A Fixer-Upper

See this picture here to the left? Notice the blue skies, rolling green hills and the overall beauty. Right now all that is white and gray, covered in snow and ice. This picture looks like the most glorious place in the world to me right now.

This is a view from the future transitional living house that about a dozen guys and I will eventually be living in. Lives will change here, mine included.

This house is a house that we will work on together. American construction teams will be coming in the summer to work alongside Moldovans, including the guys from the orphanage.

I was told I needed to write about the meetings we have been having with those four guys I mentioned a few posts ago. So here goes.

When we sat to meet the first night with the four sweet sleep employees (Dima, Ivan, Artur and Vasille), they didn't really know why we were meeting. They were terrified that their jobs were about to end. They have been building beds for Internat (the orphanage they all grew up in), and had only 16 beds left. Needless to say, they had been taking their sweet time on those last few beds. Ivan, with fear in his eyes, would not stop asking us what they would be doing next.

So after a few hours of going over their finances and eating pizza topped with mayonaise, corn and God knows what else, we showed them what was next. It was this house.

Joy ensues and these guys get excited. We tell them we want it to be done by September. Joy changes to terror. They think they will be the only people working on it.

As you can see, it has a ways to go. Those two buildings will be connected and a roof will be added. We tell them we will have other people working on it besides them. Relief.

Also, we have 50 bunkbeds to build for this house and the girls transitional house. They have more work then they know what to do with and they are excited. They are excited about their futures for one of the few times in their lives. It is an amazing thing to see.

I am grateful to have been there.

A few nights later, we have another meeting. We have new contracts for them. These contracts are not just about work. They ecompass their whole lives. We are asking them to be Godly men. We are asking them to believe they can become what they wish they could. We are telling them we are going to do whatever we can to help them have lives they are proud to have.

They are terrified. What we are asking has never been expected from them, it has just been assumed they were a lost cause. We sign the contracts, the guys and me, together. This house will change their lives, my life as well. It is a house full of hope (and a bunch of homeless guys trying to stay warm during the winter).