Wonder of Wonder, Miracle of Miracles

Another miracle, perhaps the biggest yet-

TEO (our volunteer coordinator at the orphanage- aka wonder woman and the nicest, most selfless lady on the whole wide planet) SAID CHILD PROTECTIVE SERVICES APPROACHED HER ON FRIDAY AND SAID THEY FOUND A FOSTER HOME FOR MR. MAGICIAN AND... MY LITTLE SQUIRT!

As of two weeks ago, they still needed to evaluate the family and let them meet little squirt and make sure they would be okay to take him on with all his problems, but... he had a chance! Teo said they came with a CPS agent with the prospective parents to meet him and see if there was a connection there. Oh how I hoped there would be.

And there was. His foster mom is is kind, and very nice. I got to meet her on my last day at the orphanage during a birthday party in the kitchen. I looked at her helping feed the little squirt birthday cake and cried because of how good God has been.

This is a miracle. I was so sad about having to leave Romania, feeling like my life would be worthless because he still didn't have parents and look at that- God was looking out for both me and my little squirt and is giving him some parents right as I'm leaving. Only two weeks after I leave Romania, he is scheduled to go to his new home.

God sure planned that perfectly- I learned to love a little boy that needed love, and he got to teach me about being amazed with God's creations out the window, and now when I leave to go back to America, I won't be as worried, because he'll have a mom. :)

I get it easy. Teo loves him just as much and more than I do. She has known him for longer, and has seen him progress. Sometimes life is very, very, unfair. The people, like Teo, who do the most for these kids, who save them and love them when no one else does, who take them on special trips to the zoo and visit them just to see how they are doing every day in the orphanage- who give everything they can to loving these kids while no one else is loving them... are not the ones who get the credit for it. He's going to his new home with his new wonderful mom, and Teo will keep taking care of all the other kids at the orphanage. Will anyone tell Teo thank you? Not even the little squirt is old enough to comprehend or to say, "Thank you for changing my life." Even though she has.

Matthew 18:

 "1 At the same time came the disciples unto Jesus, saying, Who is the^agreatest in the kingdom of heaven?

 2 And Jesus called a little child unto him, and set him in the midst of them,

 3 And said, Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little ^achildren, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.

 4 Whosoever therefore shall ^ahumble himself as this little ^bchild, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven.

 5 And whoso shall receive one such little child in my ^anamereceiveth me."

Teo is my hero. She found a mom for my favorite little boy. I don't know if anyone will ever tell her thank you- but she really is my hero- always doing good, even though it is good no one else ever knows about unless they work directly with her.

So here- Dear Teo-

Thank you Teo. Thank you for helping a miracle happen. It means the world to me, and it means the world to that little boy. You are God's hands.

Love, Alana

Mary

Mary has always been my hero. My grandma is also named Mary, and I think it's the greatest name ever. For goodness sakes, Mary was the mother of Jesus Christ. Talk about God trusting you. When she was only 14, she was pregnant. So by 15 she was a mother.

This is me at 15. Aka- NOT ready to be a mother:

If I were Mary, and I'm 18 years old, Christ, my son, would be three years old. That's the same age as my little beaver kid in my room- the one with fetal alcohol syndrome. 

Little Beaver was really sick this week, and he was in the hospital. Sometimes I wonder how Mary did it. She was only 14 years old- how did she possibly know everything about being a parent to Jesus Christ?

Well- I don't know anything about being a parent either- but I know that it's sure easy for me to love Little Beaver. He's just a little boy, and he just needs someone to play with him, color with him, hold in and rock him while he is sick in the hospital. I couldn't wait to trek the 30 minute uphill walk to the hospital so I could see little Beaver's eyes peering out from between those white metal crib bars, and so I could take him out of that crib and hold him.

Maybe Mary was like that. Maybe she just really really loved her little Jesus, and so God knew she would do a good job, and taking care of him was natural.

My dad once told me he was afraid for me to be born. He didn't know how to be a father and he was worried he wouldn't be good enough. His father, my Grandpa Bob, told him, "Just love them." Maybe it's not so much about knowing as it is about loving.

" I know that he loveth his children; nevertheless, I do not know the meaning of all things." -1 Nephi 11:17 

Hiding Orphans

The hospital has a strange phenomenon:
Many times, when we ask what rooms the orphans are in, the nurses will just shake their fingers at us and say "nu avem" (we don't have). Even though we KNOW they have kids. Sometimes we can literally see the orphans through the window, but oh no- "nu avem."

