August 12, 2002
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| SCARS on his neck and chest mark the hard life lived by Artum, one of the temporary residents of Orphanage No. 15, a street children's hospital and assessment center in St. Petersburg, Russia. Texas Baptists working with Buckner Orphan Care International ministered to Artum and other children living in this orphanage this summer through camps and delivery of needed supplies. (Russ Dilday Photos) |
CAMPING WITH CARE:
With Buckner in Russia & Romania
___By Russ Dilday
___Buckner News Services
___TARGU MURES, Romania--The roaring campfire among the tall fir trees gave Alin a warm feeling against the cool night air as he and his fellow campers sang about Jesus. He had just finished a toasted marshmallow and was licking the sticky remains of the treat from his thumb.
___During a pause in the singing, he looked up at Laura Watson and smiled. It's a memory of Camp Buckner--a camp for orphans in the hills of Romania--that will haunt Watson the rest of her life, she said.
___It's also a reminder that she and other Romanian camp team members from Wedgwood Baptist Church in Fort Worth and Calvary Bapt
See Gallery of photos from Russia and Romanian trips.
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ist Church in Tulia were doing their "job," as many put it: Sharing Christ's love with those who don't often experience it.
___"Alin is 10 years old and is a special-needs child," explained Watson, a Wedgwood member. "He was not touched e
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| SCOTT HENSLEY, pastor of Calvary Baptist Church in Tulia, places a new pair of socks on Laurentiu, a child living at Big Blue Orphanage in Romania. The Buckner team washed each child's feet before giving new socks and shoes. |
nough as a child, so he rocks constantly. Whenever we're in a big group, he just looks like he's going to explode. My job was to hold him, tell him that I love him and that it's OK.
___"One night at the campfire, he looked up at me, and he looked right at me with both eyes and he knew that I cared," she recalled. "He had this look of pure joy and innocence, which the Romanian team says they don't often have."
___Comparing the volunteer summer missions experience with work, Wedgwood member Jaudon Davis said her team's role was "to show the love of Jesus Christ to these children."
___Summer camps like the one deep in central Romania, as well as work with children in Russian and Romanian orphanages, form a major part of the summer program for Buckner Orphan Care International.
___Working through short-term volunteers from churches like Wedgwood, Calvary and First Baptist Church of Lubbock, plus longer-term interns and team members from Romania, Buckner summer camps provide children living in crowded, monotonous conditions with a camp experience away from orphanages. Volunteers conducted Vacation Bible School-type programs featuring recreation, Bible teaching, crafts and lots of love for neglected children.
___"We have hugged them, spent free time with them," said Davis, a pharmacist who made the trip with her husband, Mike. "We let them play with our hair and gave them hugs, lots of hugs."
___The hugs also were given during ministry trips to children's and babies' orphanages by team members prior to camp.
___Wedgwood team member Tom August said the team's goal at the orphanages was to "provide them with the opportunity to be loved, to be held, to be sung to, to be caressed. The children need this. The babies need that nurturing. As good a job as the caretakers do, there's just not enough of them. They are overworked and underpaid. They are so busy trying to provide for the physical needs of the child and not
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| JOHN FRANK REEVE, associate pastor for music and worship at Wedgwood Baptist Church in Fort Worth, gets a thank-you kiss from a child living at the Leaganul Orphanage in Romania. Volunteers from Fort Worth and Tulia worked in the orphanage this summer and offered a camp nearby. |
able to provide for the emotional and spiritual needs.
___"The volunteers through Buckner are able to come into the orphanage and spend some time just doing nothing more than praying over the children as they hold them," said August, who was on his fourth trip through Buckner. "We had the opportunities to feed them, to sing to them songs that they otherwise won't have a chance to hear. Babies obviously are too young to understand the gospel message, but we sang the songs they are going to hear later on in life. As they become older children, they will hear the same songs and realize that the same people that loved them as babies are now giving the message about where that love comes from--our Father in heaven."
___While some Texas teams served in Romania, other Texans staffed Buckner teams in Russia. Participants included First Baptist Church of Athens, First Baptist Church of Longview, First Baptist Church of Houston and Tallowood Baptist Church of Houston.
___Pastor Kevin Hall of First Baptist Church of Haskell led a team of 22 that included members of First Baptist in Longview and individuals from churches in Cleburne, Dallas, Fort Worth, the Valley and Texarkana.
___"Our assignment was to share the gospel through Vacation Bible School with the children in Orphanage No. 2 out of St. Petersburg," he said. "It seemed to work. You can do some of the same things you can in America, using 30-minute stations where we had crafts, memory verses, story time and recreation.
___"The gospel translates in any language, but we needed to make sure that it would translate in a way that the kids
would understand it," he said, "and then we did games that would be more culturally sensitive to the Russian culture."
___Hall said he was most rewarded during the trip when he observed adult team members blossom in their faith--"their eyes opening to the need, a need that's larger than them, seeing outside themselves and their own comfort zones."
___Like the Romanian camps, the Russian camps contained large doses of emotion as children who have known little love were buried in it.
___"When we turned into the orphanage drive, we saw all these children just pushed up against the gate, holding their hands out wanting just to touch us," said Michelle Morgan of First Baptist in Longview. "A little boy ran up to me and raised his hand up like he wanted to be held, so I just held on to him, and he clung to me. At that moment, I was like, 'God, I don't know how I'm going to make it this week, but it's only by your power, because I cannot love these children on my own'."
___Departing camp was no less emotional, said Jane Ann Crowson of First Baptist in Longview. Ultimately, the group was comforted knowing "that God comes in and his love will never leave them, that even though parents leave them and people leave them and disappoint them, God's love is constant, never changes, never leaves them. "
___The summer teams brought love and care and much-needed humanitarian aid in the form of medicine, hygiene products, quilts, school supplies and money to many of the orphanages in Russia and Romania.
___In addition to bags of aid, Wedgwood brought money to purchase beds at "Big Blue," the children's orphanage in Targu Mures, Romania.
___Wedgwood team leader Patricia Wood said the church gave $2,500 to the Buckner Gift from the Heart program "because we, as a church, have seen the need firsthand that these children have and we really wanted to do something to provide for these kids."
___The congregation chose to buy beds, she explained, because "a bed not only helps the children get a good night's sleep and comfort but it also in a way makes them feel they have some worth."
___Team members both in Russia and Romania also took new shoes for children attending the camps on behalf of the Buckner Shoes for Orphan Souls drive.
___"The moment that struck me the most was looking at the little children's feet as they took their old shoes off to receive the new shoes," said Scott Hensley, pastor of Calvary Baptist Church in Tulia. "When I saw the pile of old shoes and the pile of new shoes, it reminded me of taking off the old and putting on the new.
___"And that is what we are trying to do here with these kids in teaching them about Jesus: That there is a new life if they will but take it and go with it," he said. "But right now, we are planting seeds in their hearts and hopefully they will take on the new life."
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