July 22, 2008 (Tuesday)
The Lord’s Hand in my Life: Moment of enlightenment.

I woke up early and wrote in my journal about the events of yesterday. As I wrote in my journal and typed up quotes from The Odyssey of a Street Child I thought in depth about what they meant. For some reason something clicked in my mind this morning about the concept of not judging a person for face value. I’ve heard it my entire life - that we should love everyone and not judge others, but it finally made sense to me. It’s always interesting when moments of enlightenment come. Whenever it makes sense I always wonder why I didn’t understand the concept earlier. I think the Lord just has to guide us gradually to understand certain concepts because we are so thick headed sometimes. At least I know I can be.

At the orphanage nothing too terribly interesting happened. Andrei was his usual monkey self. He kept climbing on this rope ladder they have on the swing set. He makes me so nervous, because he doesn’t think about anything he does – he just does. He kept climbing up and hanging from it and he’s only three. He could get hurt if no one was watching him. That’d be a long fall. He is such a stinker.

While I was pushing Andrei on the swing there was a truck on the other side of the fence doing something that made a loud noise. Right when the noise happened Andrei wheeled around in the direction the sound was coming from and looked around to see what the commotion was about. I was so excited. I think the hearing aids are starting to work. He still can’t hear well, but it appears that he can hear loud noises. Hooray!

Florine came outside today, and I chatted with him for a few minutes. Apparently he is going to Greece on vacation for 10 days sometime next week. I’m soooo jealous! It sounds amazing. He was excited about it. Then we just made small talk about our family and little things like that. Florine is an awesome guy. I wish I could find someone with his temperament who was Mormon in the United States. He’s mellow and sweet but still has a personality.

When we got done at the orphanage Doamna Doina came and gave each of us girls a picture she had colored. It was so sweet – especially since she doesn’t know all of us real well. I love sweet little thoughts like that – they make all the difference.

Whitney S., Elyse and I went to the apartments today. On the way it started pouring rain. We ended up getting soaked through and through, but it was kind of fun. I love playing in the rain. Whitney kept jumping in the puddles like she always does. Then I bought Elyse a gogosi that I owed her. She was able to make it 24 hours without being sarcastic…I was very impressed that she could do it.

At the apartment the kids were all pretty grumpy for some reason. Maybe it was because the rain? We don’t know. After Alina got out of her grumpy mood I had a lot of fun with her today. I was showing her little dance moves and she followed along. It was pretty adorable. Then we chassed down the hall and I twirled her. She absolutely loved it!I tried to teach Catalina and Laura some dance moves, but they lost focus real fast.

The rest of the night I organized pictures I got from the Black Sea. Pictures are great, but boy do they take a lot of time to keep straight. Then right before I went to bed I talked to my mom…she is so funny.