Volunteers warm orphans’ hearts—and feet—in Moldova

Posted: 1/05/07

Volunteers warm orphans’
hearts—and feet—in Moldova

By Craig Bird

Baptist Child & Family Services

Clay Palmer handed a thin, poorly dressed Moldovan child new white socks and got the typical excited smile. But what happened next was totally unexpected.

Instead of moving to the next station where volunteers were fitting children for insulated winter boots, the boy grinned broadly and headed back out the door.

“He was just thrilled to be getting a pair of socks. When I called to him and pointed to the volunteers fitting the boots, that grin got even bigger, and he literally started jumping up and down with joy,” Palmer remembered. “How can your heart not break for children who have so little and are so grateful for anything?”

The distribution included a copy of the Gospel of John in either Romanian or Russian donated by the Baptist Union of Moldova.

Palmer, a member of Bethel Baptist Church in New Caney, was one of 48 volunteers from six states who fitted new winter boots and socks on every resident of the 66 government “interstats” scattered throughout Moldova.

The government institutions are mostly orphanages, but they also include facilities housing mentally and physically disabled people, as well as one youth detention facility.

The project, Operation Knit Together, has supplied warm shoes and socks to some Moldovan orphanages since 2000. Last month, after it became part of Children’s Emergency Relief International, the overseas arm of Baptist Child & Family Services, the project took on the entire nation and signed formal contracts with the Moldovan government.

Volunteers returned home with intimate memories—a girl in a wheelchair reaching up to help carry the boxes of shoes and socks inside her orphanage, a remote interstat that has running water from a single faucet only three or four times a week, a 7-year-old giving a volunteer the only cookie he would get for weeks as a “thank you,” a mentally handicapped teenager beaming as a hand touched his face and clinging to the hand when the volunteer turned to leave.

“The volunteers worked tirelessly from 6 a.m. and often until 10 p.m. when they could have been home decorating and shopping for Christmas,” noted Dearing Garner, who headed the project. “They smiled at nervous children, tenderly held dirty and smelly feet, took pictures, hugged Moldovans by the hundreds and brought joy and the true spirit of Christmas.

Children in traditional Modovan dress help unload shoes and other supplies distributed by the team from Children’s Emergency Relief International, the overseas arm of Baptist Child & Family Services.

“When we started this six years ago after seeing children suffering from frostbite by going to just a handful of orphanages, we never could have dreamed we’d be sending seven teams over thousands of kilometers to successfully complete a project assigned, funded and enabled by our Lord. We jumped from 30 orphanages last year to 66 this time. The planning and logistics were a challenge. Amaz-ingly, we had shoes to fit each child.”

In addition to paying their own way and helping raise the funds to underwrite the project, the volunteers brought their own gifts—hand-knitted hats and scarves, stuffed animals and small toys that were handed out at the smaller orphanages.

Moldova’s Baptist churches provided the translators for the teams and often helped with the distributions, which included a copy of the Gospel of John in either Romanian or Russian donated by the Baptist Union of Moldova.

Children’s Emergency Relief International and Baptist Child & Family Services have been involved in Moldova since 1999, working primarily with the country’s two largest orphanages that house 500 to 700 children each. Currently, hundreds of youth are supported through sponsorship programs including children in interstats, youth involved in independent living and foster-care children.

Additionally, the agency sponsors camps for orphans in the summer and at Christmas, funds a doctor and provides medicines for the country’s largest orphanage and partners with a rehabilitation program for physically handicapped.

Operation Knit Together drew volunteers and financial support from churches in Texas, Tennessee, Louisiana, North Carolina, Virginia and Pennsylvania and contributions from Mississippi, Georgia and South Carolina.