Nobody's Child

GOOD CAUSES DEPT.

Cy Coben and Mel Foree wrote a song called Nobody's Child which was recorded in 1949 by Hank Snow. Last night I heard the 1990 version of this song by the Travelling Wilbury's, the supergroup of George Harrison and friends -- Bob Dylan, Tom Petty, and Jeff Lynne. Roy Orbison was still a Wilbury but preparing to leave for another destination at the time.

The song became the opening track on an album titled Nobody's Child: Romanian Angel Appeal. Romanian Angel Appeal was an effort to raise awareness, and money, for the needy children of Romania.

Yesterday when I heard the song on KUMD, it reminded me of the outreach started by our friends Silviu and Tirzah Pop whom I wrote about last summer. The needs in Romania have not gone away, even if they are not in the news like all the global economic turmoil. While earthquakes and tsunamis cause massive destruction and media coverage, the ongoing needs in places like Romania are all but forgotten. It was this ongoing need that prompted Silviu and Tirzah Pop to create Romanian Hope Springs International.

Nobody's Child
As I was slowly passing, an orphans home today
I stopped for just a little while to watch the children play
A lone boy standin', and when I asked him why
He turned with eyes that could not see, and he began to cry

I'm nobody's child, I'm nobody's child
Just like a flower I'm growin' wild
No mama's arms to hold me no daddy's smile
Nobody wants me, I'm nobody's child

In every town and village
There are places just like this
With rows and rows of children
And babies in their cribs

They've long since stopped their cryin'
As no-one ever hears
And no-one there to notice them or take away their fears

Nobody's child, they're nobody's child
Just like a flower they're growin wild
No mama's arms to hold them, no daddy's smile
Nobody wants them they're nobody's child

Nobody's child, they're nobody's child
Just like a flower they're growin wild
No mama's arms to hold them, no daddy's smile
Nobody wants them they're nobody's child
Nobody wants them they're nobody's child

It just so happens that this weekend I received an invitation to Silviu & Tirzah's next fundraiser for orphaned children in Northeast Romania.

We are going to have a traditional Romanian meal Including home made bread and other goodies that my be a new cultural experience. The meal and entertainment will be $20.
The event will take place at East Ridge Community Church on July -10 Time 5-7 pm.
Location: 3727 West Arrowhead Road, Duluth MN 55811

Silviu is himself an artist, singer and excellent cook. Yum. It is my understanding that there will be a silent auction that includes art by potters and painters. All proceeds will go to help meet the needs of the children.

For more information about Romanian Hope Springs International visit http://www.romanianhopesprings.org/

Trivia: George Harrison's first recording of Nobody's Child was with Tony Sheridan and the Beatles in 1961.

Reaching the Marginalized in Romania

"Jesus was all about the lost, the last and the least. This is good news for the poor, the blind and the needy... There is much in Scripture about God's concern for the marginalized, the orphan, the widow, the elderly, the broken. We cannot confess the centrality of the Word without embracing its major themes." ~Gary Walter

This past weekend had some interesting moments. The third was on Sunday morning. Our pastor was in Colorado with his family and instead of a stand in, we watched an excerpt from a longer message by the president of the Covenant Church International. The quote above is a passage from his message.
The second was the night before. We had visited the home of Silviu and Tirzah Pop, founders of an outreach to forgotten and marginalized children in the village of Poiana in Northeast Romania. Silviu is from this region and is painfully aware of the great need there.

The major issue is widespread AIDS. In the 1980's it was believed that blood transfusions to children would improve their health for minor and major surgeries. Untested, contaminated blood and the lack of hygienic practices helped transmit HIV to inordinate numbers of children there. Some were already orphans while others were abandoned in garbage containers, parks or apartment buildings.

Silviu and Tirzah have land and a small run-down building. Their desire is to create an orphanage where these and other outcast youth can be cared for and loved.

On Saturday evening we looked at photos from Silviu's recent visit there. We saw the need and we saw their dream. The special power of their outreach is that it originated in the hearts of two very ordinary people. There is no bureaucracy. Just a pair of young people responding to needs and striving to do something good.

The first "interesting moment" of the weekend, and the trigger event for this sequence of thoughts, was seeing again the film About Schmidt, which I wrote about here.

How is one transformed from self-preoccupation to selflessness? In a culture which preaches "me" and publishes bestsellers like Looking Out for Number One, where do the Mother Teresas come from? Silviu and Tirzah give evidence that it can really come from anywhere.

For more information, visit their website at http://www.romanianhopesprings.org/

Five Minutes With Silviu Pop

So many times in history we read of ordinary people who do extraordinary things. It can be very exhilarating to discover the modest roots of these many great enterprises. The flip side, we often don't know whether a big dream or vision will come to pass for certain because there is always risk involved and we really cannot see tomorrow very well. One thing we do know is that he who tries nothing achieves exactly that.

For this reason I am always impressed by people who are passionate about their dreams, especially when it comes to making sacrifices to help make others' lives better. These are people who do not link risks to the cost, but to the potential rewards.

