Good-will trip will also be a reunion
Good-will trip will also be a reunion
Romania - A Tualatin teen will meet her birth mother during a trip to
visit an orphanage
Wednesday, December 26, 2007
DEE ANNE FINKEN Special to The Oregonian
TUALATIN, OR -- A trip for a Tualatin family today to deliver gifts
and a message of hope to an orphanage in Eastern Europe is more than a
holiday good-will venture.
It's also a homecoming.
In Romania, a nation still struggling to extract itself from the
systematic abandonment of a generation and children and infants,
16-year-old Kira Shearer will meet the Romanian woman who agreed to
place her for adoption when she was 2 weeks old.
Understandably, the Tualatin teen has mixed feelings about the reunion.
"I'm anxious in a bad way -- and in a good way," Kira, a quiet junior
at Horizon Christian School in Tualatin, confided recently, alongside
her parents, Tom and Cherie Shearer, and her 12-year-old sister, Tia,
in the comfort of their home.
Sitting next to a Christmas tree laden with ornaments and surrounded
by a flood of gifts, Kira conceded it might be difficult in just one
week to get to know the woman who bore her but gave her to others to
raise. "When I was younger, I'd wonder why'd she give me up."
Now, the teen said she is concerned that once she returns to Oregon
after meeting her birth mother, the pain of missing her might be too
great.
"We didn't know for sure if she was even still alive until just
recently," Kira said.
The significance of her adoption by an American family is not lost on
the teen. A few weeks ago, Kira toured a Tigard exhibit by the
humanitarian group Medical Teams International displaying the plight
of homeless and abandoned people around the world, including orphans
in Romania.
"It kind of scared me," Kira said. "It was really nasty. There was
overcrowding and they just let the kids cry. There were no cots and it
was freezing, and the children were sleeping on urine-soaked
mattresses."
Conditions for children in Romania have improved since news reports in
the early 1990s unveiled the horror of life under Nicolae Ceausescu,
the dictator who was overthrown at Christmas in 1989. In an attempt to
build his nation, Ceausescu had outlawed birth control and abortion
and paid mothers for having babies. The ideal was five children, which
resulted in a mother receiving additional money from the government.
Kira was baby No. 4 for Maricica Edu.
But the poverty gripping the nation made it impossible for Edu and
thousands of other mothers to care for their babies. Hundreds of
thousands of infants and children who were not adopted ended up in
orphanages ill-equipped to provide for the avalanche of youngsters.
Conditions in many institutions were so horrid they were likened to
Nazi concentration camps.
Despite improvements in recent years, humanitarian and church groups
such as Heart To Heart International Ministries that send missionaries
and others to work in Romania's orphanages report significant work is
yet to be done.
"We have a cycle of abandonment that continues in Romania," said Anna
Nielsen, Heart To Heart spokeswoman.
It was through Heart To Heart that the Shearers tracked down Kira's
birth mother. Natalie Richards, who, along with Cherie Shearer teaches
at Horizon, one day happened to mention her volunteer work with the
California-based nonprofit and an upcoming missionary trip she had
planned to Romania in late December.
Before long, the Shearers had signed on for the trip, which will cost
them about $7,000. Heart To Heart helped track down Kira's birth
mother.
Edu lives in the tiny village of Focsani north of Bucharest in a
region so rural that electricity is a luxury. With no roads, the
Shearers will have to hike the last mile to reach her one-room house.
In addition to the reunion, Cherie Shearer said the trip will "bring
Christmas to the orphans," children who otherwise might not have any
holiday.
"We'll have parties and deliver boxes filled with gifts. Many of the
children don't have anything."
Among the gifts for each of the 120 children in the orphanage the
Shearers will visit will be a new pair of shoes.
When fellow classmates at Horizon learned about the orphanage Kira and
Tia will visit, the youngsters held fundraisers and collected more
than $3,300.
"The students' hearts," said Principal Pam Pries, "were really touched."
Dee Anne Finken: dfinken@comcast.net