Tomorrow (10-9) is my last day in Romania! So thankful for the month I have spent in this beautiful country with its even more beautiful people. I realized I haven’t posted many photos, so here are some with the stories below them!
(Above) It was our off day and we were sitting on benches outside the church to get wifi. As I scrolled through Pinterest for the first time in a month, three little boys walked over and sat right next to me. They asked me my name and after talking to them for a while, we got to play frisbee! I got to spend almost an hour with them! They were the sweetest! Since they lived in the neighborhood, I would see them almost every day as they waled to school and I walked to the church! These boys were definitely a highlight of my time in Romania.
Craiova
It was just another ministry day, I was ready to go into a small village as I wore my bright blue socks and sandals with my grey flow PJ pants and grey fleece jacket. My team and I were quite shocked when the drive took over an hour and we arrived in a city! We split up and my group had no translator. We were confused as what we should do or where we should go. I remembered that God knows what he’s doing and that I just had to wait and see how he would show up. Soon after, a Romanian from the church showed up to help us. Although he didn’t speak English, we worked well as a team. As we handed out new testaments, we ran into a girl that spoke perfect English and was a Christian. She ended up getting coffee with us!
Our team was told to prepare for children’s ministry, so we had this great plan to use finger puppets, songs, and games to tell the story of David and Goliath. It became quickly apparent to us that our plans were not going to work, as the “kids” arrived. We came outside to find several teens our age, ready for a story. We decided to not pull out the finger puppets and just told the story. This is a picture of us playing games with them! Definitely not what we expected, but we had a good time!
This month, our most frequent ministry has been passing out new testaments to nearby villages. These women, Maria and Maria, were so happy to have us pray for them. Directly after, I also got to pray for the women on the left’s husband. A minute later, they brought their other friend, Maria, to be prayed for also! Such a special time, because in this moment God showed me how he can give me words to say.
We showed up again for our second “Children’s” ministry, (feeling prepared and ready for the teens this time) and our ministry host told us he needed some help moving some logs. We went to the backyard to see how we could help. What he needed was for us to empty all the logs out of his shed, divide them into a big log and small log piles, then put the small logs back. I and a few other girls didn’t even go to children’s ministry because they needed more help with the logs. I encountered more spiders that day than I ever wanted to.
Life on the race is utterly unpredictable!
This is a picture of me on a mountain in Brasov!! I hiked up with some friends and could see the whole city! We are here for debrief after our first country.
I have learned so much this first month. My prayers will continue to be with this sweet country!
I’m so excited for what God has next. Here we come Ukraine!
