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Today, as I
sat in church, I looked at the shoes of the boy
sitting next to me. He had his shoes on the wrong
feet. Of course, all young children sometimes put
their shoes on wrong. However, Dacian is not a young
child. He is twelve and an orphan. He has no mother
or staff person who cares enough to say, "Dacian
you have your shoes on the wrong feet. Take them
off and put them on right." At one point, Dacian
bowed his head and with his hands clasped, prayed.
What was his prayer? When he looked up, I noticed
his wet eyelashes. Something in this time of prayer
touched his heart.
Some fifty orphans
sat scattered throughout the small congregation.
What an unusual church. Several blocks from the
church is Popesti orphanage. It houses about 130
children. Today was a sad day as some of the children
will go to a bigger orphanage in Oradea to begin
the school year. Many are afraid, as was one girl
who sat in our row at church. Tears dripped down
her cheeks throughout the whole service. She will
be sent to another village to work in a factory.
It seems like something out of a Dickens novel,
where children were beaten because they asked for
more food.
Another pair
of shoes catches my eye. Roxanna never has on shoes
that match. Today, she has a blue flip flop on one
foot and a pink one on the other. Last week, she
had one tennis shoe on, and one sandal. Does the
pile of shoes she sorts through not have matching
pairs? Do mean kids steal her shoes? If I ask her
she will be "rusine" or embarrassed, so I don't
ask. I try to focus on her beautiful smile. Sometime
and somewhere, someone carved a cross on her forehead-
the cross scar is still there. Roxanna looks twelve
but she is seventeen. Tomorrow, she will go to the
orphanage in Oradea, and I might see her once a
month.
Romi, a fifteen
year old orphan, wore bright yellow tennis shoes
from spring to mid-summer.
Last spring, Fred and I moved into our apartment
in Marghita, Romania. We live here because we are
retired. We invited Romi to come visit us, and he
wore leather shoes without socks. The holes in the
bottoms of his shoes were so big, they ruined any
socks he wore. We tried to patch the insides with
cardboard, and when this didn't work, we looked
in FCE's storage depot. There, sitting in a box,
was a pair of brand new yellow high tops.
Romi was thrilled! He promised to give them back
to the depot as soon as he received his new camp
shoes from the Loving Arms camp team. Romi came
to visit again in June. As soon as he walked in
the door, I noticed a strong odor. The source was
his yellow high tops. After going through several
buckets of water, we finally got them clean. Then,
we noticed that they, too, were falling apart. Romi
said, "A man on the street asked to buy my shoes,
but I said no as I promised to bring them back."
I was overjoyed when the camp team from Colorado
gave Romi new shoes and socks.
I pray for
the day when all of "God's children" have shoes...
not worn out ones, not mismatched ones, not smelly
yellow ones, but brand new shoes.
Blessings,
Karleen Dewey
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