When we arrived in Draganesti, we jumped off of the train into 3 or 4 feet of snow. We walked in a slip and slide fashion to a car and were driven to our ministry location. We were given an evening to settle in and the following day to rest before beginning our ministry. The first ministry that I signed up for was an after school program for children at the church. We found out in the morning that because of the cold weather, school had been cancelled for a couple of days and thus, so was the after school program. This meant that the people assigned to that activity would be moved over to snow shoveling.
I didn’t question how snow shoveling fit into ministry, but our contacts were nice enough to explain it to us. In this community, keeping your walkways shoveled is a respectable thing to do, so it is important for the church and the mission house to be well kept. If we take the opportunity to shovel the sidewalks and walkways of our neighbors, we give them a reason to trust and appreciate us. There is a lot of fear and lack of trust as the rate of crime in the community is increasing and the unemployment rate is 70%. There is also a language barrier that gets in our way when we’re speaking with to the locals. We learn a few phrases and do our best to use body language and be respectful of their customs, but for the most part, we need a translator. This also frees up our contacts so that they can spend more time talking to the people of the community and sharing Jesus with them in a way that we are not able to.
I was happy to help out in this way. I’m not afraid of a little hard work or even a lot of it. I like physical activities and I really don’t mind manual labor. Sometimes I have to remind myself that I have a bad neck and back and probably shouldn’t go go go as much as I do. But I figured one day of shoveling snow would be fun. Especially since I had newly acquired gloves, a scarf, a coat, and a hat. I was all set to go. My partner for this adventure was Jessica, born and raised in Florida. Her first snow experiences have been on this mission trip. She is not experienced in walking in it, let alone shoveling it.
We started shoveling and Jessica held her own like a champ! With just a moment of instruction from me, she was off and running. After removing the snow, we found an intense layer of ice. We spent much of the next two hours breaking the ice apart so that removing the snow wouldn’t make walking even more dangerous. We were able to set goals and clear out a pretty large area. I was a little sore the next day, but I would (and with the recent snowfall, I know I will) definitely do it again. I had a lot of fun and I really think it was an important part of our ministry that day! Ministry might not always look like holding babies and evangelizing, but it’s always important and a part of His plan.
