Romanian Orphan Ministries' Blog

I Can’t do it. Yes, You Can!

“I can’t do it!” “It’s too hard.” “My feet hurt.” The complaints just kept coming from the mouth of one of our “big-boned” orphan girls on a recent hike in the mountains.

As many of you parents can relate to, I began to get irritated. “It’s not that hard”, I was thinking. “Can’t she just be quiet and hike?!” “If she would just loose some weight, this wouldn’t be so hard for her!”

But none of these things did I say. Instead, I began encouraging her. “Good job!” “You’re doing pretty well at this.” “You’re a good hiker.” I took the time to show her some hiking techniques. I pointed out the trees. I explained a little bit about nature to her.

Funny thing happened. No more complaining. No more lagging behind the group. No more hurting feet! This was a different girl hiking beside me. She was full of enthusiasm. She was keeping up with me. She was making plans to come the next day on another hike!

Her “I can’t do it” became a “yes, you can”. A few words from me and she now likes hiking.

Orphans are both very tough and very fragile at the same time. They need to be built up because they don’t see themselves as good at much of anything. At the same time, they are very defensive and rebellious. Handling them with kid gloves is many times not an option!

But on this occasion I think our orphan girl and I both learned something. She learned that just because she had never done something before didn’t mean that she couldn’t do it, or wasn’t any good at it. I learned that my words have the power to break down or build up. I fear that many times, I fail to do the latter and find myself doing the former. “The tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity” (James 3:6a)

As one who has been called to work among these orphans, the former is just not an option. May God continue to mold us into His image. He never misspeaks. He never looses His temper. He never fails.

A God-sized Goal

I’ve got to admit it, many people think our ministry goal is nuts! Our goal is to take young people who have spent their entire lives in orphanages, with almost no discipline, love, encouragement, direction, or help, and to turn them into not just productive, normal citizens, but young Christians on fire for Christ who will then go out and disciple others as they were discipled, producing for the Kingdom!

As anyone who has worked with orphans, at-risk youth, rebellious teens, and the like knows, this is, indeed, a pretty tall order.

I personally don’t think we can succeed! I don’t expect us to. I know how hard this goal is. But I also know that this is what God has called us to do! That means that if it is going to happen, He will have done it. He will succeed, not us. And if we do not succeed, we have still fulfilled His mission for us.  (John 17:4)

Many people think our standard is too high. They think that we put too much on the poor orphans, that they are incapable of ever being “normal” people. They think that all orphans are handicapped or brain damaged. They think that working with them is a big waste of time. We have been accused of being cold and heartless, of being too harsh and unloving.

If what we are doing is based in any way upon human strength, then I would agree with their criticisms. But I don’t believe that it is. God can change a life so radically that you do not even recognize the person after some time has passed. In fact, I believe He seeks out “lowly” people just like orphans to put to shame those who think themselves more important. (I Cor. 1:26-29)

I pray constantly for God to perform these kinds of miracles in the lives of the orphans we work with. Only He can change them and bring about this massive change in their lives and way of thinking.

I have seen hints of the fulfilled goal in some of our young people. I have seen much progress in their lives. I have seen dozens of orphans helped in a significant way. I have not seen the goal completely realized in the life of one of our orphans…yet. Until that day comes, may He find us always about His work, so that upon His arrival (or our departure) we can say, “I have finished the work you gave me to do”.

emmie

I 100% believe that God can fulfill this goal He has placed in your hearts. Whether this year, this ...

23 August 10 at 11:04

admin

Emmie, Thanks for your comment. You're 100% right!

24 August 10 at 11:10

ROM Prayer Day – June

Dear ROM Prayer Day Supporters,

In this month’s ROM Prayer Day email we would like to update you on a couple of past prayer requests.

Recently we asked for prayer for our Annual Rib sale/Car wash. (ROM Prayer Day – April) This year’s sale was our biggest ever, bringing in over $3,800! Thank you for your prayers for this event! We would also like to thank everyone who bought ribs, got their cars washed, or showed up to volunteer for this event!

Special thanks to the Romanian Baptist Church of Donelson and Green Hill Church of Mt. Juliet, TN for allowing us the use of their facilities!

