Castoffs Give Nashville Man Direction For Life

Castoffs give Nashville man direction for life
Troubled early years were training for working with Romanian orphans

By TIM GHIANNI
Senior Writer
Faith in Action

Corey Burba's conquest of his demons — the whisky, drugs and hatred of God that stole his Nashville youth — makes it easy for him to relate to the orphans who are cast onto Romania's streets, selling their bodies and huffing glue.

The fact that he spent 9/11 comforting many of them amid Manhattan's smoky terror drew him even closer to the fragile outcasts.

"They were scared," says Corey, who had gone to New York as a volunteer with Mt. Juliet-based Small World, an agency that deals with international orphans and adoptions. "Their first day in America and everything is supposed to be wonderful and all of the sudden buildings are on fire and it's a war zone."

Now 29, Corey has expanded beyond comforting the orphans. He and his wife, Diana, a native Romanian, use the Bible to deliver direction to lost children in that tragic land.

The 9/11 experience sparked a passion, a direction Corey had been missing. The 20 kids from Bucharest were in the U.S. for temporary reprieves from life sentences in a land where 100,000 orphans are warehoused in squalid facilities before being cast out to fend for themselves.

Corey's mother, Susan Ruby, at the time a Small World employee, had enlisted her son to go with her to New York to pick up the kids and take them to a three-week camp in South Carolina.

Bucharest has the dark distinction of being the pedophiles' capital of Europe, where male and female orphanage "graduates" sell their bodies and lose their souls in glue-inhaled hazes. "Many orphans are taken away to other countries and become part of pedophilia rings, the sex slave trade and are heavily involved in prostitution," Corey says.

Children usually are abandoned because of dirt-floored poverty. International adoption was an "out" until Romania ended such programs for political reasons.

Now, remedies must be found within the nation's borders. That's where Corey and his wife come in. "We are working to prevent people from abandoning their children so that a child never winds up on the streets using drugs and prostituting themselves."

They seek out Romanian families for abandoned babies. They also work with orphanage children, providing spiritual and material reinforcement through Bible study and school supplies.

Corey also works the streets, guiding the sewer-dwelling discards from the darkness. "Because of my past, I am able to very closely connect to the orphans," he says, reflecting on his teenage years. "I did a lot of illegal things and somehow, by the grace of God, I was never caught. "I had serious problems with alcohol and drug dependency. I tried all kinds of things, but I always preferred alcohol and marijuana.... I was quite fond of whisky."

Stoned or absent, he "never passed a single class" while attending McGavock High School, later getting his GED. "Because my mother raised us in the church... I always believed in God. I hated him, however, because I felt that everything bad that had happened in my life was his fault.… By the time I was 18, I was a mess and knew if I didn't get some help, I would probably kill myself."

Along came Jesus: "I was saved when I was 18." But his woes didn't end. Injuries from an auto accident when he was 23 made it difficult for him to work, leading to a depression his mom was trying to combat by inviting him on that New York mission.

Bin Laden provided a terrifying introduction to the U.S. for the orphans, but Corey was struck by their more terrified departures. "When we took them back to the airport, they were crying and begging us not to send them back. I had to find out what was so bad in Romania, what it was that they didn't want to go back to. "I began learning all I could about Romania and the problem with the orphans…. It became clear that I had to go to Romania."

After visiting the country, he returned to Nashville to establish Romanian Orphan Ministries Inc., a non-profit to fund his programs. Then he returned "home" to the Balkan land and a life that belongs to the kids he and Diana try to save daily.

He realizes the haze and hate of his youth all was a part of God's training for him. "This was his plan for me all along."