When we found out that the snow was preventing us from really being able to start any work here, we of course welcomed the opportunity for a relatively relaxed couple of weeks, but we also wanted to find out what we could so that we were making the most of the time here.
A large part of our time has been chopping wood for the fire. Our two houses and Mihai’s, our contact, house are heated by wood furnaces, so we need to make sure there is plenty of chopped wood available and ready to go.
We need to add to the fire every few hours which means making sure it’s checked often. This also includes a 3.30am rota for checking our two houses…
We had church yesterday, a very small congregation but we were able to be a big part of the service by singing some songs, sharing a word and giving a couple of testimonies.
But one other thing we have been glad to do is go and get to know one of the elderly ladies in the community – a committed believer, 90 years old, named Marishca. We visited her on Friday evening and then we visited her with a couple of the church folk after the service yesterday morning.
She is a lovely old lady who has lived in this town her entire life. Her husband died 22 years old and she has four children, but she has come from some terrible circumstances before. She told us of a time as a young girl when there was nothing available for heating and how she would have to go out by the cows and warm herself using cow pat. She told us of being married at 16 to a man who was several years older than her and had had three wives previously already. She told us of having been a slave, and she told us of how she had come to a saving knowledge of Jesus. She told us of how now she loves to serve people and Mihai shared with us how it’s not unusual for her to insist that anyone who visits her have some of her food, even though it usually means she has nothing to eat. He said she can get by on a slice of bread and a glass of milk for an entire day.
She is a sweet lady and she gets out her hymnal when we are there and sings to us some Romanian worship songs, occasionally we might hear a tune we recognise and then we’ll sing along the English verses with her Romanian verses. We also sing some of the hymns we know together and it brings a tear to her eyes.
