Sponsor day blogs for two of our first days here in the city of Draganesti, Romania.
November 10th was our first full ministry day here in Romania but it wasn’t a standard ministry day. A lot of the day was an orientation at the church where we introduced ourselves and learned more about our ministry host church and what they are doing in the community. This ministry is very established and is doing great work in this city and the surrounding area.
After learning more about the ministry we were given a schedule for what each day will look like. Our normal schedule will be…
9-10: practical work around the church
10-10:30: worship
10:30-11:30: intercessory prayer
11:30-12: homework assignment
12-2: lunch break
2-6: ministry in the surrounding area with a long term missionary
This month is all squad month so all of us are together at one ministry location but we are still split up into our teams for that 2-6 time frame. My team is going to be working on a variety of things in this time throughout this month including church planting, street evangelism, children’s ministry, encouraging ministry partners, and teaching english. After we went through all of this we went grocery shopping, had dinner and enjoyed a relaxing night.
November 10th was a day of excitement as we look forward to the work that is to come. Thank you to Laurie Collins for sponsoring this day!
November 12th was our first rest day. In order for us all to not be burned out from all the work we will be doing we do ministry 5 days a week and have a rest day on Sundays and adventure days on Mondays. Personally, I took advantage of my rest day sleeping in until 10:30. After having breakfast we went grocery shopping mainly to get more water. The water here is not safe to drink. It’s a combination of both the potential bacteria but also the minerals. We ended up getting nine 5L jugs of water which will last us probably the next 3-4 days. (I’m not very good at drinking water so on November 11th a squad mate and I challenged ourselves to drink a 5L jug ourselves throughout the day. Water here isn’t in short supply and it is very affordable, about $0.50 so we figured why not? Stay tuned for that vlog).
After grocery shopping we had lunch and then a few of us spent some time petting our neighbors puppies who are literal furballs. After that some of us went to find wifi. It has been a struggle since we got here to get connected. At wifi I was able to catch up on treasurer work and catch up with my parents.
Then we went home and had a squad dinner that was amazing. Chili mac n cheese is something that I have to learn how to make some point soon. After dinner we had a squad worship/prayer session. Though we have all had excitement about ministry here a lot of us have felt a spiritual darkness in this place. To add some context we have been told that recently their was a witch conference. 100 witches showed up. The darkness here is real. We have had some of our squadmates get really sick and 1 is actually in the hospital getting healthy as I write this. The worship session was so refreshing and got us all amped up to take on any challenges we face as we all continue to lean on God and push through the tough circumstances that keep on arising. At the end of the day God is always good and He has the strength to bring us through the tough times.
Thank you to John and Rosene Miller for sponsoring November 14th. It was a day of both rest and recognition of our need for consistent dependence on the one who has already conquered all of the challenges we will ever face.
For more information about the ministry we are partnering with you can visit their website here.
Stay tuned for more updates and if you have interest in sponsoring a day yourself and partnering with me in that way that would be awesome! On whatever days are sponsored I will write a blog about that day so whoever sponsored that day will know how their partnership with me has helped fund my ability to serve God here impact the community I’m a part of on that date. I will try my best to post it soon after the day occurs. The average cost of this trip breaks down to equaling about $50 a day. If you would like to partner with me through donation and sponsor a day by submitting a $50 donation, you can do so by donating here on this blog and then click on this link
https://www.timetosignup.com/jonathansworldrace/sheet/70611/
and choose the day you’d like to sponsor. If you have already donated and never picked a day(s) feel free to add yourself into the calendar as well!
