{"id":225,"date":"2010-04-11T13:40:29","date_gmt":"2010-04-11T18:40:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thespicytexan.com\/travel\/archives\/225"},"modified":"2010-04-13T15:20:34","modified_gmt":"2010-04-13T20:20:34","slug":"roxana","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thespicytexan.com\/travel\/roxana\/","title":{"rendered":"Roxana"},"content":{"rendered":"

When House of Angels\u00a0opened up the child placement center to the orphans again we weren\u2019t prepared for them.\u00a0 We didn\u2019t have proper things.\u00a0\u00a0We had been caring for only older after school program children in the community.\u00a0\u00a0 It had been several years since we had orphans in our center, and then we had only infants up to three.\u00a0 The state wanted to give House of Angels the smaller disabled children that had been in the Romanian state care.\u00a0 How could anyone say no!\u00a0 There right now are twenty of them. \u00a0\u00a0 We called out for donations not knowing which ages of kids they would bring.\u00a0\u00a0 We have a better idea now and generous donations have gone far but we need real money, as there are some things here that just cannot be donated.\u00a0 The children all have different needs.<\/p>\n

There are always so many children that steal my heart.\u00a0\u00a0 Some children take a part of my heart forever.\u00a0\u00a0 Roxana is going to be one of those children.\u00a0\u00a0I can\u2019t wait for you to\u00a0hear about her.\u00a0 \u00a0I think she\u2019s about 11 years old, golden thick wavy hair cropped into a boy cut. \u00a0 She has the fairest of skin and a few freckles and blue eyes.\u00a0 Her features are very thin and frail. \u00a0 She doesn\u2019t speak.\u00a0\u00a0 She appears to have some institutional autism and major sensory deprivation and disorder.\u00a0 She has auditory and tactile sensory issues.\u00a0 She cannot touch things easily and she reaches out with much trepidation and recoils her hand a few times before trusting.\u00a0 She is thin and shuffles when she walks.\u00a0 I don\u2019t feel she is truly autistic, she does engage and make eye contact and smile but she is terrified of the world around her.\u00a0 She\u2019s so physically delayed and completely mute as far as I can tell.\u00a0\u00a0 I love to make her smile.\u00a0She loves to smile.\u00a0 \u00a0She spends most of the day fearful of the sudden actions and sounds of the other children.\u00a0 She sits in the corner and rocks.\u00a0\u00a0 I have talked to Simona to get her some one on one time so we can assess what her real abilities are for the future.\u00a0 This is why we need volunteers.\u00a0 We\u2019ve given some plastic surgical brushes to the nurses to \u201cbrush\u201d her skin so she can become more tolerant.\u00a0 I\u2019m giving her some big deep hugs, the kind that reach right into the soul too!<\/p>\n

Tonight I took Roxana around letting her touch the plants inside the House of Angels, letting her feel the different leaves and textures.\u00a0\u00a0 She adored this truly.\u00a0 She held my hand firmly and loved the walk up and down the stairs.\u00a0\u00a0 She was very worried about the stairs but she did so well we did it again on the other side of the hall.\u00a0 The stairs are marble.\u00a0 There are 23 of them.\u00a0\u00a0 I walk them night and day along with the rest of the nurses and employees.<\/p>\n

We took Roxana to the donation room.\u00a0 All the children were in ill fitting clothing and shoes.\u00a0\u00a0 It was time for Roxana to get her new shoes.\u00a0\u00a0 Roxana was smiling because I\u2019d given her a new teddy bear and now we were trying to dig in huge boxes of shoes for something for her to wear.\u00a0\u00a0 Her feet were too long.\u00a0 She got afraid when Gelu (House of Angels Director) started tossing shoes around on the floor.\u00a0\u00a0 I held her tighter and comforted her.\u00a0 Finally we found something for her but I think I\u2019ll go and buy her some newer shoes too.\u00a0 We found a sports suit for her which was brand new and she smiled.\u00a0\u00a0 I asked her if she liked it in Romanian\u2026but there was no reaction.\u00a0\u00a0 I know she did like them.\u00a0\u00a0 Thank you for the new sports suit and shoes, from Roxana.\u00a0 She truly loves them.\u00a0 Please pray for the restoration of the emotional and physical health of Roxana.<\/span><\/p>\n

This is where I\u2019d love to thank the donors for all their donations, however, there were so many unusable shoes in those donations.\u00a0 Please be mindful if you send donations, we need very gently used<\/span> and new clothing.\u00a0 We cannot use shoes with holes and soles tearing off.\u00a0\u00a0 These children are often growing fast and hard on their shoes.\u00a0\u00a0What we can really use is rubber crocks or slip on sandals that the children can wear socks with inside.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0 These are the absolute best shoes ever for a child placement center.\u00a0\u00a0 They wear socks all the time and the rubber shoes are necessary inside so the children don\u2019t fall on the tile or wooden flooring.<\/p>\n

Speaking of shoes and feet and such\u2026I know this is silly but I painted my toenails very bright florescent colors before I left.\u00a0\u00a0 They have polka dots on them in many patterns.\u00a0\u00a0 The children adore them.\u00a0\u00a0 I\u2019m glad someone likes my feet, I don\u2019t really care much for them myself haha.\u00a0 They always want to look at them!\u00a0 I\u2019m wearing rubber flip flops here in the orphanage, I can\u2019t handle wearing socks with crocks or sandals.\u00a0 I can go from the shower right to work in them\u00a0 \"\" Speaking of work\u2026I hear a baby crying.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When House of Angels\u00a0opened up the child placement center to the orphans again we weren\u2019t prepared for them.\u00a0 We didn\u2019t have proper things.\u00a0\u00a0We had been caring for only older after school program children in the community.\u00a0\u00a0 It had been several years since we had orphans in our center, and then we had only infants up […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[87,85,86,63,82,83,58,84,59,72,81],"class_list":["post-225","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","tag-child-charity","tag-donations","tag-donors","tag-house-of-angels","tag-institutional-autism","tag-new-shoes","tag-orphan","tag-orphan-shoes","tag-orphanage","tag-romanian-orphan","tag-roxana"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thespicytexan.com\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thespicytexan.com\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thespicytexan.com\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thespicytexan.com\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thespicytexan.com\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=225"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/thespicytexan.com\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":226,"href":"https:\/\/thespicytexan.com\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225\/revisions\/226"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thespicytexan.com\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thespicytexan.com\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thespicytexan.com\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}