Our team spent the day at Internat 2 today. We were allowed to program from their large but cold and drafty cafeteria. Still, it was great to reconnect with so many familiar faces…odd to be there and see so few kids – maybe 20 and mostly boys.

Most of the girls there were older and close friends with each other:  Viorica, Nina, Tanya and Alina, if you’re familiar with them. Alina had paid to take the bus to see her sponsor Jason. All of these girls are prime candidates for Grace House and Viorica will be joining us this June. It’s very difficult to overstate how humble, bright and precious they are…think Willy Nelson’s “Angels Flying Too Close To The Ground!”. One of our team – Buddy Newsome – is a former canine cop and used to dealing with the toughest and hardest of society, but he was in tears over them. I’m convinced that God will be using him in a mighty way through JMI in the near future.

This evening we prepared to say goodbye to Stephanie Dykes, who has to leave a few days early to get back to teaching school. Steph had approached this trip with a mixture of excitement and trepidation, concerned that it might be the last time she would see Adele, the girl she sponsors in Falesti and who will graduate this year. Through her own tears, she told us how incredibly meaningful their relationship had become, something you will see for yourself in an upcoming video we will post. Stephanie is now determined to go back and fundraise in order to ensure that Adele has a place of her own in Grace House!

The evening concluded with a chance for all our team to hang out with the Grace House girls. What amazing young women they’ve become in these few short years! We’ve recently had one of them – Alina – get married to a great young man, and Doina and Elena are engaged. As any parent, we feel the impending sense of loss and concern over their departure, but are gratified that they have successfully crossed the bridge over the most dangerous waters of their lives.  Now they will enter the next part of their journey with life skills and a foundation in the faith. More, they have experienced what it means to have the love of a God-family, a love that endures and will continue to express itself through their children someday. And that, friends, is what it’s all about for JMI!

Posted in Winter 2011-2012Tags: Christmas, internat 2, moldova | by stevedavis No Comments

It’s Friday in Moldova and I’m suiting up in anticipation of making my surprise appearance to a room full of orphans in Falesti.

My first experience as a European Santa imposter came on Thursday when our mission team visited the orphanage in Drochia. That morning, as we were doing “ice-breaker” activities with them, at least 3 little girls responded to the question, “If you could spend a day with anyone, who would you choose?” with the answer, “Father Christmas.” Suddenly the gravity of my little part in this brief and happy charade has begun to hit home.

As I make my auspicious entrance into the door at the back of the room and kids begin to become aware of my jingling presence, the excitement mounts and is electric. At this point, I sense their interest is directed toward my jolly old soul rather than the sack of gifts I’m toting over my shoulder. I know that most of them recognize the eyes behind the beard because they’ve known me for years now, but I still feel the sense of newfound celebrity.

With the help of a few of my entourage of elves I begin to pass out the assortment of gifts our team has carried across the ocean.

With every gift I hand off, I am struck by conflicting emotions:  the joy of giving that is matched, at least momentarily, by the anticipation on their faces versus the queasy feeling in my stomach that our gifts, once opened, won’t deliver on the full expectation of their impact. And since I, as Father Christmas, am the delivery agent, I sense that my celebrity status is now in real jeopardy!

In retrospect, I wonder if this experience is the bittersweet bread that we force-feed our Lord on a daily basis.  Is He the gift we crave or are we more interested in what He has for us in His promising bag of gifts?  And how must He feel knowing that, even the most satisfying of those gifts will fade in importance over the years, perhaps ending up in the warehouse of our discarded, once precious memories?

Playing Father Christmas is teaching this dimmest of disciples how shallow the stream of my faith runs and how wise is the Father who yearns for us to love Him more than we love what He can do for us!

- Steve Davis

Posted in Winter 2011-2012Tags: Christmas, moldova | by stevedavis No Comments

This morning we visited a new orphanage to us in Balti – Internat 7.  It’s director has been there for 17 years and was extremely welcoming and interested in our programs. When I asked her how the initiative to reintegrate kids with families was affecting their population of children, she replied that it hadn’t much. They have a camp they send their kids to in the summer near Balti and she was interested to hear about our transitional living programs.

