March 1, 2006

To all of our supporters,

After years of helping children’s shelters and children on the streets of Bucharest, our organization took the next step in helping these children. In 2004 we started the Miracle House, where we offered a safe haven for abandoned children, who had been left on the streets of Bucharest by their families because of desperate poverty. Through our fundraising dinners and generous supporters we have been providing sanctuary to many children and offering emergency rescue for others.

To prevent abandonment and the ravaging emotional affects it imprints on these children, we started the Family Assistance Program that helps families in desperate situations. Our program makes it possible for these families to stay together. The missionary/social worker we sponsor visits these families, and while making sure their most vital needs are met, he also offers them emotional and spiritual support. The children in these families otherwise would spend their days on the street begging for their survival, at the cost of their education, insuring a grim future for themselves.

We have in our program now 42 beautiful children. And as I present the program, every time I am asked the same questions. “Why are there so many needy children on the street?” While in Romania in November of 2004 I asked this question of a pastor. His response was to show me that a lot of the children on the street have families. But that only brought up the next question. “Why are they having so many children?” I found the answer to that question at the end of the second day spent with the pastor, after visiting 18 families in need that depend mainly on their children’s begging.

After the second day of visiting those families, as the evening came we had to attend a meeting with our Romanian foundation. Before the meeting started I asked our gracious host if there was a room where I could take a few minutes to reflect on the day. It was there, while Julie Ross and I quietly sobbed, unable to ask questions any more, I got the answer, but the answer did not matter.  The reality was plain and more obvious than any answer. Gratitude and reverence filled my heart. Only by the grace of God and through my father’s faith and courage was I plucked out from this grim fate myself.  Had I remained in Romania, impaired by dyslexia, and pressured by religion and the culture of the country, just like these overwhelmed mothers I visited those days, I would have found my value and worth in the numbers of children I bore.

That evening’s meeting was a milestone for us. We built a program to help these children.

In exchange for the new shoes we gave them, we try to walk in their shoes; we became the beggars for them.
We now pray you will hear our plea and join us in our mission.

Respectfully,

Rodica Lack
President and Co-Founder of Hope for the Future