My name is Daniela Bacos and I’m a nurse. My husband, Florin, a sergeant major in the military, and I are thirty-three years old and we have a ten-year old son, David Benjamin.
For nine years we lived in the Casa Noastra building in a small twenty-two sq. meter dorm room with a leaky roof and a shared bathroom at the end of the hallway. We never had hot water, and the cold water often stopped as well. Every day our situation became more and more unbearable. This became more apparent when our son began attending school and didn’t have a good place to study at home, as all we had was a small corner in the room where he usually played.
One day he asked me, “Mom, do we have any money?” I replied, “Yes, we have some, but why do you ask? Do you want a new toy?” “No, mom. I want you to buy 3-4 bricks so that we can build a house where we would have more room, like my classmates,” he said.
I was speechless. That is when I started praying to God that He would make a miracle so we could get out of this situation. Then one day I saw a poster around town advertising for their family selection program. Without knowing much about Casa Draga Casa we said, “Let’s try it!”
We applied, went through the selection process and volunteered on site, and eventually became a homeowner. On August 13, 1999 we moved into our new house. It was our greatest joy; our biggest dream had become reality. It is not by chance that the Bible says: “Ask and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.” That is exactly what happened to us: the wish of our son had become a reality! It is so wonderful to be able to sit back look around and say: Home, sweet home!
Our lives have been changed by the partnership with Casa Draga Casa. We worked together with Romanian and foreign volunteers coming from many different countries, made lots of friendships, and learned to care more about other people.
It is a great thing to be helped, and to be able to help others. Every evening we pray for the people who have helped us; for the people who traveled so far to spend their vacations to work together with us. We thank them and we keep them in our hearts as friends. We hope to see them again in Romania because the house they built here, the Bacos house, is their house too.
