(backtracking a bit to Romania)Romania was amazing. We stayed in a beautiful house in the countryside of a town called Akatari. Our house was is in the midst of rolling green hills. Our contact was Hungarian. He has started a ministry in the nearby city of Targu Mures. He is a pastor of a small church. Our mission was to basically invite people to his church, talk to people about God, to minister in gypsy villages and to come alongside him with encouragement and prayer.
God has shown me a different side of ministering. In Ghana I felt more like I had to approach people. But, here, God showed me He can just bring people to me. I have also realized He uses you when you just walk. I don’t have to have a clear step by step plan before I step out. I can let things just happen. Freeing. My teammate Nicole and I were praying as we were beginning to walk about the city. I saw a vision of a café’s seating arrangement, but forgot about it. We continued to sit on the bench in the park and just asked God to lead us. As we were sitting a woman headed straight for us. She sat down and began to talk to us using a little English. She was hungry and looking for food. So we took her to a store and bought her some. After we parted ways, Nicole and I walked into a café to get coffee. The lady working there just opened right up and started speaking English with me, asking me what I was doing in Romania. We just clicked. As I sat down and began drinking my coffee I looked around the café. It was the same exact seating arrangement I had seen in my vision. God just showed me how natural it can be.
I later told my team about the day’s encounters. One of my teammates, Mike, told me he felt like while we literally fed the first girl who approached us in the park, the girl from the café was spiritually hungry and to feed her. Each time we came into the city, I would go to the café in hopes of seeing her. Sometimes she was there and sometimes she wasn’t. But, my city mission became about her. As the few weeks went by, I developed a relationship with her. Sharing part of my testimony here and there and just inquiring about her life. Relationship. By the time we left, I had a word for her and gave it to her. The day before we were to leave she invited me into town to shop with her and her fiancé for wedding shoes. It was incredible to have gone from just meeting her in the café to walking about the city with her and being a part of her life.
Our contact also took us throughout the city to pray for people. One day he took us to a house where a man who was probably in his 70s or 80s was sick from a stroke that had occurred just a few days earlier. He had been completely healthy his family said and then all of a sudden had a stroke. He was paralyzed on one side of his body, from his head down to his toe. He just kept looking at us, with this look of desperation in his eyes. He wanted to talk to us, he would try and open his mouth, but just mumbles came out. My heart broke for him. They translated to him that we wanted to pray for him. He gladly agreed. As soon as we gathered around his bed and placed our hands on him, he broke down sobbing. Sobbing to receive his life back. Broken because of his condition. We prayed for God to restore him back to health. Then we prayed over his wife who was broken as well for comfort, faith and endurance.
One morning as we went into town for ministry, our contact met us. He brought us a list of prayer requests, about 20. Throughout the month, I could sense burdens upon him. He doesn’t seem to have many people around him that support and encourage him. When he brought us this list, it was like he was laying it all down, saying help. Many times on this race it seems we are there to minister to our contact. It was awesome to come alongside him, have a time of intercession, carrying the burdens for him and giving them over to God. I believe God is raising up people, men, to come alongside him, with the same heart and mind. He truly is an amazing man of God.
We also went to gypsy villages. Gypsies have been stereotyped. Yes, there are gypsies who steal, but not
all do. It is sad how stereotypes are embedded in all of our cultures. They are different, but we are all different. We live in a world that judges. Judgment and believing you are right or your way is right has led to holocausts and genocides. A few people I talked to simply said, “I don’t like gypsies. I don’t trust them. They steal. I treat them differently.” I responded not all steal I’m sure. Just like us. We mess up, but God loves, forgives and remembers no more. He wipes the slate clean. I know things have been sown into the lives of gypsies by others and by themselves causing many to still steal or beg. Children have been raised to beg and to steal. It’s almost like a normal way of life for them. I pray for eyes to open, for a new way of life to be birthed, for them to know provision. I pray for love to be birthed in Romanian hearts instead of a blanket of judgment which 
covers the entire “gypsy” population. For a bridge of reconciliation between gypsies and others to be built. In the villages we shared testimonies, prayed for people and played with kids and teenagers. It was awesome. By the house we lived in, there was a gypsy village as well. Not a place we specifically went to with the purpose of ministering, but a place we walked by almost daily. In those times, we were able to just show love. They would be excited to see us and shout hi. Just showing them love and acceptance planted seeds in their lives. Just a smile can change someone’s day!
Well, that pretty much sums it up in Romania! Yipee….
