Leaving Caminul Felix

Saying good-bye is never easy…to eleven children and their parents that have worked their way into your heart in a short five months, it is difficult. We hugged and kissed each one at the Cypress House and told them something special. “Good luck in college. I am proud of you. You are beautiful. I love you.” These were only words to fill the pain of silence and goodbye.



We heard their shouts. We saw their smiling faces and energetic waves. All summer, we knew we would be back in a few days or a few weeks. Today, this was our final visit. We rode away from Caminul Felix Village Two, waving frantically and watching as we had so many times before--children waving across the village until we were out of sight. We stopped and looked back up the road at the village and the farm tucked in the plains…praying for their continued blessing and their changed lives.

For me, Caminul Felix bridged my fears of leaving my career by providing an opportunity to give my professional talents and my heart during our five-month stay in Romania. The perk was interacting everyday with the children who are directly receiving the resources and the services from this amazing non-profit organization. For the past eight years, I certainly loved my fundraising work in higher education. Actually, I was convinced life couldn’t get any better than being on a college campus everyday, establishing processes and strategies to engage donors, and traveling the country meeting successful alumni and hosting special events, while asking for funds and advancing the institution’s mission. I always enjoyed the return visit to campus to get acquainted with a student or chat with a faculty member. Yet, these moments are often lost in the goals of the system and dismissed as intangible.

I am here to tell you life does get better. It gets better when you give your whole heart. For me, that meant working for free with no window office, no title to validate my existence, no paycheck, no health benefits, and no retirement program. To work just to be satisfied at the end of the day with nothing but the feeling to have given it my all. To work beside my husband on a project that is bigger than us. To have an opportunity just to give of ourselves together…

It may not be the Marriott, the Hilton or the Westin, but the bunk bed at the Cypress House with eleven kids demanding attention (and hating to hear about your work) remind me fundraising changes lives one day at a time. It was meant as an opportunity to give to others… but I am simply a life changed by an experience which gave so much to me. -HSR