We would also especially like to thank Todd Roberts and Daryl Samuels who work very hard every year to pull off this event. Thank you for your hard work!

In March we asked for prayers of protection as some of girls were being targeted by various local criminals. (ROM Prayer Day – March) We are happy to say that the violence has ceased! The police actually took our complaints seriously and have begun building a case against the pimps who were trying to kidnap one of our girls.

In addition to this good news, the girl who was being targeted recently accepted Christ as her Savior and has been baptized! She has been reunited with her husband and they are both looking for employment. We were happy to be able to help her for six months until she got on her feet. We are sad to see her leave the Beauty from Ashes Center but look forward to continuing to assist these two as they try to put their lives back together again. Please pray for them as they have a long, hard road ahead of them.

The number of girls at the Beauty from Ashes Center was not diminished, however, as last week we were thrilled to welcome Ella (left) into our center. Now begins the process of helping her transition from orphanage life to becoming a productive citizen and a fruit-producing servant of Christ.

Thank you for praying every month as part of our ROM Prayer Day! Your support and prayers are essential and lives are being changed because of your sacrifice!

May God bless,

Corey Burba

Backpacking and Manhood

So I have just returned from a six-day backpacking trip with nine other guys in the Fagaras Mountains of the Transylvanian Alps, the highest mountain range in Romania! If I only had two adjectives to describe the trip they would be: grueling and mind-clearing.

Now we’re not talking about a nice hike through the woods here. These mountains were brutal. We summited three of the highest peaks in Romania. We hiked and climbed all day long for six days. We toughed out rain, wind, sunburn, hail, cold, sore muscles, bug bites, twisted knees and ankles, near-death experiences, ascent after ascent followed by descent after descent until, at one point, you almost just wanted to sit down and give up. I still have no feeling in my two big toes!

So why would we put ourselves through this!? Because while it was grueling, it was also mind-clearing. Unimportant things began to fade away. What was really important became clear. God. Family. People’s souls. These kinds of trips also develop determination and a certain hardness that transforms to “real” life once you come down out of the mountains.

I am a goal-oriented, driven person. No sooner have I reached a goal I am thinking about the next one. I push myself constantly. If I ran four miles, five is the next goal. If I lifted 200 pounds, 225 is the next goal. I have been like this for years.

But a funny thing happened on this trip. I was not thinking about the next hike. I was not thinking about how I could push things further next year.

Instead I was thinking about my family! I was thinking about my wife. I was thinking about my little girl, Evelyn. I missed them both terribly. I kept thinking that I should be with them instead of testing myself alone in the mountains!

These thoughts scared me at first. Was I getting too old for adventurous stuff, too old to keep pushing myself? No, not true, the Lord showed me.

Instead, I think the Lord wants me to push myself in other areas. He wants me to push myself to be a better husband. He wants me to push myself to be a better father. These are now my goals.

I will always go hiking. I will always want to push myself. I will never stop trying to be the best I can be for the Lord. But these things are only partly found in “manly” things like grueling hikes and heavy weight lifting.  A real man can do those things and push himself but his real focus is not on those things but on what they produce – a determined, strong character that is 100% committed to Christ and to his family.

If these activities really are “manly”, then they should produce a real man…one who is determined to excel as a Christian, husband and father. Now it is time to put to use what I’ve learned. Now it will be seen if I am really a man.

ROM Prayer Day – May

Dear ROM Prayer Day Supporters,

Compassion. This is where it all starts. Anyone whom I’ve ever met (myself included) who has worked with orphans began doing so because they felt compassion for them.

But it doesn’t take long working with teenage/young adult Romanian orphans to realize that more than compassion is needed.  There are two very different problems that must be addressed.

These young people are damaged. Eighteen (or more) years of living in an institution without positive role models, without direction or guidance, without love or affection have left more than just a mark – they have left a gaping wound.

Have you ever seen the movie The Shawshank Redemption? It’s a prison movie about a man wrongfully accused. One of his fellow inmates, an older man, is released on parole! But this is not good news for the old man. He has been institutionalized by 50 years of living in a prison. He cannot hack it on the outside. He commits suicide.

