Romania has been unbelievable. All Squad month ended up being less daunting than I expected. My team spent the majority of our week (5 days), about an hour and a half away in Craiova, one of the bigger cities of Romania. Unsure what our ministry would be, we walked into a new mission house with open hands and open hearts.
Our hosts, Beni and Rodi, were native Romanians but lived in London for 5 years. Which means… they had British accents! Lucky me. I loved just hearing them speak. They were in the beginning stages of a church plant, so there were always things to do. Our ministry varied day to day, hour to hour, but everything we did, we did intentionally for the Lord.
When I say our ministry varied, I really mean it. We did everything from passing out New Testament bibles to every house, visiting an elderly woman in a nursing home that has no family, going on prayer walks, visiting the sick in the hospital, cleaning up a man’s backyard whose wife just left him, helping a widow pick grapes to sell, and holding weekly Kids Club for the Roma (gypsy) kids.
A bit of background: the Roma people are an unwanted people, disgraced by the rest of Romanians. We know them as Gypsies. When you think of Gypsies, what do you think? Thieves and liars are the first things to come to mind. That they would rather steal than work hard, that they would rather sell out their own family than be honest. A Romanian himself told me: They can’t be trusted.
Knowing what little I did about them, driving for the first time into the community was a little unsettling. I knew I’d be walking into the poorest of poor, where kids ran naked and not every meal was provided. Nonetheless, I wearily got out of the car, clutching my bag tightly, with my hair pulled tight to avoid any lice.
What started out as a cautious event, soon turned into such a joyous movement. We danced and sang to Jesus, taught them a verse from the Bible, played games (duck duck goose & freeze tag), and just had fun. It was so incredible to see children of all ages (2-12 usually), just get to be kids. The older ones couldn’t come every week because they had to help their parents work, but when they could come, they hung around the outside and stared curiously at the white Americans who were happy to roll around in the dirt.
The beautiful thing of it all, was for those few hours, they were just children. They weren’t Gypsy and we weren’t American, not thieves verses pure, not sinners against holy. It was just a group of people, all equally made in the image of God, singing and playing in the dirt.
James 2 talks about loving equally, without partiality, and I realized how far we have all fallen from this. It says, “For if a man wearing a gold ring and fine clothing comes into your assembly, and a poor man in shabby clothing also comes in, and if you pay attention to the one who wears the fine clothing and say, “You sit here in a good place,” while to the poor man you say, “You stand over there,” or “sit down at my feet,” have you not then made distinctions among yourself and become judges with evil thoughts? Listen, my beloved brothers, has not God chosen those who are poor in the world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom, which he has promised to those who love him?” (2:2-5). It goes on in verse 9 to say that “if you show partiality, you are commenting sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors”.
Pretty powerful stuff. Jesus calls us to love our neighbors as ourselves, but surely he didn’t mean thieves right? He didn’t mean the selfish and the liars surely. Except He did. And we’re failing.
If your parents are thieves, it’s not a stretch to assume that you also will steal. If your parents beat you and lie, its not far fetched that you will also grow up to be aggressive. But what if someone told you from a young age that there was another way? What if at the age of 6 years old, someone told you that there was a God in Heaven who loved you no matter what? That we should try and be good for Him, but that he won’t hit us when we mess up? That in Him, we’ll never go hungry? That with all your human imperfections, He sees you as holy, blameless, and created for more than you can imagine?
That could change the trajectory of someone’s life. What if that person grew up wanting to please God, rather than himself? He could teach his kids that, and those kids to their kids. Generations could change by the planting of seeds in young children. Southern Romania could no longer be referred to as the “graveyard for missionaries”, but the spring of life or the chosen land, all because a group of unwanted people were the catalyst.
It wouldn’t be the firs time Jesus used an unwanted group of people to be an example. If you’ve ever read stories in the Bible you know He walked with the lowliest of low. Tax collectors, men with anger issues, prostitutes, lepers, adulterers, the uneducated. Yet again, He saw them as holy, blameless, and made in the image of God.
So when I look at these small children, what do I see?
Hope.
