This month we are living at the church we are working with, along with another family that is in need of a home. We have been so so blessed this month, in so many ways. Not only do we have a working, warm, shower with a door, but a dryer, 24/7 coffee, the most comfortable beds and a big enough room with windows! If an American stepped into our situation, they probably wouldn't think much of it, but these are the little things we have come to GREATLY appreciate over the past 11 months. Not to mention, we have the sweetest contacts. The husband left after our first week here for a Pastoral Seminar in Dallas, but we have been having a ball with his wife and 4 kids. Mariana, the wife, is constantly blessing us with dinner, sodas, doughtnuts, everything. Other women from the church have been bringing us food as well, lots of presents! Yesterday, Luida, the mom of the family living with us, made dozens of homemade paczkis, the most AMAZING doughnut I have ever had in my life!
We are helping out in lots of areas this month and staying very busy! Monday-Friday we have VBS from 10-1pm, in which I lead craft time and songs. At 2pm we have some sort of project, either weeding, painting conference rooms, going door to door or whatever else they want us to do that day. At 4pm Rachel, Laura and Megan teach English to little kids and at 6pm Kelly and I teach English to adults. In between that time, I've been training for the Chicago Half Marathon and figuring out what my plans are for after the race. I've been running about 20 miles a week now! Maybe if I stopped eating homemade paczkis I would actually lose some weight while running so much 😉
One of the harder things about this month is the language barrier. Moldova has two national languages, Romanian and Russian and both are used very often. In church we have someone preaching in one language, someone translating into the other and someone typing out the English translation through the projector. The family that lives here doesn't speak hardly any English and what they do is very choppy. One of the girls tries so hard to speak English (and wants to ALL the time) and it has been a bit of a test of our patience to listen to her and figure out what she is saying all the time. She is extremely sweet and I really do love talking to her, but sometimes the language barrier is very tough. Example, here is a note I received from her a few days ago, see if you can decipher:
"When to see they and to understand what quickly. They go in the house tranz crying I to adopt for you and Kelly, tranz time. On for little time I solid to love and to adopt for they Kelly and Amely Ray. I either for they always to remember and to miss."
Well, this is our LAST full week of ministry on the World Race, I just can't believe this chapter of my life is closing! We leave here on Monday morning for a team getaway in the capital for a night or two. Then off to Bucharest with the squad for 4 days for final debrief and then off to Italy to WWOOF on a farm in the Campania region of Southern Italy! Gosh, so much!
I pray your day is blessed and the sun is shining 🙂 Love you all so much and can't wait to come home and see everyone face to face!!
Edit// You can now support my mission trip to Argentina online! http://bit.ly/M2AsLb
