The last weeks on the Race and the transition home were busy, wifi was slow, and my technological devices were full of data.
The last thing I wrote on my blog had to do with wondering why I was in Romania.
I can tell you now!
Out of the 11 months on the Race, Romania was the month in which I grew the most spiritually. It was also where I learned to serve church leadership and submit to someone else’s vision. It was where I functioned out of patience for my squad, that was God’s and not my own. And it was where I experienced a church community that my heart fit into for the first time.
Who: Raul and Anna Costea, pastors of the Baptist church
What: I and 3 others were the personal assistants to Raul. Other squad mates did evangelism on the streets, kids club, village preaching.
Where: Draganesti-Olt (Oltena), southern Romania.
When: Month 10, June 2014
Why: Racers to provide prayer support and man power for ministry to spread the love of God to the people
Living Situation: The whole squad lived in one house with 3 toilets, 3 showers, 2 bathroom sinks, 1 kitchen sink, 1 small oven, 4 small stove tops. We were prepared to tent, but instead because our squad was small, we were all able to fit into 5 rooms, on the floor, or stacked on shelving-style bunk beds (3 high!). It rained some and so I was very thankful for shelter!
I found out about the Race by coming across Jeff Goins’ blog and then book “Wrecked: When a Broken World Slams into your Comfortable Life”. In his book, he talks about how he valued travel and personal growth, but that he lived his life transiently moving from place to place. He explained how God asked him to commit to a place, commit to a vision for the Church (the Church being people, and not a particular building or denomination, in this use of the word).
Commitment. Staying. Helping. Helping someone else achieve their vision. Serving. Wholeheartedly.
Romania is where I was about to submit to the vision for Pastor Raul and Anna’s church, to help day after day, to work towards their vision. I say this heavily, because I had to pray through a lot of personality differences, petty frustrations (thanks to spiritual warfare), and a general apathy. And it was hard.
My daily schedule looked like:
0545-0730 Get up before everyone else to read my Bible and make coffee.
0730-0900 Remain at kitchen table to talk with everyone as they came and went for breakfast. I cherished the mornings because I knew my time with my squad was coming to an end.
1000-1200 Squad intercessory prayer at the Church. Raul taught us about strategic prayer through local, national, and international needs.
1200-1300 Lunch. (Actually means, blitz grocery shopping for that evening if you were on for cooking dinner for your team of 7).
1300-1700 Office work with Raul. Read, inform Raul, and paraphrase his responses into proper english for emails. Manage social media sites and continue networking. Design and print church handouts. Manage his appointments and schedule. And always always always, there would be great conversation and questions from Raul to teach about God and help us to grow spiritually.
1800 Do Insanity work-out if it’s not raining.
Evening: Prepare and cook dinner as 5 separate teams in that small kitchen with limited equipment. Sometimes we’d eat at 1800, sometimes we’d eat at 2130, just depends on who needs the oven etc…. Team time. Hang out with whoever. Had some awesome chats, life changing chats. Amazing what can come out of living with people who have moved from strangers to each having a special place in your heart.
To touch on spiritual warfare:
This is not a new concept for me, but it was for a lot of my squad mates. We learned about it collectively at training camp in July 2013.
I personally had friends in high school do a 2 week mission trip to Romania, and I remember them distinctly saying that Romania was “heavy”.
Racers have a web page we can consult for information from previous Racers regarding any Race location and any kind of topic like safety, transportation, visas, etc… When we looked into this location’s tips, we were warned about previous Racers having had dead rats thrown at them by local kids. When we drove in on the bus (and we stood out), I was given the middle finger by a teenage girl, and a teenage boy did an inappropriate gesture at us. I had just seen Romanian country side for the first time (rolling hills and wild flowers), and the towns looked quaint and peaceful with the older generation talking on any sitting surface between their homes, and I was praying and asking God to give me a heart for these people. And so, receiving this kind of welcome really bruised me somehow.
Throughout the month, a lot of us weren’t sleeping soundly, we each seemed to feel a general sense of apathy, and were very easily annoyed by the Romanian people, culture, or each other.
What I learned from being in Romania about spiritual warfare, is that it doesn’t always look like how you would expect – someone getting a severe injury or illness (which did happen to one of my squadmates and she needed to go home early because of it), but spiritual warfare can also take a pestering, nagging, annoying, or a heckling kind of angle. I know it was spiritual warfare because I didn’t feel like that going into Romania, or leaving Romania, nor did my squadmates collectively. I know it was spiritual warfare because we prayed about it, through it, and God helped us over come it and this opened up a lot of incredible learning and growth for me personally.
I believe in the spiritual because I believe that humans are made of spirit, soul, and body. We can all agree on the body at least, and we can see the physical world we live in. But bodies aren’t just methods of transport or devices to execute tasks in, we are ALIVE. We breathe, we feel, we have personality, opinions, and dreams, and this is what I call the soul. The spirit is the miracle of life to me, it’s what Genesis 2:7 says: “Then the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being.” Incredible eh?
My month consisted of DOING LIFE alongside Raul and Anna, their family, their church, their community, and in their culture. I have so much respect for them because I saw them handle stress, handle a large workload, handle the personal needs of their community, love and care and teach us Racers, all the while keeping God as their helper, their compass, their source of compassion, patience, gentleness, and love.
They then took their own vehicles to caravan all of us 15 hrs across the borders of Romania, Serbia, Bulgaria, Macedonia, and finally into Albania, to pass us off to our next contact for the month of July.
That evening Raul baptized Jenny in the Adriatic Sea, and it was an evening I will absolutely never forget. She was glowing, ready, radiant, and IN LOVE WITH HER MAKER!!! And in Romanian baptism tradition, after the dunk, we dove into the water too!
Raul and Anna are warriors for the Kingdom and lovers of people. Pray for them. They live in what is deemed “the missionary graveyard”, as southern Romania is a very unreached people group with the real Truth and Hope of Jesus Christ who came to Earth to put skin on, died in order to take the penalty of every single sin of every single person, and then to resurrect and return to Heaven to conquer the strongest tactic of Satan – death. It’s also deemed “the missionary graveyard” because it’s known to be a place of burn-out, where missionaries and their families (present or not) get sick or injured, or the discouragement of lack of change plays on mental health. Because of Jesus Raul and Anna have an incredible marriage, an incredible family, an incredible purpose, and are living an incredible story. I am honoured to be a part of it.
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