Thank You Very Much!

In the summer of 2008 I was given an amazing opportunity. I, along with 8 others, headed overseas to a small country called Moldova to do missions work. Our main goal while we were there was to run a camp for children in the small village of Petrovca, but more importantly we wanted to create relationships with these children to let them know that they were cared about.

Many people do not know much about the country of Moldova, in fact when I speak of it most people don’t even know it exists. Moldova is a very small country smack dab in the middle of the Ukraine and Romania. The people there speak mainly Romanian, and have a culture that is very unique to them. It is a wonderful country but is sadly very poor. It was once part of the USSR, and did not become an independent country until 1991. As a result of the former USSR rule they are still developing as a nation and still suffer from a lack of money, jobs, and resourses. As a result many parents leave their children to live with grandparents, or sometimes alone, to go to Russia to find work. They tell their children that they will send money, and that they will return eventually. Unfortunately a lot of the time the children don’t see any money, or their parents.
While we were in Moldova we ran camps for the children that included songs, crafts, and lessons. We taught the children basic english words, and played a lot of soccer. As a result we got very close with the children and created relationships with them.

On my final night in the village we were out in the field playing soccer, and I had taken it upon myself to entertain some of the younger ones who were a little shy to play with the bigger children. We were all a little sad to be leaving and the children and villagers were sad to see us leave. One little girl in particular pulled at my heart strings. As I was sitting on a well she came over, sat on my lap, took my big hands into her little hands and said in the best english she could muster “Thank you very much!”. And I melted. It was at that moment that I realized that even though I didn’t think that running and organizing the camps was a big deal, I had made a big impact on the lives of these children and they were very grateful.