The goal was simple! We wanted to hold abandon babies for a couple of hours! We had found an organization that would go into the hospitals and hold the babies that were abandoned by their parents! These babies would get little interaction or physical touch so this group would come in and love on these children! What person wouldn’t want to do this ministry!
The only direction we had was the name of the organization, an address of a hospital and a lot of determination! We jumped on the bus and said Okay God…lead us to this place!
When we got to the hospital we quickly realized how insane our request was! You would never be able to walk into a hospital in America and say “hello, I want to hold babies!” But we all had this huge desire to do this and we knew that this is what God had asked us to do!
So we took the scary plunge to ask the people behind the front desk! Little did we consider beforehand that not a lot of people in Romania speak English! The next 15 minutes we found out through a lot of hand motions and broken English, that the hospital had never heard of this organization before and that they didn’t have a children area!
So what do we do now? Do we give up? Do we go back to the hostel? Do we find something else to do?
One of the receptionist mentioned that there was a children’s hospital and maybe that would be a better place to try! We got directions and as we headed out of the door…this man said “oh we know exactly where that hospital is. You need to take this bus and it will be right there! FOLLOW US and we will show you!” (Let me just mention that Nandor speaks English but Maria does not!)
What a blessing! Our mission was still on; we didn’t have to give up! We started to follow this guy (Nandor) and his mother (Maria) to the bus stop. We suddenly realized that they didn’t mean they would show us where the bus stop was…but that they were going to take us to the hospital and find out if and where we could hold these babies! They dropped everything they had that day and took us around on a wild goose hunt!
For the next hour or two we followed Nandor and Maria through hospital hallways, offices and stairways! Maria questioned every person who looked important that might know any information about this organization! I actually think that we went into places that we weren’t supposed to go but Maria was on a mission for us!
We went to one last office and Maria begged and pleaded to the people inside for us to go hold these babies! But with a defeated face, Maria said that it just wasn’t possible! The hospital had never heard of this organization and to volunteer in this hospital we need to get blood tested!
We told Maria and Nandor that it was okay! We told them how much we appreciated how hard they tried! We got to pray over them and as we thought we were saying our goodbyes! Maria was off again…taking us to the bus stop!! They rode the bus all the way to our stop and made sure we knew how to get home! She was always looking out for our safety every step of the way!
We did agree to see them one more time that night! We met them at the town square and got to laugh and talk to them for a few hours! I will always remember the conversations we had that night!
We left that morning with a plan, but God had a different plan! We were never going to hold babies in the hospital! God knew that from the very start.
He knew that we would meet Maria and Nandor! He knew that we were supposed to follow Maria and Nandor! We were supposed to trust that God had us covered! We were supposed to pray over Maria and Nandor and show them the love of Jesus! He knew that even though we couldn’t communicate with Maria with words, we would form a bond with her and love her as if she was our own Romanian Grandma! God knew that Maria would never give up on us!
At any moment we could have given up and said our Goodbyes! We could have felt defeated and upset that we didn’t get to do what we wanted to do!
BUT God said…Follow me and we did!!
