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Email has become a very important form of communication for our church. Each week Christ Community Church of Laguna Hills publishes an
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Latest Correspondence from Kelly Stark
September 19, 2006
THANK YOU for your prayers!!! I received the declaration from Sophia's mother so that I can finish the adoptions with her!!!! GOD IS SO GOOD!
"If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land."
2 Chron. 7:14-15
Dear Friends and Family,
I was in Brasov for the weekend visiting friends who started a family center just recently. They shared a lot with me and even though the prospect of starting our family center is overwhelming, it is exciting to see them and to learn as much as possible from them, and I can only pray that God will use our association in the same way. Nothing has progressed with ours since I last wrote you. It is very hard for me, I get impatient, and I start to doubt if this is what God wants for us. The last night I spent in Brasov some of us watched a movie called, Human Trafficking. An overwhelming sense of fear for my kids came over me and so I prayed. I didn't fall asleep until 3 am, and woke up still praying. I prayed while I drove the car back to Petrosani, the fear just wouldn't leave until later that afternoon. When I came home, the first thing that Lenuta told me almost made my heart stop. David and Tabita were standing outside our gate that morning with Tabita's brother, 10 years old, who is staying with us for part of his vacation. The street in front of our house is always full of children playing together. A man that no one has ever seen before tried to get Tabita to come to him by offering her money. She didn't go to him so he went to the store around the corner, bought ice cream, and tried to make her come with him, she almost took it. That minute my neighbor came out and saw what he was doing and yelled at him. He left. In broad daylight, in front of our house, where adults constantly take turns watching the kids play...
The panic in Lenuta reminded me of the panic I had been feeling since that last night. Even though the movie was enough to make me pray for the kids, I know it was God who led me to pray all night. It also made me think of a few things that have happened in the past. When I first came here, there was one girl I wanted to take in placement, but the director absolutely refused to let me, and said, "You just want to take all the pretty girls away from me." It was partly true, I wanted ALL the girls if I had the room for them. Later I found out that she was working in Italy in a striptease bar. The kids at the orphanage told me that the director had sold her. Monika, Sophia's birth mother, was a well known prostitute around here. When she left for Spain she told me that the man who is paying for her ticket to "work" there promised to buy her teeth (all of hers had rotted away). When we called her almost half a year later she told us how she had escaped after being kept prisoner in a basement for 3 months...at that time I didn't believe her, and we haven't heard from her since. Cosmin told me how when he was begging on the streets a man told him to get in his car. The man grabbed him and tried to pull him in, but his friends saved his life by pulling and holding on to his other arm.
Human trafficking is a growing problem here in Romania and other economically unstable countries all over the world. Here is a quote from the US embassy in Bucharest:
"Romania is a source and transit country for women and girls trafficked for the purpose of sexual exploitation. Females from Moldova, Ukraine, and Russia are trafficked through Romania to Italy, Spain, Germany, Greece, France, Austria, and Canada. There were reports that Romanian boys and young men were trafficked to another Eastern European country for purposes of sexual exploitation. Romanian girls are trafficked within the country for commercial sexual exploitation, and boys are trafficked from Eastern and Northern Romania to urban cities for purposes of forced labor including forced petty theft. The Government of Romania does not fully comply with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking; however, it is making significant efforts to do so."
There is still an anti-American sentiment. I keep hearing how we should just leave. And sometimes, that is what I would love to do. Forget the association, take my kids, go back to my comfortable country and raise them near my family who love them unconditionally. But not only is Romania unable to deal with the orphan situation, and no country is able to deal with the human trafficking crisis on it's own. And nothing can really done if we as Christians fail to humble ourselves and seek His face and turn from our wicked ways.
- Praise God that the battle belongs the Lord! And we can rest in Him and trust in His righteousness and His love for all the orphans, for all those involved in Human Trafficking.
- Praise God for protecting Tabita!
- Please pray for the safety of Romania's children.
- Please pray for a baby that will be born in September and is related to both Tabita and Sophia, and if it's God's will for the baby to come stay with us.
- Please pray for me to humble myself to keep serving the Lord by serving His children. Please pray for me to seek His face and go where He calls me, or stay where He wants me. Please continue to pray for me to completely forgive.
- Please pray for our association, for Nicu and Silvana, and for the ministry house to be completed soon. Pray for the workers.
In His Love,
Kelly
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