Casa Ruxandra

Newletter - Romania - 2007

Dear Prayer Partners and Supporters        October 2007

I am so sorry you have had to wait so long for a newsletter but I am afraid I have been ill and I still am. I have to somehow get ready to finish but I cannot get any help from anyone. The young people say I am an old man and the vision was mine so no one will help the old man to retire. Even though I am rescuing Gods Children. I may be too old to understand the reasoning.

It is with great sorrow I have to report that a trustee David Catlow died on 13th February. He was my organiser and a really hard helper for the Thailand Project.

I told you in September 2006 about the man with his 6-year-old daughter who could not walk with legs twisted in a position she could not even crawl. The man sold his cow to have one leg done but then he could not feed his family without his cow so we bought him another one. He has a family of 9 children. We then paid for his daughter to have the second leg operated on. I can tell you Praise the Lord she can now walk and can run and she is going to school. The doctors nearly lost her on the operating table because she had malnutrition they said. Thank God all is now well with her. The family still need a little support for food at least. Last winter we were able to buy food for about 50 families with children who were starving and we would like to be able to help them again this Christmas.

The house Casa Ruxandra is now running well. Catalina is the most caring loving girl I have ever had the pleasure to meet. She loves the children just like her own. Her husband helps in the house with repairs and when he goes fishing he takes the boys with him, they love it. They are all trying hard at school and Lavinia who is a true orphan did the best we can all remember to go to the senior college she is 16. We were worried that if she should fail, she would have been thrown out of school. This would have made her a person who no one would want to work for them. Now she stands a great chance. Praise the Lord, she is also a Christian.

We were running short of money during the summer and Catalina wanted to take the children on holiday for a week. She asked for some money but the Trustees said we could not afford to give any money for holidays, as we were struggling to meet all the bills and food price increases. When Terry & Sue Wright of St Andrews Church heard about this they sent her some money. A full report of the holiday written by the children is attached to this newsletter. Also a report about another holiday they had at the Mission House Bible Camp.

Since Romania joined the EU wages have more than doubled and we also have to pay the Tax and Insurance for everyone who works for us. Brussels also makes a lot of rules, which are of course stupid, as we all know. Every Children’s Home now has to employ a psychologist, so Catalina now has to go to university to be a psychologist at our expense. The EU in Brussels has now come up with another idea; we have to employ an inspector for safety. The safety engineer will inspect every month all the machinery that the staff uses and that they are proficient to use it and have the correct training. The cost for this will be £145 a month. Catalina can also study for this, which she is doing to save us some money. We must now also pay for her to learn this at the university. Of course not many people can squeeze a bottle of washing up liquid correctly. The skill, which is required to push the button to start the washing machine is incredible.

We would love to feed the very poor children again this winter also their families, please can anyone help. Against doctors orders I am going to Romania on 12 October to try to make the work possible to run without me. If you can still keep the money coming in please help.

God Bless you all     Tom Payne

Lavinia's Story     Lavinia Damean - Born 13 October 1991

The youngest of 5 children, her mother was 24 years old. Her father was not the father of the other children, he was in prison. Her mother was very poorly and when Lavinia was 2. She was taken to her grandmothers on her mother’s side. Her grandmother was not really interested and when she was just turned 3 she was taken to Dersca Orphanage. This was not a very good orphanage even though the communists had been over thrown and supplies were coming in, most of which were stolen by the staff at the orphanage.

She was abandoned twice and just left alone and wondering what was matter with her. When she was 4 she was fostered to a couple in a village, these people wanted a servant and they thought if they took a child young they could train it to do what they wanted. They did not reckon on Lavinia—even though she was only 4!!! When the couple one winter’s night decided to have the usual alcohol intake they sent her to put the pigs away outside and carried on drinking. The next morning they awoke and went to the pigs, the gate and doors to the pigs had been left open. The pigs were ALL gone. I am told about 100 pigs and piglets. In the villages there is total poverty in most families and for a pig to wander into there garden is a gift from God. ALL the pigs had disappeared. There was a wonderful smell of roast PORK for a long time afterwards.

Lavinia was beaten by the couple and taken back to the orphanage. She had a friend in the orphanage called Madelena who was her best friend. Lavinia was also a leader and soon became in charge of all the children including those at 8 years old.

