Meet Our Volunteers
I'm hooked. I've found what it means to be called to a personal mission field in a tiny country far, far away building beds for the sweetest children on earth. I love it. I can't get enough of it. I love it so much, that even though I just returned from Drochia in April, I'm returning in September to Ialoveni for my third trip to Moldova.
I used to be one of those people that questioned whether or not what we were trying to do was enough; "Can a new bed really change a child's life"? I don't ask that question anymore.
During our second day of building beds in Drochia, it hit me. I was playing Frisbee with a group of kids in a forgotten field behind the orphanage. The weather was perfect and a strong breeze was blowing in our direction. It smelled like a campfire nearby or maybe a farmer burning rubbish of some sort down the road. It was then that an errant Frisbee led me behind an outbuilding where I found the source of the smoke. The smoke I had been inhaling was that of 240 piles of stinky rotten, disgusting, smelly, and just plain wrong, mattresses and bedding in one big smoldering heap. In the blaze were all of the children's mattresses we had cleaned out the day before. To me, it was a symbol of all of the injustice we had witnessed in this place burning.
I literally ran to tell the other team members. "Go see for yourselves! This is it! This is why we've come." I was smiling, although tears were streaming down my face. I was overcome with joy. These children that we had come to love would never sleep in filth again. Those mattresses no longer existed. They were forever and permanently banished from the place these children call home. They were gone forever.
We built more beds on this trip than any trip before. 240 kids are sleeping sweetly tonight in their very own own Sweet Sleep beds thanks to Sweet Sleep and friends like you. In Drochia, Sweet Sleep marked the completion of new beds for 10% of the children living in Moldovan orphanages. God is amazing and for this, He gets all the glory!
I see God at work in Moldova and I can see the face of this country changing each time I visit. Christians in Moldova and Christians from America investing in and traveling to Moldova are leading anti-trafficking training classes, starting homeless ministries, adopting kids out of the system, and strengthening local Moldovan churches. I know that God is there. I know he is at work. And I know that I am blessed to be a part of what He is doing in Moldova and through Sweet Sleep.
Great things are happening, but there is still so much more to be done. I hope you will consider praying, giving our going. The impact you can leave on the life of a child is eternal.
May God set your heart ablaze,
Amy Helms
