Coming to a Close

Well, my time in Romania is now over. The emotions are so varied and I don't even know where to start in putting them all down. I want to tell the world what a great time it was and express to them in full detail everything that happened while there. In reality I cannot begin to share in the fullness what happened, there are not the words for me to express them. So I will do my best.
The greatest thing that I gleaned from this month of my life is the goodness of God. Time and time again He would show up and bless me. The days that I was feeling like I was not doing anything for the kids, God would softly encourage me to continue loving them because that was why He had brought me there. "For whatever you have done unto the least of these you have done unto me." So it does not matter how useful I feel, but if I am allowing myself to be used.
The last week in Romania we took 50 kids from 6 group homes to camp. It was one of the most amazing experiences that I have had. I worked with the "Rosu(red) group" and we had a group of 9 boys aged 5-11. I must say that we were the #1 team. We beat everyone else in points, although, I think we got most of our points because they were the cutest campers and the rest of the points were earned by our amazing hula-hooping skills! It was definately the hardest goodbye. I loved all of our times of playing basketball, eating our dinners of bread loaded with margerine all topped off with a ton of homemade jam, breaking up fights during recreation, learning the bible verses in Romanian and doing the hokey pokey around the campfire. What great memories.
One of the highlights of the week when Gutsa walked up to me and handed me a heart shaped card that he had made out of red construction paper. On the inside of the card he said thanks for spending time with him and for always eating dinner with him. It was one of the sweetest moments all week.
Another highlight was on Tuesday afternoon, the children received a snack and all the boys were trying to give theirs to me. They were afraid that the snacks were going to run out and that I would not get one. No matter how often I insisted that they eat their own snack they all denied and began to rip off pieces of the cakes, set them in front of me and then run away.
So, this month in Romania is now complete physically, but I know that God will continue to use this experience in my life spiritually. May He continue to bless the children of Romania and use them to bless the interns, their caretakers and the other children that they live with.