Ukraine, continued...

I don't have pictures yet, but I'm going to go ahead and write a bit more on my trip. In addition to the sports our team leader, the pastor from CC Heidelberg, taught an evening Bible study Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights. The boarding school is run through the reformed church in the Ukraine. It is in an area known as Trans-Carpathia, the people in this area are actually Hungarian, so the school is taught in Hungarian.

Two of the guys did devotions Saturday and Sunday morning after breakfast. We attended church at the reform church in the village on Sunday morning. It was quite interesting, more of a history lesson on Hungary than a Bible study....but we decided that maybe we need the same pews in our church...it would keep people from falling asleep! It was a great opportunity to experience more of the culture and better understand where the people are coming from in their relationship with the Lord.

The hardest part of the whole trip though was Friday morning. As soon as our team leader, Chris, said what we would be doing I knew it was going to be tough. The director of the school wanted to take us to a hospital where he goes two or three times a week with some of the students.

It is a hospital where they care for abandoned babies.

I am finding it hard to write about the experience...I'm sure you can imagine the emotions involved. I cried pretty much the whole time we were there. I was able to smile and play with the babies, but I had to leave every now and then to go to the hallway and cry. These babies were between 0 and 3 years old. They are there for different reasons, some are just simply abandoned after birth while others are there because the parents have been declared unfit by the state. The kids in this hospital are on the way to an orphanage at some point. Many of those abandoned at birth are Gypsie, but not all.

The conditions were horrendous! Imagaine the dirtiest most dilapidated building you can...ok are you imagining?

This place was worse....I can't even describe it...

We gagged when we went into some of the rooms, the air was so bad. There were cockroaches on the walls and even in some of the beds. Some of the babies had bugs matted in their hair. I can still see their faces...so sweet and hungry for attention. We held them for a bit and they cried when we put them back in their beds. I know that it was heart breaking for everyone, and my mamma's heart was for sure broken! I just pray that these babies get the opportunity to know the love of a mother and a father, but even more the love of our Heavenly Father, the love that never fails and from someone who will never disappoint.

The hospital receives little or no money from the government, what it does receive from whatever sources, rarely makes it where it should. Sad to say there is still quite a bit of corruption at all levels in the country.

My heart still aches for those little ones when I think of them...like I said I knew that it was going to be tough, but I don't think you could ever prepare yourself completely for such an experience. And when I think how many other hospitals and orphanages there are with kids and babies like this I get very sad...but I trust God and I know that He knows each one of them by name and that is comforting.