Yesterday was our last day of ministry. It was sad but wonderful.
I guess I should first tell you what we’ve been doing here in Romania, huh?
We have been living in Pitesti, Romania (one hour outside of Bucharest), serving with a church called Living Hope. We have been ministering, with members of the church, in a very impoverished gypsy neighborhood within Pitesti, called Razboieni. Drugs, violence, prostitution and trafficking are very prevalent in this area. The church has a partnership with the community and comes every day to minister to the children in hopes of preventing these children from falling into the sins of their parents and the surrounding area. Their hope and vision is to raise up a generation that lives and stands for Jesus in that community. It is a huge undertaking but our God is one who answers huge prayers 🙂
One thing that has really impacted me since I’ve been here working with the children is the crazy way that they love. It’s truly extravagant. They squeal and run to us as we come in the neighborhood each day, they hug us and kiss our cheeks constantly, they say “I love you” in their best English over and over again in a heavy Romanian accent, they smile ear to ear at you, communicating love in ways that need no words. And this is all on a daily basis, twice a day when we come to visit them.
Yesterday, our last day with them, they exemplified all of the above behaviors times 10. To my surprise, many of them also brought sweet little gifts to us, things to remember them by…a way to even more clearly express their love. Children in such need and poverty were willing and excited to give out of their need…A grungy stuffed animal, colored pictures, sparkly nail polish and a bangle bracelet were all eagerly handed my way from multiple different children with beaming faces. I was blown away by their sacrificial love…something I think we could all learn from.
During our time with them yesterday, we showed the children a slideshow of pictures and videos from our time with them in the past 2.5 weeks (see video below!! Video credit: Jacquelyn Hannah), played their favorite games and gave them brownies and little notes. I expected them to be sad we were leaving, but I never expected the crying fest that took place at the end of that day. Older teenagers were bawling along with the 5 year olds and clinging to any extremity of ours they could get a hold of. At one point I had 5+ crying children clinging to me and speaking in Roman-glish (like spang-lish but with Romanian…) about how they love us and don’t want us to go. We must have stood there for at least 20 minutes consoling them and loving on them after the program had ended.
The time had come when we had to leave for real. We decided it would be a good time to bust out the candy we brought and distract them from their tears. We ended up not being too successful in that…the sweetest thing was that, although they get very few sweets, many of them tried to give pieces of candy back to us as a gift. Again, I was blown away. When we finally had to leave, streams of children clung to us and insisted on walking us to our bus station.
As we watched tearful children sit on the curb and watch our bus drive away I realized something…Loving well and loving extravagantly like these children did comes with a price. It takes sacrifice and sometimes grief to give that much of yourself.
What would I sacrifice of myself in loving others? Am I selfish in my love or do I give without regard to what it costs me? Do love with only part of my heart to avoid getting hurt or do I love with all I have and risk the potential consequences?
I can’t help but reflect on the extravagant love of Christ and the extent to which He sacrificed to show us that love. Giving that kind of love comes at a cost. For Christ the cost was His very life…There is really no love that compares.
“The amazing grace of the Master, Jesus Christ, the extravagant love of God, the intimate friendship of the Holy Spirit, be with all of you.” 2 Corinthians 13:14 MSG
