So, in case you haven’t noticed, I’m really bad at
blogging regularly. A whole month later, I’m sitting in a coffee shop in
Bucharest, Romania, trying for the billionth time to start (and finish) a blog
post about our time in Moldova. Hopefully you’ve gotten a chance to read some
of my teammates’ blogs in the meanwhile. 🙂
One of my favorite things about the race so far is how I
haven’t really heard of a lot of the places we’ve been till the week before we
head there. So, to start off, I thought I’d tell you a little bit about where
we’ve been this past month.
“Moldova?
Chisinau? Vulcanesti? Where??”
Moldova is a small-ish country (the size of the state of
Maryland) in Eastern Europe (right by Ukraine and Romania). Up till a couple
decades ago, Moldova was under communist control as part of the USSR. A lot of
that communist influence still lingers and among the older generations, you can
find people who prefer the days of communism because of the widespread poverty
in the country. It’s common for Moldovans to go abroad in search of jobs and
we’ve met several families where moms and dads leave their little ones for
months at a time to work in other countries.
Our ministry site for the month was a Pentecostal church
in southern Moldova. The town we were in, Vulcanesti, is in the middle of wine
country and is home to about 16,000 people who speak Russian (“Priviet!”). Pastor Marin and his family at New Life Church
were awesome people to get to spend the month with. They have an afternoon
program for kids (Monday – Wednesday) where they provide them with a meal and
then teach them songs and Bible stories. While we were there, we got to spend
the afternoon with those kids, teaching them about the greatness of our God. We
also visited churches in nearby villages and the guys on our team had many
opportunities to preach and lead people in worship. Our last week there, we spent
the afternoons at the park with the kids and teens who would hang out there
after school. It was cool to get opportunities to get to know them (thanks to
our baller translator, Andrei) and to share the gospel with them.
Hopefully I’ll be posting a picture blog soon with
snapshots from this past month (once I snag them from my teammates). 🙂
