Moldova is excluded. Romania had to close their border this year when it was accepted into the European Union. The exchange with its neighbour was a life line. Unemployment in Moldova is oppressive. Many fathers went to Russia to work in construction; desperate mothers left their families in order to earn money. Thousands of children remained behind as orphans. The desperation this year has grown even more because it has hardly rained. People who used to survive from the food which grew in their garden now go hungry. Where is the hope for this country?

With the help of many friends we built the “City of Children”, a small paradise in the poorest land in Europe. Three hundred small and big children find a home here. One of them is Ion, twelve years old. After his parents died of tuberculoses, he had to leave his village. But he can not forget his 94 year old neighbour. Every Saturday he goes back to the village to bring her wood and water. The old woman is named Nadejda, which means hope in English.

Ion infected the young people in CONCORDIA. Now they all want to help hungry and lonely people. We got bicycles from Austria – they can use them to quickly bring warm soup to old people. They fight for the bikes. Hope has become a competition for our kids. Nadejda – hope – is the name of the new social centre in the village of Pirita. Soup will be cooked here and families in desperation will find help.

Dear friends, from the villages in Moldova come loud cries for Nadejda, for hope. Communities offer us buildings to establish soup kitchens. Please help us rebuild the dilapidated houses!

Week for week we see that hope comes through your help – like the lights in Advent. With each light, couldn’t we really open a new house of hope out of which young people ride to old people!
It is the great wish of the children to help and to give gifts. The young people pass on the donations which we receive from our friends. In this way our motto is fulfilled: “I shall make you a blessing for many.”

Empowered by our children, I ask for the blessing of Christmas for you and your family. With heartfelt appreciation,

Father Georg Sporschill, SJ

Angela King reports from Moldova It is damp in the houses, the little bit of food which is there is offered to the guests, cold. There is no wood for the oven. Old women walk barefoot on the path to the well on the edge of the village; there is no running water. The houses are built of clay, the walls fall down. Everything was built on sand and the flooding last year erode the foundations. The heat of summer turned the land into dry steppe. The children of the 1st to 4th form receive a simple breakfast and lunch in school. For many this is the only food they get all day. The headmaster knows of thirty children in the village of Valenti who are not cared for. They live without parents. The old school could become a place of hope.	Barefoot – hunger and cold. Our youth bring warm food on their bicycles.
We’re setting up a soup kitchen in the old school.
Please help us fight hunger and loneliness with our youth.

Chişinau, Advent 2007