I was going to give
Robi a New Testament in Romanian. I had been thinking about him all
week and was looking forward to seeing him. When we got to the gypsy
village he wasn’t there. Where was he? I though, upset and
confused. I sat restless and dejected as the rest of the group
interacted with the kids, as they sang songs and played games. This
would be a very long hour if Robi didn’t come.
He did come, about
10 minutes later. He had a cheap mp3 player and a pair of headphones
that were actually two pairs of headphones spliced together, half
black and half white, with tape because they broke. His mp3 player
kept running losing power and turning off in the middle of songs
because he only had two old batteries. He offered me one of the
headphones and we listened to his music together, each sharing one
ear bud.
Later I gave him
the New Testament. In the cover I wrote some chapters of Mathew I
thought he would like, Matthew 10 because it’s full of excitement and
Kingdom and the end of Matthew 11, where Jesus proclaims rest for the
weary. Because he’s poor. He thanked me quietly. I wondered if I
shouldn’t have given it to him because he acted awkward after.
As I was leaving I
asked him to write down the names of some of the bands we’d listened
to together. I handed him my notebook and pen, but he looked at me
embarrassed and said something. Then he found a girl and asked her
to write the name for him.
It was then that I
realized he couldn’t read.
I was upset. I
felt like I had given him something he couldn’t even use. I thought
I had embarrassed him. I wish I could have just talked to him about
it, or even, at my most ambitious, spent more time with him in this
village and taught him to read.
But I couldn’t.
The bus was leaving. I would never see him again.
