LIVELY LAUGHING IN THE GHETTO
30. August 2009
GOD counts differently as mankind does which becomes more and more estranged from GOD and feathers its nest at the expense on him. Profit and growth are no standard for GOD.
Yes, I do believe, that GOD likes to choose the despised to get them out of their misery and desperation. This is what we can experience here in the ghetto every day and is especially true for the youngest children. It’s a daily struggle and hard work for Light in the Darkness just to let this light shine into the ghetto. Sometimes I feel as if this misery eats me up and above all the amount
of work makes me soak with sweat and sometimes dark hours come over me. However when I see the children who GOD has awakened and hear their lively laughing and look into their wonderful open faces then I can see the light in the darkness, which does not only shine in the ghetto but also gives me a I firm orientation. I would now like to invite you to take part in our work by reading this report.
- Pupils become teachers, people who needed help themselves become helpers; autonomy through errors is one of our aims
Building site of our homepage
Because of an error some time ago we sent out wrong information, in which was pointed out, that I had changed my way of informing you. So that there aren’t any kind of misunderstanding any more here are some short hints concerning my information. Instead of more or less sending regular e-mails in future I will send out one e-mail once a month with the latest information from the ghetto. The reason is the number of e-mails has increased enormously nowadays so that many people are expecting too much with this amount of e-mails. And it stroke us that our website became a bit confused after spontaneous changes in recent times. At the moment we are reworking it to make it more understandable for people being interested in it.
If you want information about special aspects of our work, we are quite happy to answer your questions via our e-mail address: email hidden; JavaScript is required.
The personal contact to our friends is very important for us and I’ll do everything I can to give you all the information you want.
A short review over our activities here on site in Bulgaria
Our aim is to reach the children through the love of Christ. But the spoken word has to stay back for the acting love of Christ for the neighbour which is to make the light in the dark continuously shine in the ghetto. This light in the dark is a spiritual strength, which is not dependent on man but on the holy spirit, who finds room in me and my collaborators by our confession to Jesus because we want to live out the strength of the holy spirit.
If we wanted to do our work out of ourselves we wouldn’t be able to manage. In all our work GOD is to be praised. Christ’s love is lived in the community of men/women. The smallest but intimate and therefore very important part of human communities is the family, the next important community is the parish. In the family a child learns the first steps into life and gets to know Christ’s love through the parents and brothers and sisters. So much the worse it is for a child if he/she experiences hurting in the family
- Strachiel has got new shoes
From the beginning on it was our aim to restore family-like communities for the children. In 2006 we had already begun to form so called house groups, in which those boys coming from broken families live together. But we don’t remove them completely from their families. Most of the
parents do understand that it is better for their children to stay with us than to go on living in the broken families. For example if a child has an alcohol addicted father we tell him/her that he is still his father and that the child should forgive him. Even worse for a child than parental hurting is his uprooting from his origin. Man/women have two roots GOD and the parents. If a child is uprooted from him-/herself, he/she lives against him-/herself, there is no way of healing that. Therefore we teach the children to forgive and we leave it to the child to be at home whenever he/she wants it. Most of the children pop in home for some time to show their parents that they are still there. But otherwise they voluntarily stay in their house groups day and night.
In the meantime we have three house groups in which 7 to 12 children live, the youngest are 8 years old and the oldest are 16 and older. They are provided with food, clothing and medicine. Apart from that we care for supporting lessons and a regular school attendance. Each group has 12 members as the highest, if more are coming the group is split up into two groups. Each group is lead by an older experienced youngster. The groups are named after the Christian name of their leaders and they only consist of boys. Because we live in oriental surroundings girls a kept at home like slaves until they are married. Therefore we have no chance to do something for girls as well. Being a man I can’t do anything about it.
Next to these three house groups there are two preschool groups of children which are led by Carol, an English woman and a team of experienced youngsters. These group leaders meet twice a week to make a programme for their work with the 40 children most of them being between 6 and 8 years old.
