Orphanage and home children

On Tuesday evening, I brought down all the clothing that we had brought for the children at the orphanage. The Lord had amazingly provided so many clothes on clearance at Walmart, and we used some money that had come in for our trip.

The ladies were awed at all that the Lord had provided.
Heather, Kandi, and Natasha (the house mother) sorted the clothing into three piles:
a pile each for two different orphanages, and one pile for Natasha and future girls of this home.

Here Heather is getting a picture of the sorting. It made me so happy! We had filled nearly three whole big suitcases with clothing.

But not only clothing. There was also all that herbal medicine that I'd found on clearance, and Natasha was so thankful especially for the allergy drops.

She and her little boy were suffering with itching from a food allergy, and she had scratched till she was bruised or raw!

Praise God, these allergy drops, called Aller Calm, worked for her! Within days she was almost completely cleared up, and she said the drops worked even better than medication which she has to use when she reacts.

The next morning, I woke up with heaviness in my chest, and soon began to feel very achy.

I really didn't feel like going along to the orphanage administration building, but I went anyway.
Here Natasha (to the left) is translating for us to two ladies who help run the orphanage.
The man in the picture is Robert, who has been a big support of the girls' home.
The Durhams were thankful for the clothing we brought, as the gift of it was good for their relationships with the directors of the orphanage.

In actuality, the orphans are not housed in a central building as I expected, but are rather farmed out to ten or twelve homes, so that no home has more than about ten children, as I understand it. 

It is felt that this is a healthier way of taking care of the children than having them in an institutionalized setting. 

Below, we are looking at the posters on the wall that picture the different children in different settings.

We did not get to see any children ourselves that day.

This is the administration building for the orphanage, where we dropped one batch of clothing.

This is Robert's lovely home, which he is losing along with his nursery business, due to being taken advantage of in a dastardly way by someone who was out to take advantage of his  money, business and possessions.

The bank is taking over everything, as we understood it, and he and his wife will have to move in with his wife's mother. This is very hard for this family, as you can only imagine.

Pray for special grace for this precious Christian couple as they navigate these bitter waters.

Robert seemed like such a sweet man.

Here are apartment buildings that the government built for gypsies, but like in the inner cities of America, you can take some people out of the slums, but you can't take the slum out of them.

They have made a big mess. Windows were broken, and the government learned that it didn't do any good to try to help the gypsies. A large percentage of the population in Slovakia is gypsies.

One family of six or seven children in the orphanage is there because their gypsy parents would not send them to school, and so the parents were put in prison.

This is the one young lady who is presently at the girls' home we worked at--Martina.

I dearly and deeply loved this precious girl.

Here she was drawing a picture of a beautiful girl.

When I asked if I could take a picture, she went for a notebook in which she had drawn other pictures, and showed it to me. Here is a similar picture to the other one she was drawing.

I noticed the missing face.

And I wondered if the faceless girl was a cultural thing or if it came out of the deep emptiness in this girl's heart--the lack of identity, and the deep yearning to be something beautiful like this beautiful rose she had drawn in place of a face.

This girl had lived with a foster family since she was one year old. She said she has talked more to Natasha in the short time she has been in this home than she talked to her foster mother in her whole life.

It was a joy to us when Martina started sitting down with us to our meals. She hadn't for several days.

She attends a technical school where she is training to be a hair dresser.

The day before we left, her assignment was to curl someone's hair. 

I permitted her to try her hand on Hannah's hair, while Hannah patiently sat for an hour or an hour and a half!

Her hair was an awful mess by the next morning, but Martina got the job done and a picture taken to show in class! Someone teased that it was a good thing Hannah was along for her to work on, or she would have had to curl Ed's hair! What a laugh we all got!

Hannah had a practical lesson in the time and effort necessary to curl hair and decided it wasn't much to her liking. She seems to be very content with the braids or other simple ways her mother and sister make her hair!

Our First Days in Slovakia

About 9 a.m. Monday morning, after a quick metro ride to the  market where we could buy a few souvenirs in Hungary, we loaded up into a van Ed had borrowed from another mission organization,

and we drove about 4 hours to the girls' home in Slovakia.

Natasha had a delicious meal waiting for us, but Heather and Kandi Boardman were going to be in charge of cooking for the next few days. 

I loved the embroidered Slovakian curtain hanging at the kitchen window.

Heather and Kandi got right busy planning menus and making a grocery list for shopping later that afternoon.

Jonathan got a good look at the little room in which he was going to be spending most of the next six working days!

