We walked into the country of Romania wondering what God had for us. He had made it clear that we were purposefully in this country. But after some days of visiting the highschool and eating lovely snacks and enjoying spending time with new friends we began to question. Is this all? Did we come to visit this country just to make some new friends?
We woke up everyday not really knowing what we would do during the day. But each day God provided. This particular morning we discovered we were going to an orphanage. So we got up, got all pretty (I mean make-up and everything), put on our ‘nice’ clothes (for World Race language this just means they didn’t have any holes and were fairly clean) and walked out the door.
When we got to the orphanage, we found that we would be needed for some construction work. (SEE ya, nice clothes) So like any World Racer does, we adjusted our expectations and got ready to work. ‘You want us to sand?- ABSOLUTELY!’, ‘oh, what’s that you say, you’d like some painting to happen too?- OF COURSE!’ ‘and spackling too?- well, we don’t know how to do that but once you teach us we will so, YES PLEASE!’
Fortunately they offered us these incredible orange coats that had been donated to the children but were approximately eighty thousand sizes too big for them. We donned our attractive outerwear and got right down to business. We looked like this when we started…
… and we looked like this when we were done with the day!
As the day continued we soon found that our coming to this house had been an answer to prayers they had been praying for a while. When the house was finished it would be used as a home for the five children that were with the orphanage. The goal was to finish the house by November 1st. We were two weeks away from that date and they still needed lots of painting to be done, floors to be installed, and ceilings to go in. And they only had TWO men working consistently on it.
Noel
and Eliseo
You have to know that World Racers are KNOWN for coming into a situation and, like vultures, eating and consuming almost everything put before us.
HOWEVER, we got to see this phenomenon put in reverse as we started to work on the house. The seven of us came with willing hands. We knew we were not professionals but we wanted to help and we found that our help was needed.
We sang our way through sanding
We sang our way through sanding
painting
spackeling
mixing and pouring cement for the floors
installing ‘wood’ floors
and yard work
Until we came to the end of our short time there. When we left all they needed to do was install the toilets and shower stalls. These would be fairly simple in comparison to everything they had needed to do when we started two weeks before.
WOW! Thank you God for providing everything that we needed. Willing hands for the house and a purpose for our 3 weeks in Romania.
