So I’ve now been in Bucharest Romania for 1 week and somehow a lot has happened without a lot happening. (that sounded a lot better in my head). My last post explained the ministry of the Jubilee girl’s Home that we’d be working with. Well, yesterday was the first day we actually made it out there…as transportation and contacts fell through (to no ones fault…these things just tend to happen in 2nd and 3rd world countries). While I’ve experienced these type of hiccups on other such trips to Kenya, Sri Lanka or Mexico, it still requires a reminder to have an extra measure of patience when things don’t go as planned. In training they made a point to be fluid, not just flexible… because flexible things can still break. Sounds like something Bruce Lee said… be fluid like water; it is soft and fits into any shape, yet it is strong enough to split rock! OK, enough with the movie quotes.
But yes, the first two days- Mon and Tues, we spent at 2 different villages. The first was the village of a young man who grew up at the orphanage. We played in the hot heat with all kids – soccer, jump rope, duck duck goose… then taught them songs, someone told an interactive bible story using all the kids, then had prayer time with the kids and many of their parents.
The next day, we drove out to another village that had a small church. We pretty much rolled up to the church, then took our translators (a 12 and 18yr old girl) walking up and down the village streets announcing that we will be putting on an impromptu church event in about 30 mins. Amazingly we have about 50 people show up right on time… which meant standing room only in this small room. This somehow became a 3+ hour service with lots of singing songs in English and Romanian, 3 sermons by 3 different people, then village people going up in front to sing to all of us like they were trying out for American Idol. It was pretty cool to see people in the most remote villages in the furthest corners of the world know the same songs we sing in church back home.
Then we had a day off and went to the Parliament building that was built by the last communist ruler of Romania in 1993. It is the 2nd largest building in the world, ranking behind the pentagon. But the inside it build more like a palace, with marble floors and staircases, 40 foot silk curtains, ornate furniture and such. Many of the ball rooms and halls are now rented out for fancy parties, conferences or used for the NATO summits.
The Jubilee Girls home we visited briefly yesterday was tough at first to take in, but then my mind shifted to how we can best help and serve these women ages 25-34. about 3/4 of them have some form of mental handicaps, while others have had such terrible trauma or abuse in their past that they are extremely socially handicapped. Many of these girls remind me of the special campers I worked with at JEMS’ Mt. Hermon church camps for 3 summers. (for those of you familiar with that). Having experience with special campers certainly helped with the shell shock and gave me some ideas of how to best build relationships with these girls in 2 short weeks. However, the added language barrier will be a challenge too. The home was just taken over by new ownership who are a Christian family from Michigan, and a Christian Romanian couple. The former owners passed away recently, but they only claimed to be Christian… but they let all the girls smoke, cuss, whatever. So now the new owners are really starting from scratch and trying to undo years of bad habits and poor leadership. (at least thats what we were told).
So tomorrow for church I was selected to be the first person on our team to deliver the sermon. Lucky me! Its a new church with a cool concept of reach the unsaved people in urban areas by holding church services in a really nice movie theater at a very modern mall. The set up is literally in the theater as if oyu were watching a movie…all its missing is popcorn and soda. We went last week, and there was low attendance as it fluctuates greatly from week to week as the church struggles to build is member from scratch. But of course the pastor sent out a mass email to 200 people inviting them to come to a special program put on by “the Americans.” We’ll see… but please lift up a prayer for me that the Lord speaks through me tomorrow morning!
Other prayer requests… getting tons of mosquito bites.. and mostly on my shoulders, arms and face! …basically everything that’s exposed while sleeping. So I’m now sleeping with a mosquito net over my face! I think I will spray it with deet tonight!
-Also continued health. I had about a 24hr bout with food poisoning on Wed… wasn’t pretty, but I’m fine now! Thank God.
Until next time… La Revedere (Good-bye in Romanian)
Justin
PS- for those with facebook…some pictures have been posted! Check em out!
