At the end of my conversation with Stefan in a Bulgarian church, he thanked me for fulfilling his life purpose of learning English and asked if there was anything he could give to me. I told him God gave him the gift of English as planned at it had nothing to do with me, but if he had any friends living in Romania to pass along their names.
I asked for his friends’ names because my small team had the ministry of “Unsung Heroes” for the whole month in Romania. Unsung Heroes consists of traveling around the country and simply relying on God to give you a place to stay and food to eat (for much more closer to ‘free’ than you feel comfortable with). The purpose is to find more contacts for the World Race to send more teams in the future. Contacts for the World Race need to be Christians or Christian Non-Profits doing great things for God and their communities (heroes)-but are simply unheard of (unsung).
Stefan was thrilled I asked and told me some of his greatest friends were missionaries in Romania: a married couple, Dana and Christian. He immediately used Facebook to connect me to Dana. Within the week my team jumped on an old European train to meet them. When we arrived in Sighisoara, a Romanian town, Dana and her husband were waiting. They arrived on the premises that we were Facebook friends with Stefan-knowing almost nothing about us, using the last of their money in their pockets to pick us up in their car and take us to live with them in Soard; a gypsy village we spent a week in. When we arrived in Soard we anticipated harsh living conditions and being dirty-which was there, but we were also greeted with the most loving family I’ve ever met. Night dance parties and talent shows with their children, family dinners and worship time; we were invited into as family, not visitors.
Dana and Christian do not have their own house, yet they pour their money into building houses for others. They live with borrowed church furniture, no running water, no bathrooms, and little food- they did not always live this way, but felt God was calling them to do so. The extra money they have, they pour into the community, this time to build a house for a recent widow with 7 children. The children and widow we visited slept on a dirt floor in a 4×5’ shack, were dirty, had fleas, and the widow spent all of her time with her sick husband the last 4 years. The children neglected because of the mother’s attention on their father’s illness. Dana had great plans of teaching them in school, establishing cleanliness, social norms and simple domestic skills- in addition to her family building the gypsy family the new house for free.
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I felt the hot sun on my back in contrast with the crisp and cold Romanian mountain air when my team was helping Dana build the house, when and started to wonder what God was wanting me there for. I reflected on how God brought me to Dana and wondered why this held significance deciding to make a point for it not to be a coincidence- a point to make this a story and to not miss out on more wonder of God.
I think there’s a point in our lives where we simply have to decide if we’re going to live a story or not. We can let life run it’s course and wonder why we’re unhappy or bored, or we can actively choose to live it out and invite God in, or more so, be invited into God’s plans. To step outside of our circumstances and make things happen.
With Dana, I learned it was equal responsibility of my own to learn from her as it was for her to share her story. Point being, I started asking questions. Every question I could think of. How God called her to be a missionary. When it started. How she found her husband. How their reliance on God became so strong and their trust so great- and she answered. Her wisdom poured into me with grace and simplicity, as if she was saying the whole time “this is easy.” Psh, What a God thing to say.
I mentioned my worries about me post-race, finding a job and whether the rest of the world would think I was a crazy person. She told me they would, and that I am crazy, but everything in God is a bit wild. She told me she learned to stop planning, because God was going to change it anyway. She said you can plan and dream, but God’s going to have better dreams than you have, and whether or not you want them to happen, they will. You can do it the easy way with no expectations and following, or the difficult way messing things up and trying to create your own messy story.
Dana and her husband Christian are the closest people to real-life disciples I’ve ever met, and I will never forget them or their family. Dana taught me to live each day waiting on God’s voice. She brought us structure to building our own faith. She taught me to wait with confidence for God to supply all of your needs…and by her life example, He does.
