Our Christmas celebration in the Berettyóújfalu Orphanage was an amazing success this year. Much of the thanks goes to Leo Burmedi, a Boy Scout from Heidelberg, Germany. For his Eagle Scout project he collected, sorted, wrapped and delivered gifts to all 120 children in the orphanage. We asked Leo to tell the story from his perspective:
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Leo, Russell & Béla at the Tuskevar house
of the Berettyoujfalu Orphanage |
"I have been a boy scout since I was in fifth
grade and I was a cub scout for five years before that. As soon as I finished my Boy Scout Life
Rank, I started looking for an Eagle Award service project to complete. At first I did not know what kind of
project I should do. I thought
about a lot of different kinds of projects until I remembered a project Shauna
Moffett had done the year before with the Cub Scouts.
Working
with Good Sports International, Shauna Moffett had filled plastic cartons with
useful items and toys for orphans at the Miskolc Orphanage in Hungary. It was the first time I had heard about
a project like it, and I admired her for running the project.
My
project was similar, except that I put together boxes for the Berettyóújfalu
Orphanage nearby. The first thing
I did, was to write Russell Chun, the contact person for Good Sports
International in Debrecen. He told
me that they needed shoe boxes for 120 orphans that Christmas. As I kept on planning the project
though, I kept on thinking about the problem of transportation. So when I emailed Russell, he offered
to take some boxes back with him in the first weekend in November because he
was going to talk about the orphanage at the Patrick Henry Village Chapel in
Heidelberg that Sunday anyway.
Later that
day I talked to Shauna Moffett, and she told me that she still had a lot of
materials leftover from last year’s drive, because many of the donations had
arrived after she had already delivered the boxes. So we decided to put together 30 boxes for the female
orphans and send them with Russell.
I met Russell for the first time when we gave him these boxes, and then
I got to see him the next day at church, too. It was really nice to finally get to talk to him in person
and to meet his son, Levi.
Now I
had to start collecting materials for the rest of the boxes, so I asked for
permission from the Garrison Command to set up collection boxes and conduct
drives, which they granted. Then I
went to the local commissary and PX, and they agreed to let me set up the boxes
and have the drives there. Over
the next two weeks, I collected enough materials to start putting the boxes
together. I labeled the empty
boxes and spent a long time deciding what should go in each one (I wanted each
box to have roughly the same contents so none of the orphans would feel
jealous).
On Sat, Dec 8, I met
with a group of volunteers at the Scout Hut and we wrapped the boxes. We also made a bag of candy for each of
the children and labeled a package of hot chocolate for each of them. I didn’t want to put any of the candy
into the boxes because Shauna Moffett had warned us that strong smelling
toiletries might make the food taste funny. Once that was done, I packed big boxes for each of the
orphanage houses and put larger presents, and gifts for the house mothers in
them.
Soon
thereafter, Kara and Edy Fulop came to collect all of the boxes. With the help of volunteers from my
troop, I loaded the van up and waved it off to Hungary. Everything was done except from my trip
to Hungary.
I left
Germany on December 20th, but sadly because of bad weather and
travel delays, I only arrived in Debrecen on December 21st, shortly
before Russell departed for the orphanage. When we got to the orphanage we went to one of the houses
and sang carols. We sang "Silent Night" in
Hungarian for them and they sang "We Wish You A Merry Christmas" in English for us. Russell also told the children the true
story of Christmas. Then we distributed
the presents. I was proud to see
how my project had brightened up the orphan’s Christmas and how happy everyone
was. It was probably one of the most enjoyable days of my scouting career."
