So I’m sitting here in a compound in Moldova – actually, Transnistria (they’ve seceded from Moldova and are joint-ruled by Russia and the KGB (now the MGB) ). But techically it’s still a part of Moldova. I think.
Anyways. Remember that time when we were in Botswana for the month of January, and I wrote like a bajillion blogs? Yeah, I kinda never got around to the whole blog thing the entire month of February. Sorry guys! Romania kept us busy busy busy. But it was a super great month, and I want to share with you some of what happened.
At the end of January, one of our teammates, Mandy, decided to return home. So our team was down to 4 members. All the ministries for the following month had already been arranged, so we kept our team the same, even though we were down to only 4. We did add one of our lovely squad leaders, Richelle, to our team for the month. (I call her ‘lil Richie! ) Our entire squad lived together in one big house in Dragonesti-Olt, Romania. We all served with the same ministry, but each team served with a different branch. The ministry had several partners, and Hope Church was at the center of it all, with Pastor Raul coordinating things.
The ministry was really well established in the county that we were in, Olt county. They were looking to expand to the next county over, Dolj county. Our team’s ministry for the month was to take the preliminary steps in reaching out to Dolj county. The County seat was a big city called Craiova, and it was surrounding by many small villages. We spent time visiting those villages, looking for schools that would be open to having us come in the future and start up an english club. We also collected demographics of the villages, and looked for a future mission house to purchase, that would be used as a ministry base.
We also worked with Pastor Ion on the weekends, in the village of Lisa. Our team had a great time getting snowed in, in a cabin with no running water and just a propane heater. We had snowball fights with the local kiddos, and did some home visits to local friends of Pastor – some christian and some not.
So overall, it was and incredible month. God spoke to me personally in some really big ways, (blogs to come), he grew our community as a squad a whole bunch, and we had the opportunity to experience several different components of the Romanian culture.
