Standing in line at the local food pantry week after week while pregnant with our third child, I came to understand the stark difference between “wants” and “needs.” My husband was still in school in an engineering program and could only work about fifteen hours a week to support his family of five and still make the grades. We couldn’t spend money on anything that wasn’t necessary so I exhausted myself with researching sale prices or getting very creative about homemade gifts or home décor. I hated our hand-me-down couch with the frumpy, faded slip cover which, by the way, did a marvelous job of “slipping” all over the place with the help of our two year old. My home, my clothes, and my life were all out-of-style.
Four years later, my husband is graduated and makes a sufficient income to modestly support our now family of seven. I don’t need a new couch or kitchen cupboards or really anything at all. In fact all I really need is a million dollars.
You see, a million dollars can save the lives and give a good life to thousands of unadoptable Bulgarian orphans. During the past four years, I made four humanitarian trips to Bulgaria. There, I walked the halls of dozens of orphanages where I looked into the eyes of hundreds of invisible children. Do you understand what I mean by “invisible?” Let me explain. At one orphanage, I stood horrified at the edge of baby Victor’s rusty crib. His body was about fifteen inches long and his head was bigger than a very large watermelon. How Victor had survived in this state for his first year of life was beyond me. He was going to die. Why? Because of money. No one had $800 for the shunt he needed at birth and so now there was no way to save Victor. He did died and became invisible...but not to me! Victor is a hero because it was he and his other little orphan comrades, dying of hydrocephalus, who compelled me to create a program that has since saved the lives of thirty-six orphans in just one year.
Last March, pregnant with our fifth child, I traveled again to Bulgaria to personally tend to two infant orphans we were helping to provide with surgeries for hydrocephalus. How strange it was to do this while being pregnant with my own baby, a baby that would grow up in a loving family in America where she could have endless opportunities! For hours and hours, day after day in a dilapidated Bulgarian hospital, I cared for those babies who were going to live because of money. Of course, it’s not just that, but when it comes right down to it ... it is.
As I stared at those baby girls after they each had had their surgery, I wondered, now what? Back to the orphanage to live, but to have no life? By that point, the organization I had co-founded, One Heart Bulgaria, was addressing a variety of needs in many orphanages. We were well aware that food and medical care can keep a child alive, but not happy to be alive. So we have created additional programs that tend to the emotional needs of the children and the challenges they will face in their future. Currently, One Heart Bulgaria is enriching the lives of over 1,000 orphans in nineteen orphanages! We have supported a choir in one orphanage and a Bulgarian folk dancing team and sports program in another. In two other orphanages, we have provided grandmas who tend the children and love them dearly. If only we could expand these programs into each and every one of the over 200 orphanages in Bulgaria! What a powerful impact these programs could have in the lives of those orphans! And all I need is a million dollars.
