Every Wednesday we take a short bus ride to the hills outside the city, to a town called Mintia, where we visit many Roma families and play with the kids. Many of the families here live in poverty, and the conditions are hard to see and harder to forget. However it’s the beauty of the...
Many of the children in our colonies are used to getting attention only for negative behaviors. So naturally, many of them act out around us in order to get our attention. As all kids do, each one is walking the line and testing the limits. Parker and his siblings continued to come back every day...
Our big event of the summer was a summer camp for some of the kids from the Roma colony of Mintia. These kids are often not allowed to leave their area, and even if they could, they don't have a mode of transportation. Hence, we organized a week of activities for them to enjoy with...
About six or seven doors down from our house lives a Roma family with three children. They spend about half of their time here in Deva, mostly for breaks from school, and the other half in France where their father works. The youngest, Parker (age 6), was our first point of contact. He made quite the...
My community sisters and I decided to stop by the social block to see one of our dear friends Margarita. When we arrived, we realized that we had forgotten her apartment number so we waited by the door to see if someone could open the door and let us in. After waiting for five minutes,...
My community sisters and I decided to stop by the social block to see one of our dear friends Margarita. When we arrived, we realized that we had forgotten her apartment number so we waited by the door to see if someone could open the door and let us in. After waiting for five minutes,...
One day in the last two weeks of my mission, I knew it was going to be super full—this was my second to last chance visiting one of the neighborhoods in Deva, “Pe deal Sus,” a neighborhood behind a grocery store on a hill, with a beautiful view. Yet, ironically, it is totally unseen by...
I met Rick on my second or third day of the mission. He has both a mental and physical handicap but that does not stop him from sharing his light with others! He has one of the most beautiful smiles I have ever seen....
Every week, for the past 28 years, our volunteers have visited this village near Deva called Mintia. There, we often visit Elena, a mother of four boys. She had her first boy at age 13 or 14, and she is now in her early twenties. Her boys are Nicholas, Christopher, Lucas, and Michael. These boys...
Every Wednesday we take the bus to a little village near Deva called Mintia. One of the people we visit in Mintia is a little girl named Vanessa. Vanessa is 8 years old and was born without kneecaps so she is only able to walk on her knees. Vanessa doesn’t have many friends because she...