Transition House

Finally, part three of the ministries of Heart to Heart.

The Transition House is a very special place.  Each year, teenage orphans apply and are interviewed to be a part of the transition program, run by Heart to Heart.  In the course of the transition program, 4-8 students per house (the girls in Bucharest and the boys in a neighboring city) are involved in what is like a life-lessons fast-track schooling.  They start out very basically, sometimes learning what we would deem extreme basics, like learning to take a shower, take care of clothing, and clean.  Later, these life lessons grow a bit more complicated, the girls learn to cook (their teacher, Sanda, is the best!), do basic sewing and mending, computer skills, and they even have the opportunity to gain a nail technician education.  The boys learn trades like welding and carpentry.  Basically all the skills needed for living on their own-all the things that parents usually teach their children.  Throughout the process is a close-intense discipleship program.  Staff members live with the transition house students, and they begin to truly see what it means to belong to a family, to have someone that they can depend on.  For many orphans who have grown up hearing about God's love, this is where it actually hits home.  Lives are changed, eternally.

One girl who was in the very first year of the transition program was one of our translators for the trip.  She told us that when she began the program, she was very disobedient.  She said she was filled with so much hate from all the things she had experienced in the orphanage.  She began the program, only to be kicked out for violating the rules of the transition house.  Later, after some cool-down time, she decided to come back and finish the program.  It was hard to believe that this woman had once been a rebellious teenager!  She is now soooo filled with the love of God!  She is now involved in the baby hospital ministry of Heart to Heart-daily going to care for the smallest of His little ones.  As I worked alongside her there, witnessing her whispering, "Jesus loves you" to those babies, I was truly in awe of God's power to save and transform.  She is one of many who has been forever changed.