Following lunch we went to a shelter for children in the city. These are kids who are orphaned, abandoned or runaways from families or foster care homes. The goal is to reunify them within a year. Failure to do so would require that they be placed in an orphanage.

One of the more serendipitous things of this or any other trip happened at the Shelter. As I was greeting the kids on behalf of the team and asking them if they knew where Tennessee was and our connection to country music, I decided to sing a few bars of a George Strait song. Predictably they didn’t have a clue. Someone in our group suggested Elvis, so I did my impersonation for them (which was dead on, by the way). A moment after I finished, an older boy sitting near a computer attached to a boom box began playing Jailhouse Rock. Immediately some of our group began dancing with some of the kids and whatever ice might have been in the room was shattered!  As I lost all control of the moment, it occurred to me that prophesy had been fulfilled because, truly, “Everybody in the whole cell block was dancin’ to the jailhouse rock.”

We left Balti and arrived back in Chisinau around 6:30 just ahead of Dana Shockley, who just flew in to complete our merry band. After a great dinner, Jennifer Kelly, our team leader, put us to work wrapping presents. It seemed that this too was something of a miracle akin to the loaves and fishes because our supplies seem to be multiplying instead of dwindling!

As usual on New Year’s in Moldova, we were serenaded through the evening with fireworks. Tomorrow we visit Internat 2!

Posted in Winter 2011-2012Tags: Christmas, elvis, moldova | by stevedavis No Comments

Yesterday (Dec. 29th) our Christmas in Moldova team completed our first full day in country by visiting the orphanage in Drochia in the north. It is unseasonably warm for this time of year, meaning that it is comfortably cool in the afternoons.

Drochia is a new orphanage to JMI and one that I first visited about 10 years ago. There are about 175 children on campus during the school year and most of the roughly 42 kids who were there waiting on us were those who are true orphans or have been abandoned with no family member with whom to spend the holidays.

The Director greeted us outside to give us a brief rundown on the orphanage. The Drochia orphanage, she told us, is assigned for children who have special needs such as epilepsy, emotional problems related to impulse control and bed wetting. I remembered from my previous experience that electro shock therapy was used there as a treatment option. Her description of the children made things appear ominous as we walked the hallway toward the meeting room, but once inside, it became clear to me that these kids were every bit as lovable as any of the others we have known.

After introducing ourselves, we split up into small groups to get to know the children better. We offered questions for them to respond to such as:  If you could be any animal what would it be?; if you could spend the day with any person, past or present, who would you choose and what would you ask them?; if you could receive one wish, what would you wish for?; and if you could trade places with anyone alive, who would that be and why?  One of the funnier responses to the trading places question came from an older girl who said, “Justin Bieber’s girlfriend.” One of the more poignantly common responses to who would you spend a day with was “my mother or father.”

After crafts, Jason Cruise gave a devotional while Stephanie Dykes, Dave Shurson, Holly Boutwell and I stuffed the gift bags we had for them. I then donned a Father Christmas suit (the Eastern European Santa Claus) and we passed out the bags and other gifts before singing a few Christmas carols and departing.

Since our second destination cancelled on us due to there being few children left on campus, we had time to return to the team house after lunch to rest, wrap gifts for Friday, purchase fireworks (thanks to another generous gift from CAT FINANCIAL) and make a “Metro” run for the next day’s stocking stuffers.

Tonight’s reflection time included the observation that one young girl had arrived at Drochia to be admitted while we were there that morning. She sat in tears outside the meeting room door at first and one of our team was told that she had been abandoned and would likely spend the rest of her childhood there. That was a sobering reminder of an experience that most of those children shared. Though the celebration we were bringing was inadequate in the context of that kind of misery, we were grateful to allow her a moment of respite from the thought of how her life was being forever altered.

Posted in Winter 2011-2012Tags: Christmas, Drochia, moldova | by stevedavis No Comments