Pack Radiasseuo (the combo of Team RADIANT and Team
Perisseuo) are staying in a ministry house in Draganesti this month.
It’s been a pretty massive blessing thus far — we have
bedrooms, running water, WiFi, and an actual kitchen (mostly).
We cook dinner together every night. There is a Romanian version of Aldi’s down
the road where we buy some of the food, but Kyle and I went to another village
today with Raul, our contact, and got a few staples that aren’t at the Penny
Market — mainly peanut butter and chicken breast that looks like it wasn’t
butchered three years ago.
For the first few days here, we’ve had the evenings to
ourselves. We hang out and read our
squad’s blogs, have team time, and generally go to bed early. We’ve been doing a lot of physical labor
around the church and most of us are still on the tail end of the jet lag/4 day
travel situation, so we’ve slept veeery well so far.
Also, I love these stairs.
Look, Mom — wall words made it to Romania!
Effects of living out of a pack: everything explodes at the
first available opportunity.
The room that Amanda, Katlyn, and I have been sharing.
Living so closely in community has been really interesting
so far. We’re pretty deep in the
honeymoon phase, so there hasn’t been any real conflict among us. A few other people live in this house,
too…but I can’t figure out who…there are two teenage girls who don’t speak
English or leave their room too much and a 33-year-old man named Marcel. Also, there are apparently some young guys
who live in a little house in the backyard, and yesterday an absolutely ancient
Romanian woman with pristine white hair walked down the stairs and through the
kitchen, as if it was totally normal and we knew she had been there the entire
time. Seriously — one of my teammates,
Elizabeth, wasn’t feeling well last night and I walked outside to find this
tiny lady rubbing vapor rub on Elizabeth’s chest. I asked Elizabeth who she was and Elizabeth
was just like, “I don’t know. She
doesn’t speak English.� Ummm…good.
Draganesti (pronounced “Drag-nesh-t�) is a small,
rural village of about 12,000 people.
Most are very poor, although there are a few wealthy Gypsies in the
area — apparently the self-proclaimed king of the Gypsies is legally forced to stay in Draganesti and sword fights are not a thing of the past. Romania has a very different culture than any I’ve seen before; it
is Latin-based, so there are familiarities, but the people on the street are
very closed and suspicious of anyone they don’t know. All of the missionaries at the church are
warm and wonderful, but the strangers that we pass don’t even smile or respond
if we greet them.
(Daddy, I think they could use a new downspout system here…)
Because of this and the Gypsy presence, everything is kept
locked and tight. While I was writing
this, random kids from the street literally just walked into the house and
tried to take Kyle’s sunglasses off the table — while we were in the
kitchen. We’ve had people knock on the
windows, trying to get in or asking if they could have the trash on the
sidewalk. It’s definitely different than
what I’ve seen before. Also, there are wild dogs and chickens EVERYWHERE.
There are plenty of cars on the streets, but horse and buggy
seems a viable way of travel here. On
the drive to the bigger village today, I saw a caravan of Gypsy covered wagons,
loaded down with an impossibly huge amount of random stuff. Literally, everything from sinks to car
fenders. Anka, one of the women from the
church, told me that they collect any object with iron in it to sell.
The church has a very stunted presence in Southern Romania, and Olt County (where Pack Radiasseuo is) is the least reached within the country. It is a dark, oppressive spiritual climate; witchcraft and cult worship are still prevalent today. So far, our pack has been doing physical labor in the church, but we are going to have the opportunity to meet more missionaries and go to some house churches over the next few weeks. I’m so excited to meet the Lights of this community — these missionaries left behind families, homes, and jobs to come to Southern Romania to bring Jesus to their own people. The stories are incredible and I’m very excited to share them with you. I hope that your lives are changed through these testimonies as much as mine has been.
