Update from Oradea, Romania.
60ish hours and 4 planes later we arrived to Romania on a cold, drizzly night. Arriving in Romania was like arriving back into the modern world where everything looked clean, taxis don’t take more passengers than seatbelts, and hot showers and beds are normal things.
Contrasted to Central America where the ground is your trashcan, busses and taxis cram as many people as humanly possible – your nose often times ends up in someone’s armpit, and cold showers and sleeping on the ground are normal things.
We stayed in the capital city of Bucharest, Romania at a hostel that night and then left the next evening by an overnight train to our ministry location of Oradea, Romania. Oradea is in the northern part of Romania 7 miles from the border of Hungary. My first impression of Romania is that no one smiles here. Most people keep to themselves, but if you do something they don’t like –they will tell you.
After 12 hours of barely sleeping on the train, we couldn’t believe our eyes when we walked into the ministry house that we’d be staying at. Tables, Couches, beds, hot showers, a huge kitchen –these were things we’d gone without for 3 months. The ministry house is on a dairy farm outside the city, so we are surrounded by cows and beautiful farm land.
Our contact began to tell us a little about the ministry. Caminul Felix started 20 years ago and they began building houses in a little community and filling them with a husband and a wife and 12-15 orphans of all ages. Their desire was to move away from building huge orphanages and instead implementing a family style home for the orphans. They have two villages here with 10-15 houses in each one. Our ministry this month would be construction. We’d be working on a new home just down the hill from our house.
I have to admit, when I first heard that we’d be working in construction and not with people, I was a little disappointed. I’m a very relational person; I love meeting and developing relationships with people. And from the looks of it, this month would be a little isolated.
But that wasn’t the case at all, after the first week we were invited by some of the older formally orphans to go their church for a youth/college service. The church is full of young people around our age and the worship team reminded me of a mini Romanian Hillsong cover band. I met a girl my age named Mariah who lives in one of the Caminul Felix houses and we instantly became friends. They invited us that week to attend their youth conference where 500 youth/college aged people from all over Romania come.
So during the day we would work construction down at the house and during the evenings we went to the conference. The conference was mainly in English because 2 of the main speakers flew in from Atlanta and Chicago. I remember looking around the conference one night during worship and seeing 500 hundred Romanian youth worshiping God with all their hearts and God spoke to me that these youth were going to change their nation. No one left that conference the same.
Romania hasn't been at all what I expected…it's better!
I'm currently working on another blog with a little more details, so you'll be hearing again from me soon!
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