This blog was written by my beloved Mother after her PVT trip to Romania. PVT is a trip that the World Race program creates for the parents so that they can see their kids on the field and experience a little of what happens on our daily lives. For both, parents and racers, it was such and amazing experience where the Lord continually showed up to transform our hearts and our family relationships. I’m sure that you will enjoy it…
ROMANIA. If I say I dedicated 5 minutes of thought to that country in the last 50 years, I´d be lying. But we travelled all the way there, nervous and scared, to meet with Alessandro on his ninth month of work around the world. It was obvious to us that he would have changed a lot, but apart from that (and the fact that we had a good chance of getting several love shampoos) we didn´t know what to expect. The christian program he is participating in is called the World Race, but that was almost all the information we had about it.
In the process of signing up for this parent/kids encounter, we even felt that we had to lie a bit (or at least exagerate some answers)… we didn´t want to be classified as not good enough to participate. Giancarlo and I are people of lots of faith but very little Church. I came fully defensive to integrate a group of almost 30 parents I didn´t know, to stay with a family I´d never heard of, getting instructions from people I knew nothing about, without the slightest idea of what they would make us do. I was also mad that after 9 months of absence, all we were getting with Nano were 5 small days (really! What´s wrong with a week since we´re all coming from so far away!). And then we get early to where we were told only to find out we still had to take an over two hour bus ride to where our kids were…. It wasn´t my most positive participation in a program, I´ll grant you that. But to see Nano, I´d go anywhere and adjust to anything!
We finally arrived at Draganesti Olt, a tiny little town lost between valleys full of sunflowers. We got off the bus and a guy came out of a building we later found out was a church, to welcome us. Suddenly the doors opened and all of our sons and daughters came out running to greet us. My excitement of that day will stay with me for a long time… it had been a very long time since I had cried like that, unconsoled, in the arms of my boy. We were together, and we still loved each other as we always have. What a blessing. Everything was going to be all right after that.
We were hosted in the houses of people from the Church the Racers were helping that month. I was extremely impressed by the way an English man welcomed us into his home, and opened his world to us, 6 total strangers he had never met, without limits or conditions whatsoever. I made a mental note to remember this now that I will have a somewhat empty house of my own. . We established a schedule to share the only bathroom we had for all of us, and got ready for what would be our routine for the next few days: an early rushed shower, leave for the Church that would be our center of operations, breakfast at 8, time with the kids (sorry, I know and understand they are NOT kids but they are for me), some kind of mission work, rest, lunch, some other kind of mission work, dinner, going around in small vans, and worship time at nights, which was my favorite part because my heart would pour out from all the collective joy. In those days I got to see Nano play the guitar and sing (when he left Costa Rica he had never held a guitar in his arms), preach like a champion in Sunday church, challenging us and making us question ourselves, and offer with bliss to anyone that came near him his biggest treasure, the one that outpours from his heart: his tremendous and enviable love for God.
The pastor of the church, Raul, is the person with more faith I have ever met. A real inspiration of commitment, and work, and a permanent smile and a certainty of perfection in everything he faces even if it was hard for me to see beyond the huge challenges he faces every day with such enormous limitations. The parents of the other Racers were just amazing, different people from different places and with different backgrounds and realities, but all sharing the same feelings for our sons and daughters, with an open heart, more or less ready for whatever was coming to us…
The days flew by. My nights were sleepless while I tried to take it all in and assume our new reality as a family. Mostly grateful for finally being able to understand and accept Nano´s new life, the huge importance of the work he is doing (which I hadn´t been able to measure), the courage it took to leave everything behind to listen to his calling and his heart, the authenticity of this new set of values he is experiencing that is so different from the one I find in the material and disastrous world I normally move in…
Three days ago we were with him in Romania. Today we are in Rome and he is in Bulgaria. In a few days we´ll be in Costa Rica and he´ll be in Albania. After the Race comes Africa, that will be his home for a couple of years, and then who knows…. That is his new life, and it´s our new life too.
I am the mother of a missionaire. Wow.
We are the parents of a missionaire. We are the parents, the sister, the grandparents, the aunts and uncles, the cousins, the friends of a missionaire. I could have never imagined. I never saw it in my future. I never received a clue that would point in that direction. I had never even met a person who became a missionaire.
I am the mother of a missionaire, and I feel nervous, and scared, but also proud and blessed, and I thank God and ask Him for protection for my beloved boy.
Today we return home, having become the parents of a missionaire, ready for this new life that changed so much, feeling peace in our hearts, ready for this uncertain but full of adventure future that, thru Nano´s eyes, and ears, and hands and feet, we will now get to live.
What a couple of beautiful wonderful kids life has given me. I can truly ask for nothing more!