Madelena had a short arm finishing at the elbow she had no wrist, and her hand was on the wrong way round, it was totally unusable. She was brought to England where her hand was turned around and now she can use the arm and hand, even though it is short. The family where she lived for the operation adopted her, this left Lavinia without a friend but still in charge at the orphanage. The staff had a staff room and they would all retire there into the arm chairs to smoke and watch television for as long as possible during the day and night. Leaving Lavinia in charge where she would fight, kick, shout, swear and carry on just like the adult staff did. When she was 6 I visited her mother who was becoming very poorly now and I took Lavinia from the orphanage to bring her to England for adoption. Her mother had signed the piece of paper authorising it. She had to go to Dersca to sign her out and I brought her to England. She was uncontrollable and she would shout and swear in Romanian. You can hear this language in the gutters now. The people who were hoping to adopt her could not handle her and they asked me to take her back, which I had to do 7 months after I brought her to England. She had also been in School where she learned perfect English without an accent, and told the police when she got back she was English not Romanian and her name was Payne not Damean.

I promised her mother I would look after Lavinia for her when she died and I took Lavinia into the apartment I owned in Botosani. The Lady who looked after the apartment along with another orphan girl was very bad to Lavinia and when Lavinia’s mother came to play with Lavinia she was called “that woman is here again” and Matrona was very nasty to her and she stopped coming because she thought Lavinia was being beaten because she was visiting her. Lavinia was being beaten anyway by Matrona and also by the other girl living there. The other girl was 16 and very big.

When Lavinia’s Mother was 32 she died of cancer of the cervix. Lavinia has been with me since she was 6 and now in 2007 she will be 16. She has been a BIG problem with her behaviour and still is. The training at Dersca Orphanage has never left her. She can be a very loving girl but also a very bad one. The Staff at Casa Ruxandra have a very big job trying to control her. She still fights and kicks and shouts and sometimes swears very badly. We will persevere until she grows up and we hope and pray she will improve. She did accept Jesus as her saviour but she keeps forgetting and then is very sorry and ashamed of herself. We do not have enough money to give them all spending money but we try to give them the best with the money we have. The sad thing is that her brothers and sisters will not have anything to do with her and she is very upset about that. If only they would but they live with their father and Lavinia’s father is not the same one. If they would, Lavinia might have a feeling of belonging again but we are unable to do anything about it. Even her mother’s father her grandfather will have nothing to do with her.

Yours in the service of Jesus     Tom Payne

Arad Bible Camp 2007

We prayed a lot to have a safe journey back and God took care about that. We had a lot of fun. The children were crying when we get back to Botosani and we had to say goodbye. They established new friendships and learned something new:

We love God no matter how we do it

God bless you all!

Before the day started the children had prayers and bible study. Then before Bed they had more prayers. All the children say Thank You to Mission House for the opportunity to go to the Bible Camp

The Children got quite a surprise when they were invited to a Bible Camp, which was organized by Nigel Kiernander and the team from MISSION HOUSE

This letter is written by the Children

"We left Botosani on the 20th of August. We met at the Train Station at 3:00 pm. The journey to Arad it was quite difficult because the train was crowded. We arrived in Arad early in the morning. At 8 o’clock we were at the camp. We had to wait for a while because the accommodation was not ready because during the week-end they had there some kind of Christian Festival. In the afternoon we were able to get in our rooms. God took care of us and gave us power to resist the cruel weather that was very hot (42 Celsius degrees). The accommodation looked very nice and we were very comfortable. The food was quite spicy for us but in the end everything went fine. Everyday we had different games (football, volley ball) for small children and for teenagers."

Everyday we went to the lake and came back fresh.

In the evening we had different games.

Seaside holiday

We left Botosani on the 29th of July at 18:30. The train left from Botosani with many people already. The journey it was quite hard but with the help of God we managed. During the journey with the train it was really interesting. We’ve seen how beautiful is our country side with the mountains and all the nice villages where we went through. We arrived in Costinesti (the village were he had accommodation at the seaside) at 7:20 in the morning and at 10:00 o’clock we were on the beach.

We pray a lot to God and he listen our prayers and gave us a wonderful weather. We visited a lot of places like Constanta were we made a tour in a decabus, Mamaia with the entertainment park.

All the days we had many games on the beach but the most interesting it were the games in the water even if some of us didn’t know how to swim we all went in the water for fun. All the children built sand castles, played volley and football. In the evening we played rummy and cards in our rooms. Near our accommodation was an entertainment-park where we spent a lot of evening time.

The food was very nice and fresh. We had sweeties as well especially ice cream because it was very hot. The evenings were closed with a big melon or peaches.

This summer will remain in our minds forever because it was full of happy events. All of these things happened because of God and because of your help. For this we want to thank you by praying.