where in the world am i and what have i been up to
hey guys, sorry for the lack of communication the past month. it has been crazy, which even that word is an understatement, and i realized that i haven’t shared any of that with y’all. so from here on out i will (try very hard) to post a general blog, like this one, once a week with information/updates on my current whereabouts.
sooooo if you’re more into exciting blogs (like me doing spontaneous things my parents might not approve of or me just being dumb) this isn’t that, feel free to click away. i totally understand, not offended. but if you’re the kind of person who want facts and updates on my ministry (or you’re my mother), this is the blog for you. welcome.
month 1: draganesti, romania
on september 12th (yeah kinda sorta late, my sincerest apologizes), my squad began our three day travel to romania; first with a 15 hour bus ride from gainesville, georgia to new york, then a 7 hour flight to lisbon, portugal, followed by another 4 hour flight to bucharest, romania, finished with a 2 hour train ride to draganesti. i don’t recall much from those days besides the ungodly amount of junk food i consumed and maybe the total 7 hours of sleep i got. my internal clock has never been more confused.
in draganesti, we quickly got to know the town. there was the hope church mission house, where all 40 of us lived for the month. it is a two story building with endless bunk beds, a big kitchen, one bathroom (with hot showers!!!), and a cute little backyard. right next store was the god-sent second hand shop that individually saved me and every one of my squad mates from freezing to death and the same-outfit syndrome. then a 10 minute walk down the road was profi, our local grocery store and the source of my recent nutella addiction. directly across the street was THE hope church, our ministry organization for the month (check them out: www.hoperomania.org), where our daily worship and sessions took place. if you continued down the street 5 more minutes or so, you would pass the cute little town park, a local cafe where me and many others would sit for hours downloading all the movies and music we could find, the rundown and incredibly confusing atm, and eventually, the legitimate grocery store in town, the penny market (basically the costco of our new world). and so that one street became our stomping ground for the next three weeks.
our assigned ministry for the month, as i mentioned, was with hope church, which envisions to spread the kingdom of god in olt county and surrounding counties. its pastor and our host, raul costea, started the church back in 2013. since then he’s started several outreach projects in the area like 25/5 kids club, 9,000 souls, a fishing rod not a fish, eyeglasses, afect, etc. and partnered with multiple pastors in surrounding towns. he made his intent for ministry loud and clear when he surprised us with trip to greece two days after arriving to romania, under the one strict condition that ‘if he gave us good adventure days, we would give him even better ministry in return”. so september 17, off we were on another 13 hour bus ride through romania and bulgaria down to thessaloniki, greece. though i did end up stepping on a sea urchin, we all had an amazing time snorkeling, hanging out on the beach, stuffing our faces with every european pastry imaginable, ordering gelato after every meal, and i had my very first gyro… giro.. hero.. or whatever its called.
once we got back, we hitting the ground running. the squad was broken up into our previously formed teams to target ministry work in his outreach projects. my team was assigned to work for george serban, one of raul’s pastor partners, who started a church out in stoenesti. we were his special weekend helpers for the month, which looked a little different from most of the other teams that had a specific assigned ministry project all week long. this made for a slightly confusing and spontaneous ministry schedule each week, but if i’ve learned anything so far is that you never truly know what the race has in store until you’re physically there doing it. so i will attempt now to break down our “typical week”, however, pay close attention it will get confusing.
friday’s: george would pick us up from the church around noon with a new adventure. one time, we cleaned his church: wiping the windows, sweeping the floors, and sorting through random objects. afterwards, we took to the streets to placing tracks at each house. another time, he took us to a park to evangelize and later showed us around the city.
saturday’s: again, george would pick us up, but we would bring stuff to spend the night at his church. we had a bit more of a schedule with “kid’s club” in the afternoon (which should really be called teens club, not one person there was under the age of 14) that consisted of scripture reading, testimonies, questions, and games. when that ended, it was a free for all. we did anything from street evangelize to getting food with his family to moving wood out of his backyard shed (and moving it all back in two hours later).
sunday’s: we would wake up, cook up some breakfast, and put on our sunday best. each week, we would participate in the service by singing a couple songs in english and sharing a testimony. afterwards, we would clean up and re-pack our things, and then drive back to the mission house.
monday’s: this, thankfully, was our scheduled sabbath day as a squad. we were required by leadership to do absolutely nothing, except spend some quality time with the lord. woohoo rest day, best day.
tuesday’s: our scheduled adventure day as a squad, so basically a free for all. most of us though spent it at either the local cafe getting wifi or shopping at second hand stores.
wednesday’s & thursday’s: really anything. most of time, we would be driven out to some town and left there for a couple hours to hand out new testament bibles to each house and evangelize to people on the street. one time, however, we were exclusively driven to craiova (a really really big city) to feel out the area, talk to some people, and discern if raul should build a church there in the spring. it was pretty neat if you ask me (we found a starbucks), and we all returned with a resounding ‘yes’.
ministry this past was spontaneous to say the least, but fun no doubt. october 5th, crept up on us out of nowhere and we said our goodbyes; to raul and his amazing family, george, our good friend, wifi, at the local cafe, the messy mission house, jerry, the mouse living in our bedroom, and all of our new romanian friends. and off to debrief we went.
another train or two and some buses and after couple of minutes walking, we arrived at our hostel in brasov, romania. the next 5 days were spent gathering as a squad to worship, break down the past month, rest and refill, meet up with our squad mentors from home, spend one on one time with squad leaders, eat good food, adventure throughout the beautiful city, soak up our last few moments as a whole squad, and of course, more sessions!!!!
before we all knew it, month one came to a close. we traveled up to chernivtsi, ukraine and made our separate ways as teams to our new locations for the month. it was very sad, but personally i am looking forward to what this new month holds and spending more time as a team.
and so that is all for now, i will have an update on our ukraine ministry next week. thank you all for bearing with me and my fashionably late blogs.
