Last month our squad lived in Moldova. Before the World Race, I had never even heard of Moldova, and when we left a week ago, I left a piece of my heart. It is incredible the places that God will take you. Moldova is a small country between Romania and Ukraine. It used to be a territory of the Soviet Union, so there is a large Russian presence. The national language is Romanian, but almost everyone also speaks Russian. This proved to be very helpful for our team throughout the month. My team leader, Larisa, speaks Russian.
While our team was in Romania, we found out that we would be an Unsung Heroes (UH) team for month 10, in Moldova. This meant, that instead of having a host family and contact, we would spend the entire month asking the Lord where to go and what to do. Our mission was to find new contacts for Adventures in Missions (AIM) to send future World Racers.
Driving into Moldova on the first day, we arrived in the center of Chisinau, Moldova’s capital, around 6pm. We were dropped off with the rest of our squad at the train station. Our team had nowhere to sleep that night. We were homeless. Our budget was $5 per person per night and everywhere we had looked online was too expensive. Some of our team stayed at the train station with our bags and prayed while Larisa and I went to purchase SIM cards for our phones. In the midst of finding a store, getting dinner for the team, and making phone calls with another team’s contact, Jesus provided us with a place to stay. There was a room available at the office of a student ministries organization.
When we arrived, we were surprised to be living in a place that had a nice kitchen, hot shower, and even a library with Internet. I had a feeling right then that God was going to show off this month. The office apartment was in the middle of town. We were in walking distance from almost anything we needed and a bus station that took us anywhere else we needed to go. Quickly we decided that this was where our base would be for the month.
The next day, when we woke up, we had a worship session and began to ask Jesus what he wanted our month to look like. We asked him where he wanted us to go and what he wanted us to do. We received a few words and had a few feelings, but by the end of the meeting we didn’t have any decisions yet. As we were wrapping up, a couple walked into our home to meet with the owner of the office. We began talking and quickly found out that they were American missionaries. After talking for a little bit longer, I found out that they lived about 15 minutes down the road from my home in Georgia. I went to high school with their nephew. (Talk about a small world!) They were able to give us contact information for the church they attend, along with several other churches all over the city of Chisinau.
It became apparent that Jesus wanted us to spend a few weeks in Chisinau before we went to other cities in Moldova. We made a plan to stay in Chisinau for two weeks.
But that was only just the beginning…
