On the First regular day of ministry we picked up trash. We broke up into teams and walked around town to pick up trash that was on the ground in hopes of having conversations with people about why we were doing it. We went to a market to pick up trash, but not a lot of people were out since it was hot that day. We then started to walk down a side street and Ryan jumped in a ditch and got on his belly and pulled trash out. After that we went to a park to pick up trash and an older man walked up and wanted to share the story of how the park was full of kids but one day one of them broke a wrist and the park got shut down. He was happy we cleaned it up for him but said that it would be like that in 2 days. He then took us to his shop next to the park and showed us all the fences that he was making. He also had chickens, birds and a peacock. He also made the fence for the church we are working at. I believe that we showed Gods love to him in a way that impacted his life forever.
The next day my team of 7 took 200 bibles to a remote village to pass them out. We were told to place them in the fences around peoples’ yards and if someone wanted to talk to us about it they would. On the first street there was an old man sitting on the step outside his home he looked a little sad. I walked up to him and handed him a Bible. His eyes lit up and was so full of joy about getting one that all he could do was say “New Testament “ in Romanian several times. His wife came up with a look of worry but then joy that her Husband was happy. We continued though the town to pass out the rest of the bibles and came across a middle aged woman. She was thrilled to get one but and wanted us to give one to her neighbor but we ran out. In all my team passed out 196 bibles of the 200 that the 7 of us took with us. We were meant to have 150 but took 200 and used all but 4 of them. It amazed me that even though some of these people have never had a bible of their own before they were so over joyed to have God’s word in their hands. I could see God starting to move just because we were passing out bibles and could not speak their language.
We also did a sports event for the kids and youth (up to 30) in the area the next day. We first passed out paper with info on it about what we were going to be doing. Once we got to the field there were a pack of ducks so I decided to chase them into a corner but they would not go up the steps and started to hiss at me so I backed off and let them be, they then left the field. We had a few options for the kids and youth there; there were songs, games, soccer and volleyball. There was a hole in the field so I was volunteered to stand over it the whole time. So as I was standing there a Romanian kept hitting the ball for me when it got near me. We passed out toys, soap and toothbrushes and toothpaste to the kids there as well, we ran out of boys bags but they were so happy to get dolls of girls to play with.
The following day we had to mix concrete at 4pm but then 5pm came so we called Raul (our contact) and he said that he would call them. So around 5:45pm they show up and we get to work. We only had a wheelbarrow and a few shovels (not enough for the 9 guys) so we took turns mixing it and gathering the sand from outside the place where we are staying this month. It took us around 2 hours to mix 7 bags of cement to extend the driveway. We did manage to get done with our target area. Even though we did not all have something to do with what we had to work with we all took turns and had great conversations. God showed me that we have a lot to be thankful for in America in that we have big equipment to mix cement and that there are pastors out there doing this all by hand out there just to build churches and Gods kingdom.
On the last day of the week we went on face book to post about the 9000 souls project to any church facebook page that we could find https://www.facebook.com/HOPE9000souls?fref=ts . I posted to about 20 different churches. The pastor just wanted us to spread the word about his church so that is what we spent 2 hours doing. Internet is not as fast as it is in the states (for those who do not know) especially when 25 others are on it doing other things in the church.