Why would they say that? Sometimes it's because they don't want the kids to cry when we leave. But even more often than that- it's because they just mopped and they don't want footprints on their wet mopped floors. So, the children go unvisited. It's "nu avem" and a shaking finger.

Obviously it's wrong. Obviously it is infinitely more important that a child without family or friends has someone who will come and visit them than that the floors get a few footprints down one side of the hallway. Yet- the nurses who mop the floors want their coworkers to admire their clean floor, and they don't want American girls messing that up for them. So, it's "nu avem" and a shaking finger.

There's definitely a bigger and greater analogy to that. It made me think-

Do I hide orphans behind mopped floors?

Obviously I don't. But- when I say orphans- I mean- are there greater needs in my life- people who need loved, a friend who needs to be listened to, educational things I should take the time to learn, but I don't because I don't want any "footprints" on my floor?

And by footprints- I mean- the time to sit down and talk with that friend, or maybe that friend annoys me and I don't really like them and don't want to be their friend even though they need one, or maybe I am too afraid of what they would think if I shared my religious beliefs with them, or maybe I feel too lazy to take the time to learn something right? Or maybe footprints are things other people see that would be sacrifices to make if I were to take the time to actually do what is more important. Maybe I would have to sacrifice my status in a group of people to help someone not seen as "cool". Maybe I would have to miss the big end of semester ward Christmas party to help them study for a test. Maybe I wouldn't have time to curl my hair and look fabulous for church because I'd be making them breakfast. (Haha. I never have time for curling my hair anyway. I like sleeping in way too much. :) )

Maybe I am like Martha, too busy in the kitchen trying to make an impressive meal for the Savior, that I never take the time to be content to be known as the hostess who just served bread and water, so I could take the time to sit and talk with Christ.

It's worth thinking about. Do you hide orphans behind mopped floors?

Bad Dreams

 I keep dreaming about leaving- getting leaving anxiety- every night I dream that I'm back in America and I didn't get the chance to say goodbye to my kids. What am I supposed to do? Go on with my life- pursuing dreams to be a teacher to rich white kids with parents who love them? Why should I do that when these kids still doesn't have a mom? Shouldn't I stay here? Isn't that the right thing to do? It's all so confusing. With great privilege comes great responsibility. Responsibility to do what? To be a teacher to rich kids and make enough money to live comfortably in a nice neighborhood? Or to stay in a poor country loving these kids? But- even if I dedicate my whole life to this- it won't fix the problem. There will be orphan after orphan, abuse story after abuse story, and even if I help as many as I can it won't even put a dent in the problem. Does great privilege entitle one to sit back and enjoy their privilege? 

Part of me doesn't even want to go back to America. I was looking out the window today at the big apartment buildings and the street leading past the palace away from our apartment, remembering the first day I woke up in Romania and was a little scared, but mostly curious, about the unknown. I was not on U.S. Soil. This used to be communism. All the buildings looked so blocky. The people looked different. Would I be okay? Would I be good at my job? 

And now- it's my home. And while I miss Jiff Peanut butter like crazy, I don't need to go back to huge shiny elevators and clean streets and English. These small elevators and dirty stairs work just fine, and Romanian is a beautiful language. Who says America is the center of the world? (Actually, the Romanians do. They don't know why I came here, because they all save up money to leave here and go to America, or at least another European country to work. They play American music on the radios, dress their children in shirts with Minnie Mouse on them, and encourage watching American movies like Finding Nemo. America is their future.)

I'm crying now. What am I doing with my life? :) I asked myself the same question when Bradley left. I guess when you loose something you love, you start to question everything's meaning. Which proves- that love- specifically choosing to love others and to give your life to their service- really is the meaning of all of this life stuff after all. So, maybe, even though I have a lot of faults, and I don't listen as much as I should and I'm not that observant, and I say the wrong things and make the wrong comments, and slaughter my Romanian when I talk, and I don't know how to fix a lot of problems for people and situations, maybe if my heart is at least breaking at the right times, I'm doing something right.

Pillow fighting!

