Our last week of ministry was spent with a Missionary family from Transnistria who had just planted a Baptist Church in the village of Furladen, which is where we stayed. We weren’t allowed to actually cross the border because we weren’t Moldovan citizens. We were there to help grow this new church, celebrating their first communion together the first Sunday we were there.
We got to know many of the people in this village of about 5,000, through teaching the youth English daily and picking apples one day with many other people from the community. As we piled heaping buckets of apples into the tractor trailers we began reflecting on how this felt like we were symbolically seeing the fruits of our labor from the past 11 months. It was long hard work from sun up to sun down. We’d been tilling the yard behind the church all week, so it was exciting to gather so many apples, take some fresh one’s home and make apple crisp.
It’s been a long challenging journey, but made complete with the fruit we’ve seen blossom
down the road as the months have gone bye. It’s rare to be able to see more than just seeds planted as we are only there for a few short weeks at a time. But, once and awhile the fruit blossoms while we’re there to see the harvest.
The children in the community became very precious to us in just a short week. Many would come to our English program after finishing school and receive lunch from the church. For some it seemed to be the only meal they would get for the day. But they always had apples from their parents that worked in the orchards. One single mom worked sun up to sun down and her four children took care of each other after school, the oldest taking care of the younger siblings.
As we just finished up our last week in the missions field, we’re preparing for what’s next…more details on that after Thanksgiving J We’re now in Brasov, Romania for our final debrief with the whole squad! Thinking about Thanksgiving in just a week with our family back in America it feels surreal to actually be finishing The World Race!
