Buna Ziwa!

or Good day for those of you who don't speak Romanian!

Well my week at the hospital has come to an end and I'm still loving every moment of it. These kids have stolen my heart already and I can't imagine leaving them! I'll explain a little what our days are like so you can get an idea of what we are doing.
We work about 4 hours each day in the morning. We start out with just playing with the kids for a couple hours. They are all in metal cribs by themselves in hospital rooms, about 4 or 5 to a room. They don't get much attention from the nurses since they are kind of the leftover babies that aren't that sick so they get forgotten about. We go in there and try to hold everyone for a small amount of time. You should see the smiles on their faces as soon as we get in the room. It breaks your heart to know that they rest of the day they are just sitting there with nothing. They seem so content with so little yet they sob as soon as you get near their beds again because they know then you have to leave.

After playing, a lot of them get taken to do "ears". This is the hardest part of my day. The doctors here believe that if they have ear infections, they will clear up if you puncture the ear drum and drain out all the fluids. So every day they are taken to do this procedure and they come back crying with bloody ears. It's so heartbreaking. Normally if this procedure would be done, it would be a last resort with anesthetic but they don't get any of that. It's so very sad.
After this, we feed them their bottles and then change all the diapers. If we didn't buy and change the diapers, they would still be sitting there with rags all day. It sounds pretty pitiful doesn't it? Yet surprisingly, a lot of these kids are so happy, such wonderful kids. I would gladly adopt any one of them in a moment.

Some things I'm thinking of that you can pray for right now:
- that the international adoption laws would change so that people other than Romanians could adopt these children
- medical education would be able to be advanced so procedures such as the ears thing would be gotten rid of
- what we are doing would be able to make a difference in these children's lives

Well I think that's all I have for now! Send me an email if you want, I have internet here at the apartment while we are here so I can check anytime. I love you all!!
Deanne