April 13, 2013
Family and Friends,
First off I want to apologize for the delay in writing you to update you on how my month in Bolivia was and what my team and I are up to here in Romania. I have a lot I want to share and once again don’t know where to start. It is hard to share all of the amazing things that God is doing in my life and that of my team here on the World Race. I will attempt to share some of what God has been doing, but I am sure that I won’t cover everything. However if you have different questions or want to know more I welcome any and all e-mails from you. This month I have a really good Internet connection at the house I am staying at and in the church office where I am working so communication is really easy for a change.
So lets begin with a recap of Bolivia:
March was an intense month, as you know my team and I didn’t have a ministry contact as our ministry was to find and make relationships with a variety of ministries in hopes of making a partnership that can be used in the future with upcoming squads who travel to Bolivia. I however loved Bolivia; it was by far my favorite country so far on the race. I however wasn’t that fond of living in such a high elevation for a good part of the month. It is never a great feeling when you go from doing a month of manual labor and feeling some what physically fit to being winded walking up a single flight of stairs.
We spent the first ten days of our month in the city of La Paz, where we stayed in a local hostel, and ministered through good conversations with the hostel workers and the backpackers who were there during our stay. We also spent time out on the streets, talking to people and passing out bread to some of the beggars on the streets. It was awesome to see how God was able to work through the contacts we made. We met a few people who ended up playing vital roles in how the rest of our month would go, from knowing of different ministries to look up and visit in the country to having friends who are local pastors and were willing to house our team in the church buildings without having ever met us.
I even was put in contact with a local Vineyard pastor in La Paz, whose church service I attempted to attend, but some how misunderstood the directions the pastor gave me in Spanish over the phone and couldn’t find the church location.
We went from La Paz to the city of Cochabamba, where we stayed at a local church in the downtown area and were able to see a lot of how God is moving in the community. Here we participated in the youth group, and went to lunch with them after church, and spent time with the churches Sunday school teachers in order to encourage them in their ministries.
In Cochabamba I was able to visit two separate ministries that work with the prisons and the children living in the prisons with their parents. It was really neat to see those ministries in action. (Check out my blog for more info). Here we also met a young local pastor named Brayan who works with college age students and set us up with a church in our last city of Santa Cruz. Brayan actually ended up traveling with us to Santa Cruz and helped to ease our confusion as to why our 8 hour bus ride became 18 hours when our bus stopped at 1:00am and sat on the side of the road for 7+ hours as we waited for a landslide to be cleared miles up the road.
Bolivia ended with a short two day reunion with the entire Squad in Santa Cruz, where we spent time soaking in what God had done in our lives the last month and in celebration of Easter. We left Bolivia on the morning of April 1st, and flew through Washington DC via Panama City. This was a blessing as I was able to see one of my childhood friends from Scio who moved to the DC area last November during my eight-hour layover. We then flew from DC to Istanbul, Turkey before catching a short final flight to Bucharest, Romania. What was fun about that fight to Istanbul was the unique reminder of home that was served with our meal. Tillamook Cheese! Not something I ever expected to see on a flight this year. It was a welcome reminder of home after talking with my parents on the phone and seeing my friend.
Now we are in Romania, and have been here just over a week. My team is working with two other teams this month, our old friends Team Luminous who we worked with back in Ecuador and Team Favoured. We spent our first week just with Luminous as Favoured was working in a nearby village but now the three of our teams are serving together. We are working in the smallish village of Draganesti-Olt, Romania. It located in Olt County and is about a three-hour drive south of Bucharest. There are approximately 12,000 people living in Draganesti. Olt County is the most unchurched in Romania with a mere 0.02% of the population being active in the churches. The biggest Christian churches in the area have a body of at most 100 people. However the Orthodox Church is very big here, and many times there is persecution and strong discord between the Orthodox Church and anyone who opposes their teachings. The church we are working with is called Hope Baptist Church and has around 60 members. The church is also the main office for the regional area and works with around 20 missionaries in the local area on a daily basis. Our three teams are spending our time working in a variety of ways including helping with children’s programs, construction projects, gardening, teaching Mandarin, English and Math, and office work. We will also be traveling daily to a town on the boarder between Romania and Bulgaria in groups of 5-6 to do ministry with some of the local missionaries starting Monday. My month hasn’t had the variety that some of my teammates have had in ministry, my month consists of mainly office work, I have been helping Pastor Raul do administrative tasks, such as typing up different documents, translating books from English to Romanian using Google translator (It isn’t the most accurate translation but helps with giving the church a start at translating) and writing e-mails in English for the church. It has been a different sort of ministry but I know that these small tasks help Raul and the other church staff have time to participate in other aspects of the ministry where their skills can be utilized more.
It has been a growing time for me in the last few months, and I look forward to seeing where God brings me in the next 7 months while I am out on this mission field. We are getting ready for some big changes within our squad at the end of the month. We currently have three World Race Alumni who are acting as our Squad Leaders, but beginning next month they will train up two or three of my peers to become the next squad leaders and at the end of May the current three will go back home to the states for the next adventures that God has in store for them. For those of you don’t know what Squad Leaders are, let me explain, Squad Leaders acts as support for both the squad and the team leaders, they are in constant communication with the Adventures in Missions staff back in the states, and continually pour into the Racers on the field. Their race looks different than that of the rest of the squad because their mission isn’t the different ministries in each country but rather us the missionaries. I look forward to seeing what happens, but it is a little intimidating to think about the changes that will occur in the squad depending on who our new Squad Leaders are, there may be multiple team changes to redistribute the racers into new teams, but those changes are still very uncertain.
In the last month since I wrote you last, our squad has had some other impacting changes. There have been four squad mates who have gone home since the end of our time in Peru, one for health reasons and the other three for a variety of reasons that can be summed up in the fact that God was calling them to do something with the year other than continue on with the Race. It was a sad time for many but we all have faith in the fact that God has a great plan for their lives.
Even though a lot about next month is uncertain, I seriously look forward to seeing what God has in store for me in Ukraine. I know that God will be teaching me a lot and growing me in many ways.
Know that I miss each and everyone of you, and would love to hear from you. Please keep me, my team and squad in your prayers as we continue to serve our Lord around the globe.
Love,
Katrina
