No whining!

Today was long. After church, we visited the Tomb of the Martyrs, and two monasteries. Saw many donkey or horse drawn carts, stork nests with baby storks, ate another Romanian traditional meal of soup, grape leaf and cabbage rolls and large bowls of cherries for dessert. Then we traveled about an hour to our camp, Camp Sonshine. I'll share more of the day's adventures later.

Due to water outages, we've doubled up. Right now, I'm lying in my top bunk after a cold shower (no hot water) with no air-conditioning. Let me interrupt this whining post to introduce you to three children. The eldest is Chistie, but we call him "Chris". His twin bother is Daniel and their younger sister is Georgianna Maria. They don't live in the orphanage, but with their parents in a shanty town located in a dump. The neighborhood is very affluent with good schools. The neighborhood school is free, but uniforms and school supplies are expensive. Madge, one our group from New Braunfels, identified these children on a previous NOROC visit and sponsors the children, providing funds for Daniel's glasses and hearing aids, plus uniforms and school supplies. Madge, Mary and a social worker picked the children up for camp. I asked Madge to tell me about their living conditions and she said it's much like Slum Dog Millionaire. The dump is smaller, with not as many people, but the conditions are the same. These three children are Roma, or Gypsy. They had no clothes to bring to camp. NOROC provided underwear, 2 sets of playclothes, towels and toilettries. They arrived at camp when we did, so we had an extra night with them. All three are very intelligent. I'll share more about them later, but I hope this explains why I stopped whining about the lack of AC and hot water.

Love through Christ,
Bobbie Ann