Imagine if this happened to you.  You’ve been assigned to lead a camp of 90 gypsy orphans, but you can’t speak their language, and few of them can speak yours.  You want to run a program to meet as many of their needs as possible, but they range in age from maybe 6 to 18.  Many of them have mental problems, some of the girls have been pregnant.  They’re also accustomed to doing whatever they want with little to no adult supervision, many are hard core smokers.  You have a staff of 25 people who also can’t speak their language, but a few can speak Russian or Ukrainian.  And only one translator shows up, but she thought she was translating for a woman going shopping downtown.   Oh, and at the last minute you have 115 children, with twenty more possibly coming later in the week.  The venue?  A former military base in Western Ukraine.  Now, give ‘em Jesus.
     Sound like a challenge?  Welcome to my world.  I say, “Bring it On!”  Don’t be impressed, I didn’t always say that.
     I realize that one page of text cannot possibly capture the atmosphere, the stress, the downright comedy of a week’s worth of immersion into this unique subculture.  Do you know the gypsy orphans had their own president?  He’s maybe 15 years old.  His name is George (seriously but they only called him “President”) and he always wears a suit, even to play soccer.  Now I never saw him tell anyone what to do.  He didn’t talk very much or give speeches.  But whenever they saw his picture in the slide show, they would clap and cheer loudly with a great deal of respect.  Every day, he gave a huge bouquet of flowers to one of the girls on staff.  Come to think of it, that’s not such a bad president.
     In the States, the typical teenage boy is emotionally detached and certainly not affectionate to adults.  In this world, I was hugged and embraced continually by teenage boys, some who had more facial hair than I did.  One afternoon I realized that I was drenched in sweat and body odor, but none of it was mine.  Not a pleasant sensation.
That was the most difficult part of the camp.  These kids are so needy, so hungry for attention that they would hug and hang and pull on you all day.  And when one would walk away, there would be several others waiting who wanted to be picked up or held.  It was exhausting, especially on a hot summer day.  I told the staff to really take care of themselves and walk away for a while if it gets to be too much.  I had to do it myself once.
But at the end of it all, when we drove off in our bus, it really was worth it.  You capture these faces in your mind, the ones you felt you really touched, or maybe they touched you more.  I’m realistic.  A week of camp can’t repair 16 years of neglect.  There’s so much baggage that we can’t even sort through in that environment.  You can’t heal a wounded heart in a week.  Ah, but you can change the direction of that heart in an instant.  And if we can teach the children how to focus on following Jesus, as they follow him, the healing will come.  

¶ 10:56 AM

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