I opened the door to walk into Ladizhin, a level four orphanage, one warm July day in Ukraine. Though the hall was quite dark and gloomy, I saw a door across from it and through the window I saw a room full of children lying in beds. I opened a door and walked straight to a boy who appeared to be an emaciated seven-year-old, but his birth date proved otherwise. The pale eighteen-year-old boy was lying half naked on his soiled cot. I unwrapped an ice cream cone and extended it for him to take, but when I realized that he couldn’t move his arms to receive it, I knelt down beside his bed and fed it to him. As he licked an ice cream, his beautiful brown eyes stared into mine without ceasing to say thank you. His eyes were the only means of communication for he was too weak to speak, but that was enough. His longing gaze was worth more to me than all the words in the world. When he finished the last bite, his eyes still did not part from mine. As I sang to him, his eyes smiled at me, thoroughly enjoying every second of loving attention.

Natanya and her team pal Mary

I moved on to another room. There was a boy lying in a crumpled heap in his crib. His rib cage was oversized compared to the rest of his body, and his arms and legs were twisted and motionless. His green and yellow eyes stared outward blankly as his head pounded repetitively against his bed. I talked to him and caressed his arm while singing the words to Jesus Loves Me: “Little ones to Him belong. They are weak, but He is STRONG.” Tears brimmed in my eyes but I refused to cry.

Natanya minmistering to a boy in Ladizhin Orphanage

When we had to leave, everyone piled back into the bus. I sat by the window and made a little cubby with my arm by placing it on the seat in front of me and leaning on it. Quietly I sang out the window, “Thank you for the cross, thank you Lord for drawing me out of millions lost, thank you Lord for saving me.” But then I thought, “God, you said that you’d never leave or forsake your children. Why did you leave them?” That very moment, God answered me by putting Scott’s hand over mine and holding it. It was as if God was holding me and saying, “I didn’t leave them, I am here holding them, and those nurses are my angels.” Tears flowed down from my face. This time they were not of pity or of helplessness, but of joy. God taught me to look at those beautiful children through His eyes. To the world they look like pathetic, filthy, dying children, but God looks through the outward appearance and straight to their hearts. Their eyes are open windows through which we can see their hearts as well.

Our pity doesn’t make those children happy. It is when we look through God’s eyes and show them love that He changes both their lives and our lives forever.

Story Board