Well tomorrow we are starting our journey to Moldova. We will be stopping at the Black sea. It is crazy how fast this month has gone bye. Finally when things start to become familiar and friendships start to form we move on to the next country. It’s sad but that is just a lesson to be learned. Be bold; make friends fast, so then you can spend the whole month instead of just a week getting to know each other. Since this is the first time our hosts have hosted an entire squad instead of just a couple teams, they have had a busy time of coming up with things for us to help with. So some days we have a lot of free time. But starting next month no more than 2 teams will be staying together so we will be spread out all over the country with our own contacts. This last week a puppet team from northern Romania and Norway came to the church and had shows for 3 days. This last week my team’s task was to hand out and deliver invitations to everyone around town. So every afternoon we would walk the streets and deliver letters to all the gates where we walked.
Several days ago I helped one of our translators from church dig up potatoes in his garden. He has a massive garden that they get all their vegetables from. Since he has been helping us out all month he was getting behind on his garden, so a small team went and helped. We went in the evening so it was nice working in the shade as the sun began to set. It was so great to do some physical labor. Using a half-oval shaped hoe, I started to dig through this mound of dirt discovering egg-sized potatoes. I really enjoyed doing this! It was pretty hard work but I came to the realization that this is the way of life in Romania. Everyone is very hard working to collect all their vegetables from their private gardens. Most are saved for the family and the rest are to sell. For the 1st time I really felt the impact of helping someone in this community and being useful. It is was cool to be a part of the harvest and to reap all that was sown.
For the entire month I have helped with many different projects. Many if not all I was a part of I felt like I really wasn’t making an impact. For the activities we were a part of were the “seed planting.” But when I helped with the potatoes I got to see the end result. All to often we feel like we are not making a difference but we are not always supposed to be harvesting. So it was good to be reminded of this.
Galatians 6:9 Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.
We took a hike up like 1,500 steps to the Original "Dracula's" Castle Ruins in Transylvania!
"I'm on a boat" ride around a lake after we toured the castle!
God blessed me today with getting my laptop back from a computer store. It was a simple fix and didn't cost much! Just another realization how much we take everything we have for granted until it is taken from us.
