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Someone Has to Love Them They’re rude, they smell, they’re dirty, demanding, but worst of all, they’re not loved, and that’s where we fit into their lives. Over the past couple of months the number of children that come to our “center for street kids” on a daily basis has steadily gone up. We used to prepare food for 50 children each day, but more often then not we ran out of food and found ourselves scrambling to prepare more. Now we are preparing food for 60 children each day and still yet sometimes we run out. The more children that come, the more we can help. And why are more new faces showing up? It is because there is an atmosphere of true love and care for them that they are desperately thirsting for. For many of the children coming to the center is the highlight of their day. They look forward to the time when they will be in a warm place, be able to eat hot soup, sandwiches, and fruit, drink hot tea, play games like ping-pong, chess, checkers, receive medical attention, wash their clothes and so on. It’s a great blessing to be with these children. I often think, “nobody really cares about this guy, we are practically his family, we have to take care of him,” and so that’s what we do. We do whatever we can do for them, not only medically, but also humanly. The children have become such an important part of my day. I think about this one and that one and where is he or she if they don’t show up and if they’re all right. Sometimes people ask me, “Don’t you want to have any children?” If they only knew. These are my children, and they are plenty. They have no parents, no love. They need us as their parents and not too many people are willing to deal with these children. It’s because we sincerely care for their human needs (and many times spiritual, though they don’t realize it) that they have confidence and trust in us. For most of the children this is the only place they will come to for medical care. The state facilities typically don’t receive them and if they do they treat them quite harshly. Many of them come with health problems caused by the drugs they use. A not uncommon condition that we encounter here is an abscess around the elbow or forearm caused by injecting drugs with dirty needles or missing the vein and injecting toxic drugs into the skin. Most of these children don’t know or even think about any of the consequences that using drugs has on them. That’s why we use any chance we get to educate them about the consequences. For example, Anton (17) came in with a large infected abscess on his right arm. We opened the abscess and now he is coming to our clinic every day so that we can clean it. Yesterday as we were cleaning Anton’s wound a young girl, Yulia (14) came in for medicine to be put on her elbow to prevent an abscess like Anton’s. She became very concerned and frightened by the thought that her elbow could end up like Anton’s, with a huge scar for the rest of her life. We explained to her that if she keeps injecting she too will eventually develop a large abscess and it will have to be cut open, drained, and will be very painful. We could see fear in her eyes as she stared at Anton’s open abscess. We don’t know exactly what was going through her mind at that moment, but we do know she better realizes that there are consequences from using those drugs and will be thinking twice about using them in the future. Each day brings new situations in which the children place their confidence and trust in us. Thanks be to God that we can be there for them. We want to do more for them. We have the medical abilities to give them more extensive care but we don’t have the money to buy the equipment we need or to renovate our rooms. It’s quite a bother when we have to send a child to the hospital and hope that he is going to get some care that we could so easily give him if we only had the resources. We are in the process of expanding our clinic from one room to four rooms that will include a procedure/surgery room, overnight room, and two examination rooms. Whatever you can do to help us reach our goal more quickly will be much appreciated. Please share this appeal with others that might be able to help. Thank you and God bless you... |