welcome back to the world of blogging, Laney.

hi. :) i'm back from Belarus, (as you all know), and am ready to get this blog going again. :) so, here goes!

for the past few years i've been asking myself the same question, again, and again, and again. that question is, "what am i going to do with my life when i'm done with school?" that's also the question my parents have been asking me, ha. i've wanted to go into missions for a while now, (ever since i did a school project on Haiti when i was 12). i guess i get it from my mom. the want and desire to help people, and to do the little i can to do so. yet, i really hadn't known or figured out exactly what i wanted to do in the mission field. so up until this year, i've just been relying on God to open up a door for me in the mission field, and just simply waiting on His plan. i've also kept these thoughts in my head too, though: that maybe He didn't/doesn't want me in missions? and that maybe He's got a totally different plan for me. so my prayer has been that He would open a door and make it clear what i'm supposed to do. so, i'm still not entirely sure what it is that He wants me to do, but going to Belarus gave me a good lead. :)

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precious little Olya. :)

the Four year old little girl. she was an angel. 

brother and sister

i'm hoping to graduate this spring. what i'd like to do is to take all next year off of school, and take some big crazy adventure somewhere in the world. i've been checking out my options for the past few months, but nothing had really fallen into place until i went to Belarus. while i was there, we visited an abandoned baby's hospital.

there were 22 babies there in all. that's 22 mothers that didn't want their precious little babies. these children will grow up without the love of a mother or father, and most of them will probably never know the love of God, either. so they are orphans, but not because their parents have died, or that their mothers just aren't able to take care of them although still loving them. they are orphans because they were unwanted. how do you think they'd feel to know that? this is why we, the love of Christ, must reach out to these children, and let them know that someone, somewhere, really does care. so, just by being there, hugging and playing with the young girls from the orphanage, or holding the infants, shows them a little piece of the love of Christ.

Twenty-one of the 22 babies were quarantined for chicken-pox while we were there, so we only got to visit and love on one. he was 3 months old, and the size of an infant. the back of his precious little head was completely flat, because he never gets held.... only fed and changed daily. his four year old sister, the size of a 2 year old, still stays in a crib all day. we mistook her for a boy when we first arrived, because they had recently shaved her head as the result of a lack of time to fix her hair during the day. all of the children/babies there were unusually quiet. the result of knowing that even if they cry and make noise, no one will hold them, pick them up, or play with them. they sit, and lay in their cribs. day in, and day out.

when i left that place, my eyes had been opened. there are parts of the world that suffer from extreme poverty, like Haiti, Pakistan, and Tanzania. and those places need our help desperately also. yet seeing the children at that hospital made me realize how important Love really is. Love keeps us going, and if we have no Love, where is there to go? these children will grow up not knowing real Love, therefore they will end up like their parents, and the same thing that happened to them will keep happening, again and again. this is where we come in. to spread the Love and Light of Christ with them. this is what i want to do.

my plan, is to go to Belarus for 3 months, (would be more, but a visa only lasts that long), next year and do just that. i would be going to the abandoned baby's hospital 4-5 times a week, holding, loving, playing with, and caring for the children and infants. this is still completely up in the air at the moment, but i feel that this is where God is calling me. i think by doing this, it will also give me a better idea of what He has planned for my life. yet, i've decided that anything that He has me do, as long as i follow Him, all that matters is that He gets ALL of the glory. all of it.

"So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him."
-1 John 4:16