It was mid-December and Rick Lewis was on his third mission trip in Moldova, traversing the former Soviet nation distributing boots and winter clothes at orphanages, when the group’s supply truck got stuck on a snowy hill in the village of Sarata-Galbena.

“It was a blizzard,” said Lewis, the municipal court administrator for the city of Colorado Springs. “There was no way we were going to get up that hill with all those shoes.”

Word spread quickly through the small town. Before Lewis, 52, and the 10 other Colorado-based missionaries with him — including his wife, Cheryl, and son, Carson — had time to panic, help arrived.

“People started coming down the road with sleds,” he said.

Twelve-year-old Carson hopped out, loaded up a sled and trudged through the storm alongside children from the orphanage.

“They’d say stuff (in Moldovan) and you’d just kind of nod and they’d just kind of laugh,” said Carson, who’s in seventh grade at Southeast Christian School in Parker. “There’s really not much difference between American kids and Moldovan kids, even though their situation is so much different.”

During the weeklong “boot mission,” organized by Texas-based Children’s Emergency Relief International (CERI), Lewis and the other missionaries distributed shoes, boots, gloves and socks to more than 1,200 children at 14 orphanages across Moldova, a landlocked country roughly the size of Maryland.

After the breakup of the former Soviet Union, money to support the country’s infrastructure and its existing social services dried up. As of 2009, it was classified by the European Parliament as the poorest country in Europe based on gross domestic product.

With a population of less than

3.6 million, the country is estimated to have more than 30,000 children living in orphanages, many in substandard conditions, according to a CERI investigation.

“CERI found that some of the children had frostbite, so they went and raised money for coal to heat the orphanages,” Lewis said. “Then, (CERI) decided to raise money for additional things, like clothing and health needs. In the past 10 years, since CERI began work, there have been major improvements in conditions.”

The recent trip to Moldova was the third in two years for Lewis. This time, adults were accompanied by five youths, who helped measure children’s feet to determine proper sizing before distributing the footwear. Students also took the opportunity to share their faith, despite the language barrier.

Gabby Moseley, 12, used cue cards given to her by an interpreter to communicate with the Moldovan children while she was at work.

“We had little cards that had different words on them,” said Gabby, a seventh-grader at Southeast Christian. “When I was putting the boots on the kids, I would say ‘Jesus loves you,’ or, ‘Does this fit fine?’ ”

Gabby was able to use her knowledge of American Sign Language when the group visited an orphanage for deaf children in the town of Calarasi.

“I was able to have kind of a real conversation with them. Some of the (words) I had to make up, but they seemed to understand it,” said Gabby, who took the sign language class as an elective at her school. “God just made his own way for me to use that.”

Some sentiments didn’t need translation, though.

When the team pulled up to the orphanage for the deaf, one child ran out and drew something in the dirt on the side of the van, Lewis recalled. It was a picture of a Christmas present.

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Contact Stephanie Earls: 636-0364 or stephanie.earls@gazette.com