Orphanage life is not “real” life. It is a micro-society in  which things run much differently than in the “real” world. Once outside, an institutionalized young orphan who has never had any direction, has a huge chip on his shoulder and despises authority, lacks any type of life skills and has no one to lean on, finds himself in trouble. This is why so many of these young people wind up on the streets and involved in prostitution and human trafficking.

This is where the compassion comes in. Someone finds out about this situation. They want to do something. They want to help. But…what if the orphan does not want your help? What if he likes living the way he does? What if learning a trade or getting along in society do not interest him in the least? What if his hate is so deep and hot that he turns it on you!?

This is the bigger of the two obstacles. Yes, there is a lack of people compassionate enough to help these kids. That is a problem. But how do you get the kids to realize that they need your help?! This is the greatest problem we face in our work with orphans. Motivating a young person who has been rejected his whole life to want to change, to want to accept Christ, to want to do something with his life is a huge hurdle over which we must daily try to jump.

Your prayers and support are needed! We thank you for praying every month as part of our ROM Prayer Day and would ask you to pray for this need as well this month.

May God bless,

Corey Burba

ROM Prayer Day – April

Dear ROM Prayer Day Supporters,

We need your prayers! Once every month we have our ROM Prayer Day. This is a day when we ask you to pray for a specific prayer request.

This month’s prayer request is related to our Third Annual Car Wash/Rib Sale. This has become an important yearly event and is especially important right now in these hard economic times!

We really want to make this year’s sale a huge success and so we are asking for all our Nashville, TN supporters to come out to Green Hill Church, 13251 Lebanon Road, Mt Juliet, TN, or to the Romanian Baptist Church, 2520 Lebanon Rd., Nashville, TN, this Saturday, June the 12^th, from 10:00 am to 3:00 pm, to get your car washed to help support our work with orphans in Romania!

For those of you who are not in Nashville (and there are a lot of you!) we would kindly ask for you to pray for this event. Please pray that it would be successful in bringing in the support needed to continue ministering to the teenage/young adult orphans in Romania. Most of these young people have spent their whole lives in orphanages. When they “age out” of the system, they are ill-equipped to survive in society. Many of them turn to the streets, to prostitution, or get caught up in the horrible world of human trafficking.

Our programs seek to help these young people learn how to not just survive, but to thrive, in their own society by assisting them with their social, spiritual, physical and educational development.

We thank you so much for your prayers each month and for praying for this event! Please don’t forget to follow us on our Facebook page, which we update almost daily with news, events, and pictures, and also on our Blog.

May God bless,

Corey Burba

Two Problems

Compassion. This is where it all starts. Anyone whom I’ve ever met (myself included) who has worked with orphans began doing so because they felt compassion for them.

But it doesn’t take long working with teenage/young adult Romanian orphans to realize that more than compassion is needed.  There are two very different problems that must be addressed.

These young people are damaged. Eighteen (or more) years of living in an institution without positive role models, without direction or guidance, without love or affection have left more than just a mark – they have left a gaping wound.

Have you ever seen the movie “The Shawshank Redemption”? It’s a prison movie about a man wrongfully accused. One of his fellow inmates, an older man, is released on parole! But this is not good news for the old man. He has been institutionalized by 50 years of living in a prison. He cannot hack it on the outside. He commits suicide.

Orphanage life is not “real” life. It is a micro-society in  which things run much differently than in the “real” world. Once outside, an institutionalized young orphan who has never had any direction, has a huge chip on his shoulder and despises authority, lacks any type of life skills and has no one to lean on, finds himself in trouble. This is why so many of these young people wind up on the streets and involved in prostitution and human trafficking.

This is where the compassion comes in. Someone finds out about this situation. They want to do something. They want to help. But…what if the orphan does not want your help? What if he likes living the way he does? What if learning a trade or getting along in society do not interest him in the least? What if his hate is so deep and hot that he turns it on you!?

This is the bigger of the two obstacles. Yes, there is a lack of people compassionate enough to help these kids. That is a problem. But how do you get the kids to realize that they need your help?! This is the greatest problem we face in our work with orphans. Motivating a young person who has been rejected his whole life to want to change, to want to accept Christ, to want to do something with his life is a huge hurdle over which we must daily try to jump.

