Andrea with 2 orphan girls in Deva, Erdely
On the 14th of July 2007 our team of 9 was heading with a sponsored rent-a-car from Budapest, Hungary to Deva in Romania, a small city in the heart of Transsyilvania and populated partly by a Hungarian minority. A good friend of ours, a catholic priest, well known in Hungary for his selfless work with the orphans in Romania, had asked us previously to organize a 2-week summer-camp in Deva. Our team consisted of 4 adults and 5 of our own youngsters, ages 12 to 15 years old. Daniella, Jeannette, Kris, Daniel und Julie were eager to once experience how it is to help out in a Romanian orphanage.
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The following two weeks turned out to be a challenge, since we found out at our arrival that we were to take on the younger orphans, as well and would have to daily reorganize our schedules. We divided everybody into two groups: The younger ones one group and the older children together with the teenagers.
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Every morning after breakfast we began the day with animated action songs from our vast Family repertoire, this really helped the children to come out of themselves. Everybody joined in and danced, jumped and had a lot of fun moving to the songs. Soon after the “real action” would start: We organized obstacle races, treasure hunts, hide and seek games, swimming, theater, walks, excursions, crafts and arts or basketball- and soccer games, plus a special barbecue and on the evening before our departure a dance-night for the teenage orphans. Over and over again our musician Daniel was being asked to sing and perform with his guitar. Well, most of the time this resulted in a dozen or more rousing action songs that were loudly encompanied by the delighted children, as well as the handful of volunteers from Deva, who helped us daily to make the camp possible.
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Again and again the love-starved smaller children came up to us adults and youngsters to cuddle up next to us, they wanted nothing more than to be held for a long while. A “luxury” that we were gladly trying to give, something which hasn’t been granted to them in their lives all too often. “After work” was not something that we were able to indulge in during these two weeks a lot, but it was worth the sacrifice. The evening hours frequently belonged to the volunteers and orphan youths that were looking up to us for counsel and came with many questions about the meaning of life.
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Altogether the summer camp was for all involved a wonderful and great inspiration. For us organizers it was awesome to see the many miracles the Lord was able to perform, as we we included Him step by step in our planning and had thoroughly prayed for all the details; for our youngsters it was a unique experience and without their input and ideas much would not have been possible. Right after our arrival back home they burst out with the question: “We really miss all the people and the orphans, can we do the camp soon again?” The children and the youth of the orhanage probably benefited the most from the camp, to many of them we are now tied with an eternal bond of friendship, as well as through a memory on a unique summer camp. Regularely now we are receiving SMS’s from Romania, some of the youth asking if we will be coming back soon.
