Those were the first words said to me by Alexe, a large Romanian man who had just finished driving half of my team from the train station to the house where we are staying in Draganesti. What an odd way to introduce yourself. Turns out that that is not only his favorite phrase but its a way to remind himself and others to make sure to live every day for the Lord.
Alexe is a missionary from central Romania working in Draganesti in the south. In addition to his normal duties, he is building a church next to his house to serve the community in his area. Unfortunately, he has a bad back and is not supposed to do hard labor, but that doesn’t always stop him. Tommy and I went out to his house Saturday morning the help him with laying a sewer pipe for the toilets in the new church.
After playing with the puppies for a while, Tommy and I started our “hour” of work. The ditch was dug except for around 6 feet or so at the end. We thought this would be a breeze. Then Alexe came over and changed that. Turns out, we needed to make the ditch about a foot deeper all the way down so it could connect to the pipe coming out of the foundation. After 3 solid hours of work, we head back home for lunch, thinking we will finish on Wednesday when we are scheduled to return.
Wednesday comes and Alexe shows up and asks once again if we are ready to die. We say we are and Tommy and I head back to his house but this time we brought Melissa and Natalie with us to help with the digging. When we get there he asks the girls if they would be willing to help his wife, Veronica, out since she is 6 months pregnant. They of course say yes. Then they learn what the task for the day is…..killing two ducks and getting them ready to cook.
Now both of the girls are pretty adventurous, but he could tell by the astounded looks on their faces that they were not ready for such as task, so he quickly said he would kill the ducks for them. He went inside and got his knife and began to sharpen it while saying “Are you ready to die?”. This time he meant it, as it was directed towards the ducks.
Melissa grabbed her camera and Natalie, the vegetarian, stayed a good twenty feet away, with a horrified look on her face as Alexe killed the ducks. The saying running around like a chicken with its head cut off is not something I understood fully until I saw two ducks flapping their wings and flopping around the yard for a good 5 minutes after having their heads removed. After they settled down Alexe and Melissa removed the feathers while Natalie took care of Alexe’s insanely curious 2 year old boy, Joshua.
In the mean time, Tommy and I worked on finishing up the ditch and almost had it done when it was time to leave. When we arrived the next day, we finished it in about an hour and laid the sewer pipes in it, then put back all the dirt we had spent so much time removing. Alexe was so happy to have the ditch done, he took our picture next to the fresh earth we just moved and said he wanted to put the picture in the bathroom with a caption of “you can use the bathroom because of their work”
Around 3 in the afternoon when the huge pile was dwindling, we all agreed we were, in fact, ready to die. We were dead tired around 4 when we moved the last of the gravel. After a short break we learned that the dirt that had been readied and compacted for the foundation was too high and needed to be lowered by several inches. After several hours of breaking up the hard soil and moving it, the sun mercifully began to set, just as the last bit of strength we had was fading. Thankfully, Veronica and Melissa had prepared a delicious duck dinner for us. It was fantastic and fresh to boot! It was not a meal I will soon forget.
It was probably one of the longest and hardest days ever, but it was very rewarding to know that I gave everything I had that day to do the Lord’s work. It was also a blessing to get to spend time with an amazing family doing God’s work with a totally different lifestyle than what I am used to.
In between working hard moving dirt, my team and I made a video for Alicia, one of my teammates as she needs to raise 3 thousand dollars by the end of the month or she will have to go home. It tells a little of her story and what she has been doing on the race. It was filmed walking down the main street in Draganesti, so its also a good way to see where I am at now.
Also, here is the link to my picture I took sightseeing in Ireland
