Serving in Our World: Simple Goodness

This week has been so good. This last week was the first of the last five weeks where I made it to work every day, and it was just simply wonderful.

One of my girls who had been in the hospital the week before came back to the orphanage.

One of my chair bound girls got to go outside for the first time that we've seen this summer.

One of my boys who has severe burn scars is in the hospital to see about getting some skin grafts done.

I got to go see said boy in the hospital after church today. He is so adorable.

I got to take care of one of the other babies from the orphanage at the hospital on Tuesday.

I got to meet a nice gypsy girl at the hospital.

I got to eat KFC, which is really good here.

I got to visit a 14th century fortress.

We made plans to create a new Y-Serve program when we get back to school.

We had a birthday party for Mario, our Romanian mom.

I got to see some really cool lightening... I am still mystified by how there's no thunder here...

I got to spend some good time with Maria at the end of one day.

I got to hold an adorable baby boy at the hospital who was screaming when I came in, but by the end he was calm and nearly asleep. I'm actually really impressed with my own ability to put him to sleep because he was really unhappy about not being able to move his hand that had an IV in it.

I got to meet a wonderful 8 year old boy with burns on his legs. We played with bubbles and a beach ball, and watched him make faces behind the nurse's back.

The kids I work with in the afternoons at the satellite apartment got moved into the orphanage on Friday because their apartment is getting remodeled. This was a mixture of sadness and happiness. One of the boys is getting moved to a different orphanage soon where he'll be able to go to school. One was moved into Meggie and Olivia's room. He'll fit in well with the other kids in that room. The two brothers and the girl got put into Brooke D's room at the orphanage as well as one of Meggie and Olivia's boys, who will fit better in Brooke's room. She already had 5 little girls all around 14 months old, so there are 9 kids in that room now. That's where I'll be going in the afternoons now.

I went Friday afternoon, and it was wonderfully fun. The brothers have a little sister who has been in Brooke's room rather than the apartment because she's so young, so they hadn't seen her since March, and they are so cute with her. They were giving her toys and showing off for her, and just being so nice. The new boy is fun too. Brooke's girls are so wonderful. It feels so good to hold babies who are healthy and happy.

We also had some extra helpers. There's another apartment that is getting renovated, so there are three teenage girls at the orphanage right now. They joined us Friday afternoon and helped with holding the girls and disciplining the boys (it's so useful having people fluent in Romanian to tell them off for kicking the ball at the television).

And those are just some of the wonderful things from this last week.