A couple weeks ago I wrote about the fund raising dinner we went to for Romanian Hope Springs Eternal. I did a quick follow up interview with

ennyman: How old are you, Silviu?
Silviu: I just turned 29 on July 16th.

enny: How did you and Tirzah meet?

Silviu: We met through a common friend attending Grace Baptist Church in Dublin Ireland. The church had an active young adult group that we were both involved in. I was in Ireland working and Tirzah was in Ireland completing her Veterinary degree.

enny: Why is music such a part of your lives?

Silviu: I used to sing Romanian Folk music as a child. My teacher, Florica Bradu, is a famous folk music singer in Oradea. I also sang in the Romanian church in a youth group. I coordinated 2 groups while I was in "high school". Our singing group traveled around Romania on mission trips from the bottom of the Black Sea to the top of the Carpathian Mountains..

Tirzah started playing trombone in 6th grade as they didn’t want her in the choir. Her music career took off during her senior year in High School when she was involved in Jazz Band and Wind Ensemble at East High School. She continued to play while attending UMD and her trombone went with her to Ireland.

enny: Why are there so many orphans in Romania?
Silviu: Ceausescu Nicolaie had a rule enforced demanding every women to have at least 5 children in order to increase the population of Romania. He didn’t worry about how the families would feed and support their children. A lot of the families when they found they couldn’t support their kids they would leave them in blankets in the garbage, in boxes by the garbage containers or by the apartment building doors. These homeless children were put in orphanages. Romania is still struggling economically thus children are still being put into orphanages.

enny: What is the biggest need of the ministry at this time?
Silviu: We are at the very start of raising money so that we can fix up the facility in order to have our first camp with children from the orphanage next summer. We need to raise around $50,000 in order to have the facility usable.

enny: Are gifts to your ministry tax deductible? What's the easiest way to send support?
Silviu: We are working on our Federal Tax ID in the next few months we should have it. The easiest way to send support would be checks written to Romanian Hope Springs International or PayPal on our (soon to be available) web site. Artists can send art to our address for silent auction at or dinner events. Thank you for interviewing us and coming to our dinner. We really enjoyed the blog and sent out the website to a number of other people. Most of the artwork was sold which was very exciting.

For more information contact romanianhopesprings@yahoo.com

To all you dreamers and world-changers, today is a good day to move your dream one step further toward reality.

Hope Springs Eternal for Romania

This week Susie and I were invited to a fund-raising/consciousness-raising dinner for Romanian Hope Springs International and I want to convey some what we experienced there. But where does one begin?

I am reminded of the story of the little boy on the beach trying to save the lives of sand dollars (or is is starfish?) that have been washed ashore and which will most definitely die if left there out of the water. The boy is picking them up one at a time, throwing them back into the sea. A man who sees what he’s trying to do comes walking by and questions why the boy is wasting his time when the whole beach is awash with critters doomed to die. The boy will make hardly a dent and what difference can it possibly make when there are so many?

The boy has paused to consider the man’s words, then throws the next one into the sea saying, “It made a difference for that one.”

I’m sure that was a scene from a movie, and the simplicity of last night’s dinner could have been a movie scene, too. Silviu and Tirzah Pop were the organizers of the event, a Romanian meal extraordinaire. We were not only introduced to Romanian cuisine, we also heard Silviu sing to us some songs of Romanian origin…. In Romanian, of course.

There was also a silent auction in which people were able to purchase art and pottery, donated through Silviu’s local arts connections.

That Tirzah, our veterinarian extraordinaire, would have married a man from Romania and gone on to start a ministry in a foreign land comes as no surprise when you know her family as we did when we first came to Duluth in 1986. Tirzah’s dad is a doctor who is active annually in a Christian medical outreach in Madagascar. The family has missions connections of many stripes. I remember being with Dr. Roach the day the Rwandan president’s plane was shot down years ago. He commented with heaviness of heart that this was a signal that very dark days were coming in that troubled country. The film Hotel Rwanda describes that horrorific massacre of Hutus by Tutsis that resulted in a million deaths and rivers of blood.

Romania, like many nations outside the periphery of our daily news, has more than its share of sorrows. Silviu, who has maintained strong attachments with his homeland and family siince coming to this country, felt a special burden for the people of the mountain villages in Northwestern Romania. Several years ago, when he sought to bring blankets to help people through the winters, his pastor encouraged him to “think bigger.” This ministry is a direct outgrowth of those prayers and bigger thinking.

What moved me last night was how simple and pure Silviu’s and Tirzah’s ambitions are with this ministry. It is about the needy, not about the Pops. It is about ordinary people making sacrifices to do whatever they can to help other people in extraordinarily difficult straights.

A primary focus is to reach the children. There are countless orphans due to bad medical and political decisions during the past quarter century. Young people with disabilities are neglected in Romania, hence the mission includes serving disabled children.

Jacques Ellul, in his book Hope in Time of Abandonment, noted that Martin Luther's emphasis on faith was the key word for his historical moment. But the key word in our time is hope. The modern world has seen devastation on a mass scale like never before. This ministry, Romanian Hope Springs International, is focused on bringing hope to a specific people in a time of great need.

For more information contact romanianhopesprings@yahoo.com