Gypsy Love: The Little Things, the Beautiful Things

Here’s a rundown of our ministry in Romania:

Its been really diverse!  Relationship building, street evangelism and passing out flyers that are invitations to church, visiting gypsy villages, performing dramas and playing songs for kids. We’ve worked with kids a lot and its been great. They’re so enthusiastic and fun. Playing games with them is always a riot too. “Boom Chicka Boom” is always a big hit. Remind me to show you sometime.  We’re also involved in a local church that is led by our Hungarian Pastor Zsomby (he’s our main ministry contact) goes for about three hours every Saturday night. But before church we arrive two hours early for prayer and intercession for the service. We pray for the people who we handed out flyers to and that they will come.  For the service they usually get us to lead 6-8 worship songs (which is usually my job on the team) and then we have 5-6 people from our team share testimonies.  After that, the pastor gives his message which my lovely teammate Stacy Povian would translate for us from Romanian to English.  On Tuesdays, the girls on our team lead a women’s Bible study at the church. On Sunday we go to the Hungarian church just down the road. The pastor of that church is a lady named Noime and she actually owns the house we’ve been staying in. So after church some of us usually go to work with the youth group.

We’re pretty busy but its great and we love it. 

You know what else I love?

 

 

There’s this gypsy village we’ve
been going to visit once a week for the past two weeks and there is this
ADORABLE little boy named Joseph and he is such a honey! He LOVES to
give hugs. Well, its so cute cause you’ll
pick him up, he’ll hug you forever, then lean back to look at you’re
face, sigh, then give you the biggest smile of your life, his amazing hazel eyes light up, he pulls his arms close to his chest, almost as if
he’s charging up, gives a squeal of delight that is pure happiness,
then his arms rocket forward and wrap around your neck as he launches
into giving you another huge hug. This may happen several times in one
hug holding. Its incredible. He just loves to give hugs! He’s also a pretty good dancer too. He made us laugh so much!

Gypsies are the outcasts of Romania. A lot of people look down on them
and despise them.  So the fact that a bunch of North American’s would
come halfway around the world to spend time with them is a huge deal to
them. The kids are so desperate for love and acceptance.  They hug us and
hold onto us like we mean the world to them. They just don’t want to
let go and I don’t think I want them to either. I wish I could take
them all with me!

 

There was this girl named Alexandra that was basically glued to my hip all evening during one of our visits and she kept wanting to take pictures of  us together.  She hugged me and then completely surprised me by turning to kiss me on the cheek. My heart completely melted. She then made some hand motions and at first I couldn’t understand what she wanted. She’d point at the camera, at me and then her cheek. I finally figured out that now she wanted to have a picture of me kissing her on the cheek. I felt a little awkward, to be honest, posing this way for a photo, but she was so persistent and excited about it. So we took the photo and she absolutely loved it. So did I.  It meant so much to her and that made it all worth it. Its not like it was even hard to do. Its incredible how the littlest things can mean the most.  They also  turn out to be the most beautiful things too.

           

 

I’m going to look for more of the little things. How about you?

 

                                    

                                          (I love them.)