So we have finished our second week here in Romania which is our first full week of ministry. This week was the most relaxing week of the race so far which is both a good and a bad thing. We got the week going early monday as a container filled with junk arrived at 7 am. All the guys and many of the girls helped unload the container which was filled with useful stuff (couches, clothes, furniture) and junk such as broken copiers and refrigirators. This took us working until about lunch time as we also saw the kids who were camping here last weekend off as their camp ended on Monday. Our contacts here were very thankful we unloaded the container so quickly, so that was very reassuring but it wasn’t that hard of a job.
On Tuesday and Wednesday a van from the camp went out into the village which is filled with mostly Gypsies and brought kids back to the camp to play. We played with the kids for a couple of hours in the morning which was a lot of fun. We also taught arts and crafts, fed the kids lunch and acted out 2 Bible Stories. I played the part of Daniel in the Lion’s Den one day and Noah for the Noah’s ark story the next day. Our camp kind of ran like a mini VBS. It was tough to share our faith with the kids because they didn’t speak English and our contacts here were running around attending to the chaos that the camp was under. But we were able to love on the least of these with these kids as many of them are orphans who get kicked out of the orphanage for the summer and are sent back to their homes in which they are abused and unwanted. Being able to love on these kids is an incredible blessing.
Wednesday after the kids left, Chad, Tom, Mary and I went into downtown to try and evangelize to the Romanian people. We were not successful in our evangelism efforts as most everyone was busy running to and from work to talk, but we were able to pray with some homeless people and drug addicts who were hanging out outside the orthodox church. It was great to just let them know that God recognizes and cares for them even if the people professing his name pass by them everyday without even looking at them.
Thursday we had to reorganize the huge garage at the camp which was an all day task. Because there was so much work to do, the kids from the village were not able to come which was disappointing. I believe we helped out our contacts here greatly as they need stuff out of the garage everyday but it was nearly impossible to get anything because everything was so disorganized, with the man power we were able to knock out this project in a day and hopefully it will save our contact quite a few headaches and time in the future.
I’m not sure what next week will look like, we have some young adults coming in from Ireland, kind of coincidintal being that Ireland is our next country, but I have no idea if we will be working around the camp or traveling into the city to evangelize. Please pray that our team will seek after God more boldly and show his love through proclaiming Jesus’ name to everyone we meet.
