This month I have been blessed to work with two other great women of God in developing a children’s curriculum for the street kid ministry here in Cornesti. We have made a successful 16 week program that can be rotated throughout the year. Along with creating this program we have also taken one of the weeks for the program and implemented it the last week we are here in Moldova.
When we started preparing for the week of children’s program it started off a little intense. Us three girls went to the school to pass out invites to the children at the school. This started off great but turned into a downward spiral very quickly. The students had been let out of school on break and noticed three American girls walking around the school yard posting flyers. Next thing we know a group of boys are surrounding us and asking if we speak Romanian. The honest Christian girls we are told these nice boys that we didn’t speak Romanian we only spoke English. That’s when things started to get crazy! We were now surrounded by about 15-20 boys ranging in all ages and chanting and speaking Romanian to us. It became a circus fast and we were the main attraction. One boy who was the ring leader kept saying “come with me, come with me” he then started touching the other two girls I was with butts and trying to guide us to go somewhere with him. This is when we decided it was time to leave the school yard.
We were ignoring the children’s comments at this time. In the states this would have never happened first a teacher would have wondered why we were there, in Moldova we saw teachers but they ignored our presence even being there. As we were leaving the school yard the crowd of boys began throwing things at us. We had apples they were eating, walnuts from the ground, and our flyers crumpled up and thrown at us. This was our first interaction with the children who might possibly be attending the children’s program.
As the week went on we usually had about 4 to 5 little boys who would come to the hour and half children’s program. We learned that these children all dealt with one or both of their parents working in another country, and just a lot of brokenness. All we could do was love on these children the way Jesus would love on them and fully commit to them for an hour and half each day.
The following week we held a VBS for the street kids program. Each day we had about 9-10 children coming, which was very encouraging to see. On the last Friday of our kids program one of the girls from the orphanage that is at our ministry joined the street kids program. We were making a book about love and how we can show others love, when she questioned about having Jesus in her heart. Us three girls were able to pray with her and watch her accept the Lord as her savoir. The Joy that came from this girl right after praying was only the joy that the Lord could bring. Her eyes showed the Love that had come into her heart, and she was hugging everyone in the kitchen and the smile never left her face.
It was so good to see how redemptive God was with the children’s program from the very beginning with all the chaos to the end having a girl accept the Lord. It truly shows how God’s love is never ending and he will do whatever it takes to bring one of his children to him.
We leave Moldova on Tuesday for Nepal and the hardest part of leaving will be leaving these children and having to say goodbye to them. I encourage you to find someone to show God’s love to today.
