Adventures WorldRace SethBarnes Sponsorship Giving

| by archiveworldraceblogs

I love Romania, absolutely love it. I am sitting in my room, with the two other ladies I am sharing it with, the sun is shining in, a light breeze and the sound of horse drawn carriages clopping by. This month started off a little strange. On our 14 hour bus ride here (which was awful) ended with an announcement that Rachel was stepping down as our team leader and Kelly was stepping up. Then, a week into the month, Ruth decides to fly home to be with her boyfriend for his last week before he deploys into Afghanistan with the Marines. So, now are team is headed up by Kelly and down to 5. All in all though, our team is doing well and taking it all in with good spirits and low expectations, how it should be. 

 Our ministry this month is the same ministry a friend of mine from my home church had for her first month, www.carlycrookston.theworldrace.org, and loved it! Raul, the head pastor, is an amazing man that is passionate about his ministry and has a heart for helping us along with our spiritual walks and helping us out with anything and everything he can. The whole ministry team here is really great and has such a heart for this ministry, it is so great to see and walk alongside of. 
Our ministry for the month is kind of a jumbled mass of options we can choose from.

– Visiting widows in nearby villages, bringing them food, company, prayers and smiles 

– After school programs with the local children 

– Various children’s programs in the city and nearby villages 

– Logistics for Raul (sending emails, managing the Facebook page, gathering photos, etc.) 

– Worship team for the church 

-Yard work and construction at the church they are building and some of their homes 

– Gardening and beekeeping at some of their homes (my favorite!) 

– Other random tasks 

I have absolutely loved working with the widows and babushkas when I have had the chance, as well as the gardening and bee keeping. Gardening is a passion of mine and, apparently, so is cute old ladies (I am recently finding out). Some of the widows are blind, but still felt our faces and knew we were beautiful. One had a broken prosthetic leg that she needed to fix in Bucharest, but didn’t have the money to get there. Until recently, she had been walking on her broken, fake leg a few miles into town every day to get water for her garden and to drink. Her son had come home for the winter though and installed plumbing to a faucet outside her home, which is such a blessing for her, I don’t know how much longer she would have been able to walk to town. Another takes care of her mother (who is around 100 years old), as well as the garden and animals, and gets hardly any sleep. She used to be wealthy, but her husband literally stabbed her in the back and left her in a pool of blood to die. So she left him and his money and lives in the hills without hardly any money and runs the house. These ladies were in tears when we showed up. Sometimes for food, but mostly just for the companionship and someone to talk to, to smile at them, to pray with them and to care about them. 

The past few days we were blessed with a trip up north to see the Carpathian mountains and Raul’s hometown. A few members from the church were going to a conference up there and invited a few of us to come with so we could help with the gas money and get to see a bit more of Romania. We went hiking the first day, hiked around a stream, explored caves, did a little bit of bouldering and saw how amazingly beautiful Romania is! We stayed at Raul’s parents’ house, who are amazing people I am a little obsessed with at the moment. His mom reminds me a bit of my family, in the fact that she was hugging and kisses all of us off the get go and by the end of is having us all call them grandma and grandpa, telling us they love us and not letting us go without bags of vegetables from their garden. They cooked us home made, traditional Romanian meals, that were so so delicious! Three of us stayed with a neighbor family that opened up their home and beds for us. Two babushkas, one about 70 and her mother, who was about 95 or something. The next day Veronica showed us around “town”, which actually meant spending about 14 hours at this historic Roman fort, while the pastor went to the conference. We met some guys and played ultimate frisbee in the park, sang a a few amazingly echoed hymns in an 1,000 year old church, had a picnic, saw a movie in the oldest movie theater (in which we were the only people there), saw a concert and walked around tons. 

Romania is a country I could see myself coming back to, but then again, there are about 6 countries on that list… so we’ll see. 

Also, I am writing a blog IN the country I am writing about!! I am going to write more than one blog for this month!! Come on, that is kind of a big deal. I am trying to be better at this and so far, so good. I might even write another blog today, we will see.
Hope you are having a wonderful day, wherever you are in the world. May God bless you! 

HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY!!