I just want to start this blog post off with saying I am sorry for not posting a blog every week, wifi is hard to come by. Believe me it sucks not feeling like I can communicate to you guys all the time. Just remember to be patient with me and that I am still alive.
One morning before ministry, Raul was talking about the culture of Romania and how when he is at Hope church every morning he hears outside the window parents cursing their kids saying “I give you to satan”. He says that this is how all people that aren’t saved in Romania are like. Which is a lot because the southern part of Romania, which is where we are, has about 17% believers.
Could you just imagine what it would be like to be cursed and given fear and darkness all day everyday? By people that are suppose to be your family?
So as you can imagine, this really resonated with me. It instantly made me want to get up out of my seat and give kisses to every child I saw. I couldn’t imagine going to sleep in my house every night thinking that I have no worth and that nobody cares for me!
After this, my squad got sent out to put new testaments in mailboxes and to talk to people outside their houses. While we were on our way to the village, my team prayed for Gods armor and peace because we didn’t want any bad spirits to stop us from reaching someone in need. My thoughts at this point were happiness and at peace with what was going to happen in the day.
When we got there two older ladies were standing on the other side of where we parked and just kept on staring at us like they knew who we were. So of course, when we all got out of the van I started to wave at them smiling as big as I could because I was just to darn excited for what was about to happen. My group was trying to figure out what was happening because most of the time when you are on the world race you don’t know exactly whats happening until you are doing it. After waving multiple times to these ladies, they came over to us. One of them gave a couple of us some peach like fruit but the other one just came over, grabbed me, hugged me and gave me multiple kisses on each of my checks. I was kind of taken back and didn’t know what to do.
Let me backtrack a second and say that the people of Dragnesti- Olt are pretty nice but after Raul’s talk that morning I just wasn’t expecting that. I guess you could say that the Lord was watching over me.
As the kisses started to stop I had a conversation with the lady and it ended in with me saying “can I pray for you?”
she said “yes”
so I asked “what for?”
she responded with “ I am very lonely my husband died about four years ago so I don’t have anyone to talk to and I am getting old so my body hurts every day I wake up.”
After she said this I instantly thought to say that Jesus wants to talk to you! Do you have a relationship with him? But before i could get it out of my mouth we had to go. So I just hugged her once again and said “Bye.”
I know that I missed that opportunity so I just prayed over her body and her life.
A couple days after this my team went to do ministry with another host, George. We got to hand out tracks, they tell the gospel, mainly putting them in peoples mailboxes. We put a lot of things in mailboxes apparently. Anyways, we were with George’s daughter, Sara because she can translate and she knows were to go in this town. Right as we started their was a older lady sitting outside of her house. So we started a conversation a lot like the one I had with the other lady and at the end I asked if I could hug her and of course she said yes. Right as I leaned in she laid multiple kisses on me to.
I guess older ladies in Romanian culture give kisses to show their affection. But more than this the Lord was teaching me that even though these people my not see what true love is, He still shines, his love STILL reigns over the universe and even in the midst of all the hurt these people see the Lord keeps on showing me how much he loves me. Even if it’s through a couple of beautiful wrinkled kisses.
