The ladies of Umoja, Koinonia, and the Cheetahs have been going to a place called Jubilee this month. Jubilee houses women who were orphaned, most of which have a mental, social, or physical disability. At 18 years old, orphans are kicked out of the orphanage and forced to face the streets and live on their own. Because of this, the majority of these women have faced some sort of abuse as they were living on the streets of Bucharest. The brokenness they hide in their hearts is evident. We’re praying that instead they would hide the love of Jesus in their hearts, and for that to be evident.
Us with a few of the Jubilee girls on a walk to the village.
I thought I knew what to expect going into Jubilee for the first time. I have helped at a camp before for mentally and physically handicapped people in Ohio called Camp Echoing Hills, so I assumed this would be similar. It was in that we are doing similar activities with the girls as I did at camp: playing with play dough, coloring, doing hair, etc. But it was very different in the aspect of what is hindering them. Whatever disability each woman at Jubilee deals with seems to be the least of their worries; when you look in their eyes you can see a past full of pain and rejection. A heart longing for a pure, unconditional love that they’ve never known.
One of the girls, Denisa, is a fiery ball of energy. She is a classic tom boy and always up for tossing a ball around. We got to talk to Tom, a missionary from Minnesota who is the girls spiritual leader, and he stressed how fervently they’ve been praying for Denisa. He explained that she doesn’t want to have anything to do with spiritual matters and pretty much refuses to talk about it when they try. The other day I was coloring a picture of a rainbow and clouds, rain and sunshine, an ark and a dove. I wrote a Bible verse that has consistently been in my heart lately, Luke 1:37 “For nothing is impossible with God.” Denisa was sitting right next to me, so I wrote her name at the top and gave it to her. She was delighted! She began pointing to the different parts of the picture and saying things in Romanian. I pulled out my Bible and turned to Genesis 6 to show her where the account of Noah and the ark is located. She kept asking me something in Romanian, so I grabbed Tom real fast and asked him to translate. He said “she is asking for a Romanian Bible to follow along.” Denisa?! I was shocked, but amazed and thanking God in that moment. There weren’t any Romanian Bibles handy but he translated as I went through the story of Noah’s ark. Another surprise to me [and Tom] was that Denisa was saying some of the parts before I was! She had learned about this before… Now I had so many questions for her! I wanted to know if she ever had heard of Jesus, and who taught her stories from the Bible. But she quickly thanked me for drawing the picture for her, said a few words, and left. Tom looked at me in bewilderment for a second, and then told me that she said she was going to hang the picture on her wall. To my surprise, I found that drawing a picture could be a door opener to great things. I found that Denisa is a woman with a soft heart, no matter how tough she may act.I hope to be able to explore that heart more during the time we have left here in Jubilee.
Denisa
