Orphanage days

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I'm settling into a schedule of visiting an orphanage across the river every Saturday. Remember the picnic we were invited to back in August? These are the same kids. They all have physical handicaps, and many are classified as mentally handicapped, too.

There was a bit of running around to get me in there. I know a lot of you prayed. They're under quarantine and very strict about who can have contact with the kids. So, I had a chest x-ray done to prove that I don't have TB. Obviously, I don't. But, they wrote on the paper that I have bronchitis. (Huh? I felt fine. Our only guess is that it was left over from a cold I had gotten over a month before that.) So, on my first try to visit the orphanage, the nurse wouldn't let me in at all. But, the missionary I'm helping has friends in high places.  She connected me with the head of the regional lung cancer ward, so that I was able to get a paper saying that my bronchitis was "in remission." And then, with everyone praying, I went back the next week and got in, no questions asked.

I've been translating while my friend teaches Bible lessons, and then just helping with whatever activity she has planned and playing with the kids. They love the attention, and we love giving it. Games of Uno and Candy Land after the lessons are very intense and exciting. And the chattering! The verbal kids love to have a captive audience to talk to, and even the non-verbal ones like to be heard. (There's one boy who seems to have his own sign language, and it makes me sad that I can't understand what he's saying... yet? Maybe I'll learn.) We usually visit both a boys group and a girls group each time. Today we also got to visit with the littlest ones who are in the worst condition, and we fed one of them his lunch.

And now I'm so tired that I'm having trouble keeping my eyes open. I think I'll go to bed at the same time as all the little people here, and they're brushing their teeth already now. Good night!


*I can't post pictures of the kids we're working with, so you get one of Bogdan at home enjoying leftovers after we decorated Christmas cookies in the orphanage last week. So much fun!