With the possibility of up to ten girls plus the house mother and her son housed here in the future, there was most definitely a need for a second bathroom.

On Tuesday morning, the job Ed had for us ladies was to scrape the old plaster and paint off the upstairs hall walls, and to get it ready for painting. Natasha insisted on my wearing something to cover my hair, and Heather loaned me her shower cap!
I felt incredibly lovely!!!!  :)

Natasha also warned us not to try to do too much scraping in one day because she had scraped a whole room one day and couldn't sleep for the pain for the next two nights.
My arm was already still tender from the fall I had taken on the metro, so I just did what I could, hoping for the best!

Later in the day, I went to see how I could help Jonathan. He was having to unwrap the boxes of tile, clean off the globs of glue that kept them from jostling each other, and then lay them.
So I took over the job of unpacking the tile, cleaning them, and handing them to my dear hubby!
It is so fun working together as a team!

I even mixed mortar!
Little did I know this would be the first and last day that I would up to much helping, because of getting sick the next day.

Dan Boardman framed in the window of this bathroom.

I am spraying down the plaster on the other side of the hall now, getting ready to start scraping again.
Of course, we always had to move furniture and other things around before we could do any job.

This room was a big mess, and needed to be cleared out before work could be done. 

Poor Dan was ill before he even arrived, and he could not work more than 45 minutes at a time without stopping to rest. He never complained but we felt so bad for him. He had an awful cough.

His job in this room was to pull up the flooring and bolster it better underneath.

 The above picture is after we had cleared out the room, and if it looks like the air is full of dust, that is because it is! I don't know what we would have done without Carrie. She was a real trooper about keeping messes cleaned up and hauling all manner of things around as we worked in one place after another.

Below, Dan has installed new lighting along the edges of the upper cabinets in the kitchen.

That was such a help, as it was so dark to work at cooking or doing dishes. 

If it looks like there is smoke in the air in the picture below, it's because it is!

Natasha seldom bakes, and she stores hot pads in the oven.
Needless to say, one hot pad began to smoke before the ladies discovered their mistake of not checking the oven when they turned it on!
Below, Kandi and Carrie are toting a big load of painting rags and other stuff out of the hall so that Dan can start painting.

Here is the concrete staircase that we went up and down a hundred times while there.
The little door to the right opens into the bathroom that Jonathan was holed up in most of the time!

Carrie mopping after all the mess of scraping plaster, etc.

Our Weekend with Durhams in Hungary

This cute flowershop was right next door to the entrance to the Durhams' apartment complex's courtyard.

They lived on about third floor, with their door opening off the corner.

As we were out walking, this group of Irish kilts went by playing something Irish, we assumed in honor of St. Patrick's Day.

Ed Durham told us that Hungarians are depressed.

I think it's no wonder, with all the reminders of the Holocaust and World Wars around, from statues to memorials.

This one had just been put up by the government, in memory of the holocaust, with the black bird of prey representing Germany. The Jews were very upset about it, because they feel the Hungarian government and people were as much to blame for the murders of Jews as the Germans. There were many papers and much litter around this area, strewn by angry Jews.

I can see their point. Germans came in and did their dastardly deeds, but many Hungarians simply turned a blind eye, or were accomplices in some way.

Down to the right is the American embassy.

Here is the Hungarian Parliament building.

It was late afternoon, and we got to watch the soldiers taking down the Hungarian flag.

Here they are getting ready to fight the wind to fold it up.

Across from the Parliament building is this other building that had been riddled with bullet holes during the War. This particular corner wall is a memorial wall, with bullets planted into old bullet holes. Other old bullet holes have been patched and plastered over.

Then we walked down to the river. Budapest is actually a combination of two towns, Buda and Pest.

We noticed these iron shoes along the riverside, and Ed explained that they were a memorial to the Jews who had been murdered at that spot.

We listened to Ed's horrifying tale of how the Jews were herded down and lined up along the riverside here.

They had to take off their shoes (because in those days shoes were valuable)

and then the Jews were shot and would fall into the river.

To think that their shoes were valued more than their lives!

I walked along the bank, just like the many other people who were clustered around taking pictures,
and my heart broke.
Here was a wee pair of baby shoes, surrounded with flowers and candles.

To think the anti-Semites valued shoes more than the lives of the Jews!
To think they could just line people up like cattle and shoot them till they fell into the river!
Jonathan came walking toward me, (he knows his wife pretty well) and I buried my face in his chest and wept in his arms.

Dear God, help us to never value what people wear (or drive or possess) over the priceless value of their hearts and souls!

