Our train finally arrived in Iasi around 8:30 AM this morning. It was a really long night, and although we were all able to get a little bit of sleep, we were crammed together and would wake up every time someone stirred or the train wheels screeched to a stop at each station. The heat was also turned up way too high in each train car and it felt like a million degrees.
During the nine-hour trip back we tried to relax and sleep as much as we could, but we did talk a little bit at the beginning with a couple in our train compartment; mostly about religion. They told us that their daughter had taken free English lessons from the missionaries.
They asked us who the head priest of our religious group was, which took us about ten minutes and a dictionary to figure out what they were asking. I told them that we don’t have priests and that Thomas S. Monson is the prophet of our church without realizing that he had really just wanted to know who was overseeing our small group of nine on the trip. Due to the misunderstanding, he replied, “Oh, is he on the train?” and we all burst out laughing.
When we finally got off the train this morning, we were quite the sight to see. We were wearing the same clothes from the day before, our hair was all messy, and we had huge bags under our eyes from being so deprived of sleep. What made the situation even funnier was that as soon as we stepped off the train, we had to get straight onto a local tram to meet up with Mario and go visit the group homes and orphanage. So for the next few hours, we did a lot of walking and bus riding between places, and still had had nothing to eat besides bread that we bought at a stand.
As tired and dirty as I felt, I quickly forgot all about it as soon as I got to meet the kids! We went to the Dacia 3rd floor apartment first and met the three orphans there. We were greeted at the door by a loud, enthusiastic squeal from one little girl who immediately fell in love with us. Her name is Elena, and she is just like any other normal five year-old girl. The only difference is that Elena has a severely deformed face. Her mother tried to have an abortion, but it didn’t work. The child I really connected with in the short time we were visiting though, was a little boy named Sergio. He is deaf and almost completely blind. He climbed up into my arms, and the remainder of the visit, I stood in front of the window with him and we made puppets with our hands. He loved this, because he can see the outline of hands really well when contrasted with the bright sun shining in from outside.
Our visit to the orphanage wasn’t very long and not all the kids were in their rooms, but it was so exciting to finally get to see the place that we came all the way to Romania for. My first impression of the orphanage was that it is nicer than they had made it sound. The sections are all given character names; Mickey Mouse 1 & 2, Bambi 1 & 2, and Donald Duck (Isolation).
On Monday, Elisa and Mario will decide what section to assign each of us, based on where they think we will work best. I liked all the sections, but really hope I get to work in Isolation with the infants and failure to thrive children. It just looked as though many of the older kids had a lot more workers for how many children there were in their sections and it looked like they were in good hands. In isolation, there were so many infants and not a ton of workers. Some of them were crying to be held, and the workers were just sitting and watching television. I think of all the children, the infants are the ones who need the most one-on-one attention and the ones with failure to thrive really need it too. I feel like I would have the greatest impact working in isolation, and pray that that is where I am placed to work.
No comments:
Post a Comment