Today was a really good day. We went to church in downtown Bucharest with our contact Becky. I was expecting the church to be similar to our Ukrainian church experience we had. In our Ukrainian worship services the people were very reserved much like my Baptist roots and we could not understand any of the words as it was all in Russian without translation. So this is what I expected when we were riding to church in the van today. However, the church is considered the Multicultural Church of Bucharest. We worshipped the Lord in English this morning and that was such a great experience. But an even better aspect of the morning service was the fact that there were people from all over the world worshipping with us. An Indian Pastor preached to a crowd full of us Americans, Romanians, some Nigerians, another man from Sri Lanka and there were more people that I did not get a chance to meat. The Indian pastor really brought the Word. And I was truly blessed by the service. We came to find out that there are around 6,000 English speaking transplants in Bucharest and this church is designed to be a body for these transplants. After our English service they have a Romanian service in which many people were coming into. I thank God for being able to worship Him with other people throughout the world.
Our activities since Thursday when we started ministry have truly been random and great. We have helped around Casa Shalom with random activities. We have sorted and folded clothes for a garage sale, cleaned out and organized a storage unit, and worked on our trick basketball shots. On Friday a group of around 50 kids came into Casa Shalom for a church camp. We have played games and done arts and crafts with the children. The children are truly amazing as they are smaller kids than we are used to working with so the energy and joy they bring is amazing. I have really made a connection with Daniel and Immanual two brothers who are 12 and 10 and both believers. Our week will consist of working with kids this age although these kids are leaving tomorrow, we will have more coming in Tuesday.
Another great activity we took part in was man day on Saturday. Alex Cole’s birthday was Sunday so for our off day on Saturday all us guys took the afternoon and went to the mall. We played laser tag, watched Toy Story 3 in 3D, and ate in the food court. The day is tough to explain as many funny moments and jokes were shared, all in all it was probably the most fun and relaxing day I’ve had since being on the race. The past few days have surely been crazy as we’ve experienced so many random things such as playing Laser Tag or hearing an Indian preacher preach.
I hope the week provides many opportunities to not only have fun, but to share the love and knowledge of Christ with all we will come in contact with. Pray that we will see lives changed this week. Pray that children will come to know Christ.