Fulfilling Christ’s Commands through Business

I know that the idea of doing business as ministry is a little strange to some people. Recently we have begun two small businesses whose sole function is to finance our work with orphans and to provide jobs for orphans in Romania.  For those who would like to understand how business and ministry can go together, please watch this short video.

I do not know if this man is a Christian, but the principle he is talking about is very similar to the one Christian businessmen all over the world are using to put their skills to use furthering Christ’s Kingdom.

We seek to empower orphans to not just subsist, but to thrive in their communities by giving them the opportunity to work! Those of you who donate to Romanian Orphan Ministries can know that your donations are going to help these young people learn how to work, so that they can be independent, productive members of their society.

Ema

What is so impressive about this gentleman is that he seized an opportunity where others saw a tragedy. This is ...

31 May 10 at 08:16

ROM Prayer Day – March

Dear ROM Prayer Day Supporters,

Violence – I don’t like it. I don’t like having to deal with it. I don’t like threats. I don’t like living in fear. I don’t like those in my family and our orphans to have to confront these things either.

Yet these are some of the things we have been confronted with recently at our Beauty from Ashes Center for Orphan Girls here in Oradea, Romania.

One of our new girls was involved in a life of forced prostitution before coming to us. She is afraid to leave the house because her former pimps (a man and his wife) threatened her and told her they would find her. They told her that if they caught her out on the street they would kidnap her and sell her to someone in Western Europe.

To complicate matters this girl is married and her husband has attempted to assist these pimps in kidnapping her! Just recently she barely escaped from them. To read more about this situation, please visit our Blog.

Another of our girls was attacked on the tram about two weeks ago by a band of homeless orphans girls who live in a major park. They are controlled by one “Poofy” (his nickname) who is also an orphan and beats the girls if they do not steal for him. We have heard that this Poofy is wanted by Interpol and has been in prison in other countries in Europe.

About a month ago we heard the church alarm and saw someone crawling out of the window. (Our Beauty from Ashes Center is right next to the church.) We surrounded the church and called the police. We caught the thief – and it was Poofy! The police came and in all the activity, one of our girls had come over to the church. This Poofy saw her and, in his twisted mind, sought revenge on her for what happened to him. For more on this story see a second post on our Blog.

So now we must protect our house, my family, and our girls from pimps bent on kidnapping and human trafficking, and bands of thieves who would not only rob from us but physically harm us and our girls if given the chance!

This is not the nice, quiet, safe environment we would like for our girls! They need healing. They need safety. They need love and peace. They also need to be free to pursue schooling and work in the city.

This violence is not good. Further violence (although tempting!) from our part will just exacerbate the situations. Therefore I am asking for everyone to join with us in prayer. God wants us to protect our families and our children. But revenge is His. A few turns of the page in the Psalms should be enough to see how even David, who was more than capable of taking care of his own enemies, turned to the Lord and depended on Him.

We also will depend on the Lord during this time. May His will be done!

Sincerely,

Corey Burba

Mandinita

Just a quick update on Mandinita. (Pictured to the right along with her mother and Andreea, our Director) Some of you will remember her from past posts. Mandinita had to temporarily leave our program because her mother (Mandinita comes from a Gypsy family) left to go work in France for several months in order to fix the wall of their mud-brick house which was falling in.

Unfortunately, this meant that there was no one except for Mandanita to stay and take care of her nieces and nephews. Mandinita’s sisters have led less than exemplary lives and have several children out of wedlock. They have pretty much abandoned these children to Mandinita’s mother who, contrary to popular custom, has not abandoned them to the orphanage but has taken on the responsibility of taking care of them herself.

Mandinita’s mother has come back from France and the house will hopefully be fixed soon. This means that Mandinita will now have several weeks of hard studying to do in order to recover the time she lost and pass her final exams in June.

While at the Beauty from Ashes Center she will help make cards and take part in all the other aspects of our program including the homeschooling. This homeschooling in basic math, reading and writing, and grammar helps her tremendously at school.

Mandinita’s younger sister (by younger I mean 15 years old) was married two weeks ago. Mandinita (who is 16 years old) does not want to follow in any of her sister’s footsteps. Mandinita attends church and seems very interested in spiritual things and the Bible but we are not sure that she really understands what salvation means. We hope to have opportunities to discuss these things with her now that she is back!