Loving Arms Team
Our team meets Monday evenings several times a month throughout the year. A focal point of our activity is planning and running summer camps for teens and young adults in Romania. Team members also travel for visits and service other times of the year, or volunteer for extended stays. We are a multi-ethnic, multigenerational group (both among our team and our local partners in Romania) that delights in the richness of our diversity.
New members enter our Loving Arms community in the fall of each year. There is an application and orientation process in September. For more information please contact team leaders Scott Dewey or This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . *As a missional community, we are shaped by purposes beyond our small group—in this case to participate in God’s loving embrace of children who have been abandoned by parents and society. As a discipleship community, we are shaped by our journey together as followers of Jesus, who embodies God’s love for those wrongly labeled “the least, last, and lost.” As a community, we are a diverse group of ordinary people that God’s Spirit has knit together for extraordinary serving and learning experiences. |
The Loving Arms Team is a “missional discipleship community*” based in Denver, CO, USA that builds long-term relationships with abandoned children in Romania. Our purpose is to grow together with orphaned youth as people in God’s image and as an extended family of faith, hope, and love.
Our ministry is with children who have been subjected to extreme trauma, abuse, and neglect. Most are of Roma (Gypsy) descent and have been raised in bleak government institutions. They struggle to overcome physical and emotional wounds, and the ongoing shame of rejection. Because we want to love them well, we take preparation and learning experiences seriously—seeking best practices and knowledge about attachment disorders, autistic behaviors, developmental challenges, societal injustice, and other hurdles our friends face as they move into adulthood. Our emphasis is on the giftedness and assets of our youth, rather than their deficits—our view is toward their growth and empowerment.
Because recognize our work to be deeply spiritual, we pay attention our spiritual formation together. We pray, sing, discuss, question, encourage. We play crazy games and tell old camp stories. Our times together with loved ones in Romania are both joyful and heartbreaking, often all at once. Laughter and tears are equally at home in any of our gatherings. Through it all, over the past 15 years we have seen amazing transformation and growth—both in our Romanian youth and American volunteers!