Hope in Desperate Conditions

http://www.worldnextdoor.org/2009/04/romaniv-boys-orphanage/comment-page-1/

sorry...you'll have to copy and paste (I dont know how to get it where you can just click on it)

The link above is from a missionary group that is ministering to an orphanage in the same region that Inna and Vitali are from. Jason found the site and we are so moved as it brought back so many thoughts and memories! As you know if you have been reading our blog, Vitali was in a special needs orphanage in this region, except that it was a baby orphanage. Jason and I have often wondered once these special needs children, like Vitali are too old for the baby orphanage where do they go? We did not know of or see an older kids (ages 6-16) orphanage for disabled children while we were in there area and out of 300 kids at Inna's orphanage, we did not see any as disabled as what was at Vitali's orphanage. So, we have often wondered where Vitali and his friends would have gone? When we saw the website above, we couldnt help but wonder if this boy's special needs orphanage would have been where Vitali would have gone since it is in the same region. Thank God, we never know what could have happened and that Vitali does have a family now, but as I read this I couldnt help but think of all the kids in Vitali's group that we played with while there who will be transferring to places like this, if not this exact place and I thank God for the missionaries that go into such conditions and are offering these children hope! The conditions they explain are very similar in some ways to Vitali's orphanage. The smells in both Inna's and Vitali's orphanages were so repulsive that we had to begin wearing deodorant on the bottom of our nose to try to endure being there. We too experienced the constant screaming, crying of kids with no one to hold them. I specifically remember looking through a door and seeing disabled children from Vitali's group walking very slowly with head leaning on the wall with such an obvious fever(bright red cheeks) that they could barely keep their eyes open and yet there is no one to help them! The weirdest thing to us was that the whole time we were visiting Vitali's orphanage, we thought his group of about 14 children were the only ones who lived there, but one of the last days that Jason was there, the director of the orphanage for some reason took Jason into a back room of a seperate building and there was a small room where the most severely handicapped babies 0-5 lived....he witnessed children with no arms or legs propped up on a couch and many other type disabilities.....it sounded just like the setting at the orphanage above. Inna's orphanage did not have children with such disabilities that we saw, but we witnessed some very hard things there too (the same teenagers crying alone in the hallways every single day we were there, kids freely roaming the premises outside, smoking, etc..., the children were only allowed to have a "shower" on Thursdays and 300 kids had to be herded through 3 shower stalls, and forget about ever have their teeth brushed and such. Inna tells us a lot about her orphanage (most of what I could not put on here), but some of the more minor things like she was on the 3rd floor of this HUGE building and at night, they turn off all the lights and there is no adult anywhere nearby. She explained how you couldnt even make it to the bathroom stalls at night because they were on the first floor and it was too scary. In fact, I just spoke to someone the other day who took a missions trip and stayed in a Ukraine orphanage the whole day and evening to see what all goes on and while he was there he even witnessed that now the pimps hang outside of the orphanages waiting to approach the new girls that will be released from the orphanage on that day (meaning they became 17 and "graduated" from the system and are put out with no skills to function well in life.) I know all of this is blunt, but it is truth and it is happening. As Americans, I think it is very hard for us to really understand what these places are like, unless you have been there. Even for Jason and I, I do not believe that there is anyway that we could have remotely "Got it" just having it explained to us if we had never been in a place like this. Basically, once you have been there, those images stay with you (how could they not), but while you are there, you can only rest in the knowledge of that these children are not forgotten by God and He knows each one by name! We don't understand God's ways sometimes, but we know that He explains in the Bible that He cares deeply for the orphans and I truly believe that He does! Because He loves them, he calls missionaries like in the link above to go to them and show them love...it is so encouraging for us to read about missionary groups like the ones above who are sharing God's love with these children and giving them hope and bringing joy into their lives and especially the one above as it very well could have been the place Vitali would have lived if not adopted. May God bless this missionary group and double their efforts!