ENLIGHTENMENT!

August 6, 2008 (Wednesday)
The Lord’s Hand in my Life: The Lord helped me figure out how to handle our two new girls! He is aware…

This morning I was dreading going to the orphanage. I have been praying the last couple of days that I will know how to handle the two girls with love – even though they are abusive towards everyone around them. I prayed the entire walk there that everything would be okay…the last two days have been miserable.

As we got changed into our scrubs at the orphanage I started laughing and was like “I feel like I should go into the room with the girls with dark paint on my face and army gear.” I felt like I was gearing up to go battle – except I wasn’t going to fight just get beat up on.

We made our way upstairs and everyone was inside because it rained yesterday. Whitney S. and I decided to go to the first Mickey Mouse room because we didn’t get to spend a lot of time with them the last couple of days. Luckily the two girls were in the other room so it was nice and peaceful. I just played with Irina, Constantine and Valentina. I swung Constantine in the air and boy did he love it! He was giggling and smiling so big. Then I practiced jumping with Vali again…she is getting better at pushing off the ground, but she still doesn’t exactly understand the concept of jumping…I sure wish she would jump on her own for me at least once before I leave…grrr…

While we were in the first room Ana kept peeking her head around and giving me an evil smile as if to say “I’m ready for you – just wait until you get in here.” However, somehow I immediately knew how to handle the situation – with Heavenly Father’s enlightenment. When she stuck her head around the corner and looked at me I waved and smiled at her as big and cheesy as I could (she hadn’t done anything mean yet so I wanted to give her positive attention). She persisted in peaking her head around the corner, and each time I did the same thing. I made my hello as big and extravagant as possible so that when she was bad I could turn and ignore her and make an extremely stark contrast. I wanted her to understand that if she is nice we will play with her, but the second she is mean we will ignore her and pay no attention to her. It ended up working! I realized I needed to be more black and white in my actions than yesterday. Everything she did that was nice or good I overemphasized it and made it a huge deal…then everything she did that was mean received no response. Although she still did a few pinches she was much much much better than yesterday. I even got her dancing and playing ball with me. Then she sat by me for a while, and I cuddled her and scratched her back. Her behavior was a huge improvement from yesterday. At least I wasn’t punched, kicked, bit, stomped on, and hit with blunt objects – only pinched…Whitney S. and I were pretty proud of ourselves today.

The rest of the kids in the room were really well behaved today. Maria was so cute today – she really wanted to be cuddled. She can’t walk, but she can scoot…whenever I got up to walk she would follow me around the room and scoot to wherever I was and pull at my legs. At one point I was dancing with Ana and she pulled on my pants so hard that they almost came off. I was like “excuse me!” Haha…Then Andrei was his cute usual self. I got him to dance for a little bit. It’s so adorable. He’s doing really well on his signs. I feel pretty good about the fact that he didn’t know any sign language when I got here and now he knows several signs…some things I have taught him have stuck! Yes!

At the hospital the sister missionaries joined us today. Sora Betham came with Annie and I. We went and played with Mihait. He is a four year old orphan boy and dang is he cute. He is just a petite little guy with big brown eyes, pale skin and purple fingers and toes. Annie gets to visit him everyday and she adores him, and he adores her. I have to go to the apartments a couple times a week, but I like to see him when I can. Today we had Sora Betham ask the nurse why Mihait is in the hospital and apparently it’s because he needs plasma and if he doesn’t get it he’s going to die. Annie asked if Americans were able to donate plasma – apparently not. Annie and I were talking about how frustrating it is that Romania is the way it is. In America plasma is so easy to get it’s ridiculous. In Provo alone half the student body sells their plasma because they get money. We think the reason people don’t donate it as much in Romania is because they probably don’t get paid for it – if they did half the country would be standing in line every day all day to donate. It’s just frustrating that a little boy could die over something that is so easily treated in America…ahhh! He is seriously the cutest little boy! When Sora Betham was translating for us what he said it was so cute…he just has the cutest personality. At one point she went to ask him a question and he was like “what do you want?” (As if to say I’m busy playing with my little cars why are you bugging me.) We were all laughing pretty hard.

Later we visited Florine and Alexandra and took them outside. I promised Florine I would get him a treat for his birthday because it is coming up – so I did. That little stinker was such a pill though. I told him he could get a small treat, and he was going for things that cost 10 and 15 lei in the store. That boy will try and take advantage if you let him. After saying “no” to several things he finally settled on a chocolate cake from the bakery section and a soda. I was like “Florine be grateful!” One thing I’ve learned about Romanians is that if you are nice they usually take advantage so you have to be careful…really careful…

Tonight was my last time to cook for group dinner. I made lasagna from scratch, corn on the cob and franzela with butter. It was pretty good except the corn was hard for some reason – I think I got bad corn from the piata…oh well I tried…

For the rest of the evening I spent my time doing write ups on my kids. At the end of every semester we are required to write a page or two on each kid about their likes, dislikes, development, things you have been working with and other useful bits of information for the next group. That way the girls don’t have to start at square one when we’ve already built up to square 10. We have a binder that has all the write ups and pictures of each kid. They are very helpful. I had a lot of fun writing my write ups tonight. They took a while, but thinking about some of the silly quirks, experiences or random things they like to do made me laugh. Even though I’m going to miss them a great deal I’ve felt more calm and okay with leaving this week than I have the entire semester which is strange considering it’s my last week. The blessing the elders gave me has helped.

To end the night I had an unwanted visitor in my bed. As I was doing my write ups I looked over and all of a sudden I saw a baby roach sitting in the place Annie usually sleeps. I was like – not okay! So I hollered for Annie and she lifted our sheets so it would get out of the crack. Then I scooped it up with my flip flop and flung it out the window! We both cheered and laughed once it was gone…SICK SICK SICK! MacKenzie found one in her bed the other day. We are going to have to spray for roaches again – they must be making babies.