May we love people regardless of their apparel,
and stand up for the downtrodden and underdog.

Mom Kersplats on the Budapest Metro!

While I am resting here sick at home instead of attending church like I would love to have done with the rest of the crew today,
I will tell you about last Sunday.
I titled it "Mom Kersplats on the Metro" because--well, it is just too hard to say "I kersplatted."
It's too humiliating.

 So here we were having a fine time going home with Ed from church (after Heather had left earlier with the Boardmans to start dinner) and we boarded this metro in Budapest.

I was standing near the door, hanging onto a bar the way a dignified person should, when the metro came to a stop, and I realized that a person behind me wanted to get off.

So I let go of my bar and stepped over to let this person pass.

And that is when it happened.

Perhaps the metro hadn't come to a complete stop;

perhaps I still am not quite used to the progressive lenses on my new glasses;

perhaps this mom just bumbled big time.

At any rate, the floor of the metro had a sudden meeting with my shoulder!

How funny that just that very morning, Ed had preached through a translator about trust, and shown this illustration!

But the instant I hit the floor, something amazing happened.

All I saw were hands reaching out to me.

There were so many that in my jarred and befuddled state I had no idea which one to choose,

and so one chose for me.
He grabbed my hand and lifted me up and as suddenly as I had gone down, I was on my feet again.

Unfortunately, in my embarrassment, I was so self-focused that I didn't think to thank him.

(How could I anyway in Hungarian?)

I just covered my face with my hands and laughed hysterically, because really, it's not every day they get to see a funny-looking American woman falling straight over on their side on a metro!

All kinds of people were asking me if I was okay, or at least I assume that is what the garble was about, and I assured them I was (if I said I wasn't it might mean a trip to a Hungarian hospital, and who wants to go there when you are on your way to Heather Durham's delicious Sunday chicken dinner?)

The man who picked me up looked at me kind of funny.

Perhaps they thought I was drunk.

They do see that very often!

At any rate, I didn't know at that moment how I would not be able to sleep for the pain the next night,

(Till I took a pain pill)

 but I was able to rest from the terrible jarring as Heather and Kandi set on dinner. 

And I thought, how like God's hands those hands were that reached out to me when I went kersplat.

No sooner do we tumble off our feet than we see His hands reaching out to us.

When we are too befuddled and embarrassed to reach back, He doesn't berate or mock us. 

He just lifts us.

Do we think to thank Him?

Sick in Slovakia

Although it is disappointing to end up spending half my time in Slovakia sick,

it is a delightfully splendid place to be ill!

 This is what we get to watch out our bedroom window!

Storks coming back to their spring nesting place!

Our upstairs bedroom (which all four of us shared for a few days) is a warm, sunny, spacious room, and the feather comforters from Germany are incredibly soft and warm.

I wished I could go to church with the others this morning--probably the once in a lifetime experience of attending church in Slovakia.

 Instead, I get to stay home and try to recuperate after a half sleepless night with being unable to breathe well and I don't know how  many mice running all over our room,

on the desks, in the closets, around the tomato planters on the windowsills, and finally around my pillow on the bottom bunk!

When that happened a second time even after I hurled my pillow at the unseen creature in the dark, I gave up and crawled into Jonathan's narrow, hard bed, and tried to go to sleep.

 So now I am sitting here with my nose dripping, drinking cup after cup of tea to try to get rehydrated after days of sickness and terribly sore throat, aches and pains!

But at least I was able to get up and be around a little the last couple days.

Yesterday Jonathan and Ed Durham put up electric fencing to keep the sheep out of places where they do not belong.

 Like this.

 Natasha was out in the morning pruning fruit trees and spraying.

This is a plum tree.

Here many back yards have fruit trees as well as garden.

 Indoors, the first girl to stay here in the girls' home, Martina, was slicing onion greens for a fresh salad. I'm sorry her eyes are closed in the picture. She is such a lovely, sweet girl.

At first she was too shy to eat with us, and one day there was a big problem that Natasha had to deal with very firmly. But Martina changed after that. She was helping a lot on Saturday, and even started sitting at the table to eat with us! 

 Natasha translated a big teasing joke that Ed teased me with last night, and Martina joined in the laughter. We are so tickled as we watch her feel more at home with us. I just love this dear girl.

Here are the huge onion greens she sliced up!

You couldn't help getting better if you eat a salad of this stuff!

Well, I have a couple hundred pictures to try to pick from to put on my blog later, so right now I'm just updating my blog a bit since we do have access to Wi-Fi here in a certain spot of the dining room!