The past week or so has been amazing, hectic and concern filled.
The last few days my teammate Shannon, who has not been feeling well since we got to Romania, has spent at the hospital in Slatania, about 40 minutes from here. She was able to have one of the girls stay with her at all times, but after 4 days she is not feeling better. Today we transferred her to Bucharest where there are much better hospitals, and are hoping and praying that this will lead to her getting better soon. Please keep her in your prayers.
The building was a part of Ceausescu’s vision to make Bucharest more like Paris and there are spectacular fountains, a canal and a fake Arc de Triomphe nearby.
The rest of the week we spent with different missionary families helping them with their work and giving them encouragement. I did a great number of things including going up on a hill overlooking the nearby towns to pray for the people, trying and occasionally succeeding in matching up donated eyeglasses to people with poor vision, moving firewood, cleaning church grounds, street evangalism, visiting a lonely missionary family in a town far away, and even working on the mission house we are staying in.
One thing that will stay with me is when we went with Marian, one of the missionaries here, to make a video of a family that was squatting in an old concrete plant. There is a church in Bucharest that wanted to help them, but they wanted to see them before sending money. I forgot my camera that day, but the buildings were in ruins, except the one that they lived in and it was in poor repair. There were half shells of concrete trucks filled with cement that the workers let dry when they were angry with management. It was an otherworldly scene. It felt like a place James Bond would confront some Russian spy at and this family was trying to raise 3 kids there.
Overall the week was amazing because I got to learn so much about the missionaries here and how they are serving. One interesting note is that most of them are from northern Romania, where there is a lot more money and a lot more Christians. The rest of the country views Oltania, where we are at, as a dark and poor place, and these people have left their family and friends behind to try to bring Christ to where only .2% of the people are practicing Christians.
