Mission Trips

Leeds, England registered UK Charity No.1087961
Kingsport, USA charitable non-profit # 86-0957704
Oradea, Romania registered Charity No.14839712

 
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Mission Trip Update – Summer 2007

This summer, during June, July and August, more than 230 visitors will have come to Romania on a Smiles Mission Trip. People stay for 7-14 days – others for 3-6 weeks but all are involved in Changing Lives in Romania – sometimes their own life is changed the most! Mission Trip guests are involved in every aspect of Smiles work and projects in a ‘sleeves rolled up - get your hands dirty’ attitude. Sometimes the projects involve getting a lot more than your hands dirty!!

Visitors get involved in the Family Care project, travelling with our qualified social workers and doctors to families supported by Smiles delivering Food, Medicine, Clothes and offering hope in the assurance that people care and are there to support and assist as much as possible. Every day visitors have the choice of a project to work on. Choices often include: Visiting the Smiles School and Nursery facilities Helping at the Children’s Centre’s provided Supporting in State Hospitals for the Elderly and the mentally ill Getting stuck into Construction projects of Building Houses, Decorating, Gardening, Putting up Fences. Outreach to the Communities through Summer Bible School and Youth Clubs Specially Organised Lunches for the Elderly, Visits to the Sick and the Lonely. Many of the visitors have been before but nearly half the visitors this summer were with Smiles for their first time.

Barbara Graham had been once before, but here are a few words about her visit to Romania in July. “Our second visit to Romania was just as exciting and thought provoking as the first two years ago. It was great to go back and see the projects that we'd worked on ,especially the building projects, now fully operational and making such an impact on people's lives. The standard to which the projects have been finished and the immense pride that those have who use them, is amazing and truly a work of God.

I think of the welcome we received at the community complex at Tileagd for Sunday worship and the involvement of the men folk, the passion of the praying and the desire of the young folk to want to learn at school was just wonderful! I think too of Mihai & Adriana and now Linda in Gepiu - again how thrilling to see a derelict bit of ground now lovingly tended by Linda and producing crops! Those chickens and pigs with God at the centre of the work really shows - dreams do come true!

But in reality, it really is still a drop in the ocean when we saw the community at Salard with such great needs and many old people we visited with the team living in such dreadful conditions with that feeling of aloneness, almost abandonment as they openly told us they were waiting to die. So there are still dreams to be fulfilled! Again a wonderful week and we hope to be back again and see more great things done because our God is faithful and that's the top priority, letting these folk know that they are so loved and precious to God.”

Penny Kennedy is Development Associate for The Smiles Foundation in Northern Ireland & Eire. Penny was visiting again last month with her daughter and a group from Northern Ireland. This is Penny’s report on the trip: “My daughter Laura and I are just back from a week’s mission trip to Romania.  On the first day of our mission trip we were shown around an area (Salard) where The Smiles Foundation has just been asked to come in and help.  A house had burnt down and the Government had given the family a piece of land upon which a new house could be built. This tiny house is for 11 people and Smiles is stepping in to help with building the house.  As we progressed further down the road the conditions of the houses got worse and worse and even people who have been to Romania many times before were really shocked.  The Smiles Foundation will start to help this community with food and medical supplies. The Smiles Foundation employs 70 Romanians, including social workers and doctors who work all hours of day and night and are truly committed to helping their people.  One of the social workers, Angela, who impressed me very much on a previous trip with her passion for helping old people, rang Kevin, the Chief Executive on Wednesday and cried solidly for 15 minutes telling him about an elderly couple she had been referred to for help.  This couple were in their 80s and living in a one roomed house.  The old lady was incontinent and immobile.  Her bed and the floor were soaked with urine and her open sores had worms in them.  They hadn’t eaten for 4 days.  Angela said there were flies everywhere and evidence of mice.  She was really upset that they had been left to live like this.  The old man was nearly blind and very deaf. The mission trip group of 48 people suggested that we buy them new furniture and bedding and that a team of us would go to clean and disinfect the house and everything in it.  15 of us worked in temperatures of 44 degrees on Friday from early morning to 9pm.  We threw out the soaking bedding with its fly infested straw and brought everything outside so that the place could be cleaned.  The elderly couple were taken up the road to a relation’s house and the old lady’s wounds were cleaned.  The mud brick walls were brushed down and then whitewashed with a mixture of disinfectant and paint and a new linoleum floor was put down.  We put together new beds, a table and a wardrobe and washed everything that was to go back into the house.  The old lady was carried back in and she just cried.  Kevin asked a translator to tell her that we were here to show her that God loved her and hadn’t forgotten her. Also, that from now on, we would be helping her with food and medical treatment.  All of us were very moved.  The new furniture and bedding were paid for by donations of around £900 from the mission trip group. The latest project envisaged by The Smiles Foundation is an assisted living facility for the disabled and elderly and many people went home with a passion to raise money for this attempt to provide dignity to people who are so disadvantaged. It was a privilege but also very humbling to help the Romanian people and I am so grateful to The Smiles Foundation for providing us with the opportunity to help in a practical way.  I know that it has changed Laura’s life and the lives of the other young people who came with us on this trip.”

More photos from the Summer Mission Trips can be seen on the Mission Trip Gallery.

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    Page last updated on 01/08/2007 09:30:41 AM
   by ADMIN1

  

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