Month 2 has started here in Moldova!! We arrived at our ministry site on Friday the 14th and started working with the ministry on Saturday the 15th. I feel so blessed this month to be working with such a great contact and a ministry that is very spirit lead. Our contact Vitale has said several times “you follow me and I will follow Jesus” The ministry we are working with has many parts to it but they are all connected in some way back to the main ministry of preventing children or young adults into becoming involved in the sex trafficking business.
Our contact
Our contact has opened up an orphanage that houses 4 girls and 7 boys right now. There is also a farm that supplies the food for the orphanage and two brothers who are 18 and 12 live on the farm in a little house to help take care of the farm. The ministry has also set up sewing machines to make blankets and other things to sell for a way to support their ministry. There is a kids program that happens every day in the evening that allows the children in the community to be loved on and encouraged in who they are as children of God. The last thing that the ministry is involved in is teaching classes in schools about anti-smoking, anti-abortion, and other things that help introduce good morals.
The farm
The farm is where I worked for the first day of ministry. On this farm there are vegetables, chickens, pigs, 2 dogs, and the best yet “beavers” which are actually what we believe to be called muskrats. The first day of full ministry we were split into groups to help around the village with different tasks. My group was sent to work on the farm! I come from a very rural community and have always wanted to live on a farm; I even owned a potbelly pig that lived in my room for a while. Needless to say I was excited to be able to work on the farm. As we set out for the very adventures day the sun was shining bright but it was still kind of cold out. We started work on pulling gourds and placing them in a well for “beaver” food and then pulled the vines from the gourds out of the ground. This job was supposed to last for four hours and we finished in 30 minutes. At this point in the day we are all feeling great and having lots of fun on the farm. The oldest boy who lives on the farm became our leader and told us what needed to be done next. We picked green tomatoes from a field and weeded the entire field preparing it for a new season of planting. During this time some of us were able to feed the animals that live on the farm as well. After the wonderful animals were fed and tomatoes were harvested our 18 year old friend mimed with his hands that we needed to clear the hill buy the outhouse. This meant using hoes and rakes to pull up weeds along this very steep hill that was a bit muddy already. However this is where things become interesting. As we are pulling weeds and raking them into piles the temperature starts to drop and the sun disappears when the rain comes it comes with hail. Now there are 11 of us with rain coats on for winter coats pulling weeds in the hail, oh the fun of Moldova! Now the steep hill has become a muddy mess and very slippery and we are all freezing cold. This weather pattern of sunshine, cold, hail continued in that sequence for about every 20mins.
pigs "beaver" another view of the farm
We ate lunch at 2pm and then headed back out into the cold where now 5 of us went back to the farm to clean out the pens. We started by sweeping chicken poop and shoveling out water from the chicken pen. The temperatures were still bitter cold but luckily the hail had stopped. I lucky enough to hoe out the “beaver” pen while they all looked at me and tried to steal the corn husks back from the pile. I might be a bit scared of them and in turn wasn’t thrilled about this job. The “beavers” were not my favorite on the farm. This is just one day of ministry on the farm, however all the work we did in that one day helped to feed the orphans that are staying in the orphanage and helping them avoid the sex trafficking path, which makes all the work worth it!
The next blog will give you some information on what I have learned about the Moldovan culture, and our living situations. Stay posted for that one!
Prayer requests:
For health as we didn’t pack warm enough clothes for Moldovan winter?
Prayer for the ministry we are working with that we build relationships with the people and can be a blessing to them for the three weeks we are here.
Picture credit to my wonderful teamate Kacie
