Today I spent my day with children who are yearning for love. Children who have been
abandoned, forgotten and hurt. Children who have lost something that I took so much for granted for so long.
Today, I spent my day with orphans.
It is not rare to be an orphan in Moldova. In Cornesti, a town of 3,000 people, there is an orphanage that has at least 300 kids in it everyday. 10% of this town are orphans under the age of 12. And many other orphans live on the streets or by themselves because there is simply no room for them at the orphanage.
We spent this morning at a house of 5 kids. Two rooms, two beds, and zero adults. The oldest boy is 15 and they just 
get younger from there – 9, 6, 4 and 2. The house smells like pee, there is not food in the cupboards, and most of the kids sleep on their parents abandoned clothes. These kids were left by alcoholics who ran to Russia in pursuit of money. We spent all morning cleaning out their house, doing laundry and trying to set them up with a little bit of a garden. We scooped apple cores out from under furniture, did piles and piles of laundry, and wiped down walls to find out that
they weren’t actually brown, but blue. It was a devastating morning, but the kids were so filled with joy to have us there. The youngest one, Sandutsa, would run around with glee showing me all her favorite toys – they were all dirty stuffed animals, but you could tell she loved them so much.
It’s amazing how far these kids have come – they’ve been coming to the children’s program, and at the beginning of the month, they wouldn’t have given us the time of day. I would sit next to them and they would literally walk away from me. The only way Sandutsa would play with me was if I was chasing her. But now they show up every day and literally run at us, arms wide open. It’s so fun to have a two year old run at you with glee and trust, without a doubt that when they crash into you, you’ll catch them. The love that they explode with, when they feel loved themselves, is awesome.
In the afternoon, we got to spend time at the local orphanage, with
hundreds of children needing love and affection. They were kids who had obviously been hurt, abandoned and scarred during their short little lives, but they were also kids who had a smile and a laugh to share. Little girls were fighting over siting in my lap. Little boys were fighting over riding on Josh’s shoulders. The kids were so willing to be loved on – it seemed like they were going to try to take all that we 
could get while they could.
I just wanted to adopt them all – kids shouldn’t go unloved likethat. But the encouraging thing is that they DO have a father.
They have a heavenly father who loves them so much and created them to be loved, cherished and desired. We may never understand why they are in this awful situation, but we can know that they are loved and watched over. Our heavenly father loves to take care of them.
