Volunteers give the children bananas as a parting gift at each facility.
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HOUSTON (ABP) — For a decade, volunteers from throughout the United States have spent their Christmas vacations in Eastern Europe making the harsh winter a little warmer for orphans.
Volunteers serve with Children’s Emergency Relief International — the overseas division of the Texas Baptist agency Baptist Child & Family Services — distributing boots, thick socks, hats and scarves to orphaned children.
This year, volunteers from Texas, West Virginia, Alabama and Virginia delivered the winter apparel to about 3,000 residents of government-run orphanages and homes for the physically and developmentally disabled in Transnistria, a semi-autonomous region of Moldova.
In addition to meeting physical needs, CERI volunteers also take turns sharing the gospel with residents. At one orphanage, a student from the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor shared her Christian testimony. She spoke of a father she never knew who left her mother before she was born, and she talked about the questioning and grief she carried as a child because of it.
CERI supporters hand-knit winter hats to distribute to orphans in Transniestria to protect the children from frostbite.
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“There was not a dry eye in the place as she described the hope and love she found when she was introduced to her Heavenly Father who gives her endless love and heals her every hurt,” said Children's Emergency Relief International Project Director Russ Massey. “Often, children in these orphanages wonder how Americans can relate to what they have experienced, but each year we witness how God transcends cultural and geographical barriers in unique ways.”
Winter-wear missions to Transniestria and Moldova began in 1999 when a mission team from First Baptist Church in Kingwood, Texas, noticed widespread frostbite among orphans throughout the country. Since then, CERI has provided more than 83,000 winter boots and socks.
“For children who are told how to spend every moment of every day, being able to have something of their very own means the world to them,” said Leslie Mitchell, Baptist Child & Family Services senior program director of residential services. “We made sure each child got the opportunity to pick out their own boots, socks, hat and scarf.
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Haley Smith writes for Baptist Child & Family Services.