I only have 9 days left here in Cornesti, and I’ve found it impossible to write a blog about this place since day 2 here. I didn’t know why I suddenly had writers block. There was a lot going on both with me personally and with my squad, but times like that tend to make me write more, not less. I couldn’t figure it out until I got an email from my mom about it (more on that in a second).
There’s a team from U-squad living and working with us for our last two weeks in Cornesti. I don’t know if that’s ever happened before, but I know it does not happen often that two different squads get to work together, it’s rare for squads to even cross paths on the race…
but here we are with a team that’s been on the field for 10 months already. They’ve been to Thailand, Cambodia, Malaysia, Australia, Nepal, India, South Africa, Mozambique, Swaziland, and Ukraine…and they’ve told us that this place is the most blatant poverty they’ve seen all year, that it’s the worst poverty they’ve seen.
My momma is a brilliant woman. Her theory about my blog-writer’s block is that I’ve wanted to write something that would connect with my audience back home…
No wonder I’m having a hard time finding something to relate to home.
How do you relate to upper-middle class America when you’re living in poverty?
When human trafficking is right in front of you?
When your days are spent with children whose only family is each other, because their parents abandoned them in search of better financial opportunity in other countries?
I just walked out my front door in Suburbia, Northern Virginia on September 6th,
but my normal has already changed so much.
my parents' house in the states
my house in Moldova
It’s normal to wear exactly the same clothes for a week (or longer) straight.
It’s normal to wash my hair maybe once a week…or to wash it outside with freezing cold water from a hose on the farm while people are building a chicken coop to my left and tilling a field to my right.
It’s normal to have a strict “don’t ask, don’t tell” relationship with whatever’s on my dinner plate.
It’s normal to have to put on about 4 layers of clothing just to go to the bathroom at night (because you have to walk about 30 feet in 30 degrees to get to the “bathroom”).
It’s normal to be asked to lead worship with exactly zero notice.
It’s normal to wonder if the “chicken” (you hope it’s really chicken) you’re eating for lunch is the same chicken you fed this morning.
It’s normal to see the two puppies who live at your house playing with a horse leg as a chew toy, hoof still attached.
It’s normal to shower at the “sauna” that you’re pretty sure is really a strip club.
It’s normal to hike 30 minutes up a mountain with 4 other girls, your Bible, your journal, and your iPod to try to find some “alone” time.
It’s normal to squeal with excitement when you discover that your entire dinner is butter beans (and not mystery meat).
It’s normal to wake up to flies dive-bombing you in the face every morning.
It’s normal for people who love you dearly to look you directly in the eye and call out things about your personality that are seriously ugly.
It’s normal to spend my afternoons playing with orphans who are locked in a gated shelter every night to actively protect them from traffickers.
It’s normal for my contacts and host family to lavish gifts of food and snacks on me while I watch their kids go hungry.
Bri, one of my squadmates, braiding Natasha's hair.
In the words of one of our hosts, Natasha, a 23-year-old wife and mother:
“Life is short; we live for Jesus, we work for Jesus…”
“It’s hard here, but we work for Jesus.”
The community here has made the poorest country in Europe, one of the most impoverished places in the world, feel absolutely like home, and has taught me that community is infinitely more important and more valuable than even the finest amenities.