In September school starts again and so we will register the 7 year old ones at school. Their parents are often not able to do it and even do not see any sense in their children going to school. Particularly with the girls we have to motivate the parents to send their daughters to school. We also have 5 boys who are slow on the uptake, who didn’t go to school last year because their parents missed their registration at school. Our intention is to extend this group to a preschool kindergarten, please. support us with this work by your prayers. Some of the children who are going to attend school now will then move into our house groups. This means we will have to form a next house group soon.
In June two house groups opened a soup kitchen which very quickly was in great demand, more than 40 children come here to have a meal. They are children who are neglected and suffer from hunger and who are not registered with the authorities. Very often they are in bad health and in a bad hygienic condition: inwards and outwards they are attacked by parasites, they are dirty and their hair is sticky not to mention their bad smell. They live under even worse conditions than puppies in Germany. Their parents live in wooden barracks. If you take such a child to a WC he is shocked by the splash because he has never seen something like that before. The children in the house groups know these living conditions so they said that they wanted to help them. This is why we opened the soup kitchen.
Meanwhile we began to build a WC and shower for them, right in the middle of the poorest part of the ghetto. The station in which Elias’ house group lives is just situated next to the soup kitchen.
Under this kitchen there runs a sewer and a pipe for fresh water, so a craftsmen can install the necessary supply points for the WC and shower. it’s like a wonder for us,that we are able to provide these children with food and hygiene. I am so grateful for the help of my teenagers and for GOD’S support.
Health service
Many people here in Bulgaria are not able to cope with the health system. Very often poor old age people have no possibility to see a doctor or go to hospital, because they have no money for transport or medicine. So we take care of these people to go to the doctor or to hospital and if necessary we pay for their expenses.
“Solid stones on solid ground“
Meanwhile we have become an integral part of our quarter. Muslim as well as Christian Roma from various tribes trust in us. They often even beg us to take in their children. We have already rented
more than 8 houses, huts and rooms in which we do our work. Many people think, that the realisation of our work in this difficult situation of renting houses, flats or rooms here in the ghetto is a wonder, because again and again there are problems with landlords. Each housing is fitted out in such way that we are able to move house in a few hours, if the landlord gives us note to quit the housing. But apart of a small incident last July we didn’t have any notices to quit housing. Because of the large increase of our work we are forced to go new ways. We are looking for a plot of land which we can buy to build a house there. It is our aim to build walls which we can do our work in whose stones are our own stones.
Therefore we opened a building account which you can pay in for solid stones on solid ground.
Administration and new bank accounts
You can see there is quite a lot of activity here in Bulgaria. But at home, too, there are a lot of “helpers” who are active as well. They are more active in the background, but they have done a super job so far with a lot of voluntary commitment which I am deeply grateful for. As you can see from this report the amount of our work has increased enormously. For me it was a double amount of doing the work here in Bulgaria and organising the work at home, but this came out too much for me. So I found a lady in Germany who voluntarily organises and coordinates the work at home for me. Now I am able to give the work here my undivided attention. As you can see no money goes into the administration, every cent comes in useful for the children who urgently need help.
Some very poor children are waiting for their meal in the soup kitchen.
Having mentioned the money we now come to the topic ‘donations‘. Since I have been living here in the ghetto I have made some good experience with not calling up for donations in public. But I trusted in GOD that he would send us friends, who give us what we need for our work with the Roma here. A lot of you have already supported us with small and big donations, thank you ever so much for that.
Please, do understand that we are not able to send you charitable donation certificates during the year, because we would need additional staff for that, which we do not have at the moment. However, everyone of you can have such a certificate, we would send to you at the beginning of the year. So far you have transferred your donation to an account of the foundation KORN DES GLAUBENS. But now we have two accounts of our own. But the money still has to go over the foundation because we don’t have our own registered charity in Germany which would be able to hand out donation certificates. But this would mean more administration work for us which is impossible at the moment.
Our accounts are:
KORN DES GLAUBENS
Freisinger Bank code number 701 696 14
account number: 10 252 7707
It’s the account for the running expenses
account number 20 252 7707
It’s the account for ‘Solid stones on solid ground’ – expenses for the plot of land and the building
cordial greetings and thank you again
Frank