Wow, I can't believe that our first month of ministry has come to a close. As I write this, I am in our new home in a tiny village outside of Tirgu Mures, Romania. Today is our first official day of ministry here, so I wanted to recap the past month for you before we get started our new ministry. Here are a few things we did while serving with K Mission in Bulgaria:
Gypsy village outreach: We traveled to gypsy villages nearby Vidin (the city where we lived) and Sofia (the capitol). In the villages, we prayed over people, shared our testimonies and words of encouragement, evangelized to non-believers, sang worship music, played with the children, and preached at churches. We saw transformation in the churches and villages we visited. Pastor Kostov was impressed with how the Spirit moved in these places. He has visited these places many times over the past few years and he noticed change. Please join me in prayer for continued revival in these villages.
Orphan outreach: We visited two orphanages during our time in Bulgaria.
We visited an orphanage for disabled youth twice. This was the hardest ministry for most of my team. It was heartbreaking to see the conditions these children lived in, and even more heartbreaking to hear that this is a significant improvement from how they were previously cared for. God gave us the ability to temporarily block out the disturbing sights and smells in order to love on these kids and bring them joy. We performed puppet shows, sang and danced with the kids, played games with a parachute, balls, and bubbles, and spent time to give individuals a little love and attention. The smiles on the faces of those I met are etched in my memory and bring me joy when I reflect on them. Even though we knew we had brought the kids joy for a little while, we were a little discouraged believing that we didn't really make a difference in the orphanage, but then we heard a story from one of our roommates. He works with a woman, whose husband works at the orphanage we visited. Not knowing that Biser (our roommate) knew us, she told him about a group of Americans who visited the orphanage and now something was different there. Both the kids and the staff were changed in some way. Please pray that the changed atmosphere in this orphanage lingers and that it leads to positive changes in the care of the orphans.
The second orphanage we visited was for children ages 0-7. We spent some time in the afternoon with the 4-year-olds singing songs with the kids, performing a puppet show, and playing games. We had so much fun playing with these rugrats that we decided to return to the orphanage during the time we had between our ministry with K-Mission and our travels to Romania. We told the orphanage we would be willing to do whatever we could to best serve them, making a point of telling them how willing we were to run around and play with the kids. They gladly took us on, with the task of clearing out an overgrown sandbox for the kids. After working hard in the sun for a few hours to dig out all the weeds, we thought we could spend the rest of the day playing. Instead, they showed us two more overgrown sandboxes, much worse off than the first. We spent the rest of the afternoon and the next morning clearing out these sandboxes. We also pulled weeds to clean up the front of the orphanage and our men mowed the lawn. We were tired, sore, and had kind of a bad attitude about the work we were given, wondering what good we accomplished by pulling the weeds in three neglected sandboxes. Then as we were leaving, we saw a little boy playing in a hole in the sidewalk with a little bit of sand and dirt. A woman working at the orphanage pointed him out and told us this is why the kids needed a sandbox. Please pray for the kids at this orphanage. The staff seems caring, but it is clear from the state of the orphanage that they are in need of funds to provide for the kiddos.
Encouraging church members: We spent a lot of time with church members. They quickly became family to us. It is incredible to see how Christ unites Believers, despite language and cultural barriors. We visited church members in their homes, exchanging testimonies, prayer, and words of encouragement. This time was so precious to me. I was encouraged and inspired by the ways I saw people living out their faith, despite various forms of persecution and hardships. Besides visiting members in their homes, we had several parties during which we were able to share so much joy and delicious food with each other. We danced around like fools to worship music and played silly games that had everyone laughing. To me, it blew my mind that we could connect in these ways even though our lives look totally different and we do not speak the same language. Church members also served alongside of us when we went out into ministry and would often join us for our daily prayer and devotion time. It was so hard to leave this family, knowing that I probably will not see them again in this life, but I was comforted knowing that I am taking them with me, as we pray for each other and as I reflect on all that I learned from them. Please join me in praying for this church, that the members would continue to remain strong in faith and unity, that they would persevere through trials.
As I have done before, I'm including our travel itinerary for your amusement:
8:30am: wake up and finish up our last minute packing
10:00am: several friends from the church came by to say goodbye and bless us with delicious treats for our travels
10:30am: we take taxis to the ferry
11:10am: we get our ferry tickets, then took over an area outside to pile up our packs and wait for our ferry to leave.
1:30pm: we board the ferry!
2:20pm: after walking a few blocks from the ferry, we arrive at the train station, hot and sweaty, but relieved to have a place out of the sun to sit
3:10pm: our 3 1/2 hour train ride from Calafat to Craiova begins
6:40pm: we set up in a corner of the Craiova train station to await our next train
9:10pm: our 6 1/2 hour train ride to Razboieni begins! This was by far the nicest train we've travelled on–it even had air conditioning!
4:15am: we hop from one train to the next, for our last train ride to Tirgu Mures
6:50am: after a short 2 hr train ride, we arrive at our destination and eagerly await Pastor Zomboar's arrival and the promise of a bed to sleep in
7:20am: we meet Pastor Zomboar and his son, Christoph. Pastor Z takes a group to get groceries, while Blake, Frank, and I stand guard over our packs for an hour
8:40am: we meet Pastor Zomboar's wife! And she calls for a bus to pick us up
9:15am: we board a bus with the perfect amount of space to seat all of us and our packs
10:00am: after a beautiful drive out of Tirgu Mures that I mostly slept through, we arrive in a little village with a beautiful view of mountains in the distance and rolling hills with fields of corn and wheat and we realize that we are once again so blessed this month
We don't know exactly what our ministry will look like this month, except that it will involve visiting villages and hospitals to pray and also leading worship on Saturday nights. Please pray for God to show up in crazy ways these next three weeks and for increasing unity within our team.
