Mein Hertz tut mir weh

This morning/afternoon, I spent some time at an orphanage in Klaipeda. I didn't exactly know what to expect when going, but what I did see was simultaneously encouraging and saddening. While there, I helped a young boy, Arturas, take pictures with my digital camera. He seems to have quite the eye for photography and was very excited to take pictures of people and then run up to show them the photo that he had just taken of them. He took a couple of pictures of me. When I looked through them just now on iPhoto, it is clear that I've lost a bit of weight since May. The way that my clothes hang on my body is a bit awkward now, but I'll just have to make do for the next two weeks and not to try to feel self conscious about it. My dress clothes fit okay for teaching, so that's a positive.

Narcissism aside, at the orphanage I enjoyed playing frisbee with a girl who is well into puberty. It is apparent that she doesn't have very good hand-eye coordination and is sensitive to others yet attempts to exert a sense of control over the other children since she is a bit older than them. She is very eager to speak what English she knows. With her age and what may be effects of fetal alcohol syndrome, I feel that she will never be adopted while she continues to live at the orphanage. Unless the state is somehow able to help her find work and a decent home or LCC is able to provide for her life skills courses, I fear that she will become one of the many drunk homeless beggars on the streets of Klaipeda. She is such a sweet girl, I don't want that to be her life. Circumstances have made her parentless and without the characteristics of a normal adolescent. I pray that God will provide for her to make the rest of her life purposeful and one worthy of living. To answer Kel's question from Thursday: If I woke up tomorrow morning to find that I were God, the first thing I would do is give comfort and love to the children of the orphanage in the form of loving parents and comfortable home with a lush garden in the back. They have only a cement courtyard, a sandbox, and a small hard soiled football pitch (that may normally be off limits to them, I'm not sure) to play on. I cannot imagine my childhood without the three acres of land that my family had in Vermont. In thinking about that time of my life on this day, that bit of land that my parents provided for me was a luxury that I saw as every child's experience. Extend prayers of comfort to these young ones.