Today's highlight at the orphanage was a pillow fight. The workers were vacuuming the floors and asked Little Sissy and Little Squirt to sit on the little bed by D's play pen in the room. I sat on the bed with them, and after the vaccumming finished, I tossed a pillow at Sissy and it kinda hit her in the face and she thought it was so hilarious. It turned into me tossing multiple pillows at Sissy and Squirt and them loving it. Then it turned into the worker also tossing pillows at their faces, but harder, and from farther away. They loved that. Then she started tossing pillows at me too. :) Mostly at the kids though. We were tossing pillows at each other, and the kids kind of tossed them back. It was so cute.

Uniquely Romanian

 On Saturday the Stoicas (Radu's mom) invited us and the sora missionaries over for lunch. We ate in their living room, and there weren't enough seats, so Sora Stoica just watched us eat standing up, making sure we liked it and that it was okay. She didn't eat herself at all. She was a very formal host. We had coirba de legume (vegetable soup), mamaliga (like a moist and non-sweet, grainy homemade cornbread- really good), sarmale (pickled cabbage wrapped around chicken, vegetables, and rice, and boiled, then stored in these little ceramic pots- some with cabbage leaves, others with purple grape vine leaves), bread from a bag, and tort cu mere (apple cake). It was all delicious! The Romanian thing to do is to sit around and talk for a long time. The sisters even had a spiritual thought to share, but they allowed awkward silences until conversation got going for about 2 hours until they finally did the spiritual thought right before they left. They wanted it to be the last thing, I guess. Conversation was so fun, and it worked, interestingly enough, with Sora Stoica speaking in Romanian, and us speaking mostly in Romanian, but with a little bit of English, and we could understand each other and have funny conversations. By the end of our time, we had pulled out all 3 of their family photo albums, laughed at a picture of Radu in a rooster outfit, seen all the pictures of her daughter Andrea at BYU, and discussed all the different food in Romania. I even brought up farming where I lived and goat cheese came up, so they offered me some sheep cheese that was alright. I was the only one brave enough to try it. :) It just looked really bubbly. I love trying new things. I think everyone should do meals like the Romanians- keep the food coming, and you might as well just stop all the clocks. :)

 I also found out that Romanians don't like to sit on the ground because it makes girls go infertile. Oh man. No wonder the nurses used to get mad at us, but now they just laugh at us. Once you've lost your fertility, I guess there's no going back. :) Hee hee.

Amazing Grace

Amazing Grace.

Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound,
That saved a wretch like me....
I once was lost but now am found,
Was blind, but now, I see.

T'was Grace that taught...
my heart to fear.
And Grace, my fears relieved.
How precious did that Grace appear...
the hour I first believed.

Through many dangers, toils and snares...
we have already come.
T'was Grace that brought us safe thus far...
and Grace will lead us home.

The Lord has promised good to me...
His word my hope secures.
He will my shield and portion be...
as long as life endures.

When we've been here ten thousand years...
bright shining as the sun.
We've no less days to sing God's praise...
then when we've first begun.

Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound,
That saved a wretch like me....
I once was lost but now am found,
Was blind, but now, I see.

The song amazes me. So does the story of the man who wrote it- and the irony of his former position as a slave trader, and then how the song gained momentum in the American south through the slaves.

Here's a video about it if you're a history nerd like me and want to watch, otherwise skip the video and keep reading:

The song first seriously struck me last summer, right before I went to college, when the father of one of my dear friends sang a solo in sacrament meeting. The man has been literally going blind throughout his life, and  has such limited vision left the doctors predict he will be permanently blind within a few years. When he sang, "was blind but now I see", it struck me that he couldn't possibly be talking about literal vision. So- what was he talking about being able to see?

I think... it's seeing a deeper meaning in life, and that is Jesus Christ. Seeing His love. Seeing His miracles. Seeing the power of his Atonement change you from the person you didn't like to be before into the person you could not have become today without His hand.

This song is very true of my life. Grace has saved me from struggles with my testimony, trying to love friends and collegues when I felt like I did not have any more love to give, letting my best friend Bradley leave on a mission to Spain for two years, and leaving all my friends in Amarillo Texas when we had to move to Washington. I cannot deny that grace alone got me through those hard times. It truly is amazing.

So- here. Give it a try- play this video, close your eyes, and listen to the lyrics.
Think about your life.
Think about growing up, learning, loving, falling, and getting back up again.
See if it touches your heart like it did mine.