Christmas Day Humanitarian Missionary Style

What could humanitarian missionaries do on Christmas Day to make a difference?

We arranged for all the missionaries in Bucharest to visit an orphanage after church services. Randy MC'd the event with the help of Elder Johnson as translator. Mission President Hill, Sister Hill and their son, who is working in Egypt, and was in town for the holidays looked on.

First on the program was a classical guitar solo by Joseph Hill. The smiling lady behind him is the director of the facility.

Next, a member of the Church here in Bucharest and an excellent cellist favored us with a Romanian carol.

One of the residents, this young girl is attending music school and studying the violin. But she wanted to play the keyboard for us today.

All the missionaries gathered to sing a few carols (all in Romanian).  We sounded pretty good! This little girl wanted to join us up front as missionaries and children all sang together for our last song.

President Hill then shared a sweet message about how God knows and loves all His children and that we can all go to Him in prayer.  Pres. Hill had given Randy and I the OK to prepare gift bags for each of the children. We had the pleasure of shopping and packaging them up earlier in the week.  So at this point all the young missionaries passed out the bags to the kids.

Up till then the children had been pretty shy and quiet. But now they got warmed up and wanted to perform for us before we said goodbye.  We got many smiles, thank-you's and hugs. Our hearts were touched by these children who are longing to be loved. Here are a few sweet moments we managed to capture:

We are not sure who brought who the most joy that day, but for us, it was a wonderful Christmas.