So we have officially finished our second month of
ministry here in Romania. We served the
church here in Romania through the place in which we stayed, Casa Shalom. Casa Shalom was an orphanage at one time but
due to logistical reasons (i.e. the Lord leading elsewhere) Casa Shalom now serves as a host home for
many short term missionaries. We saw a
few teams from different areas stay at Casa Shalom while we stayed here. The guys main job throughout the month was to
help out the missionary hosts, Becky and Reddica, with work around the
camp. We did a lot of random tasks such
as sorting and folding clothes, cleaning out a garage, organizing trash to be
picked up, washing dishes, picking weeds, washing windows, and your general
cleaning, dusting, sweeping and mopping.
The girls were very fortunate as they were able to serve at Jubilee
which is an incredible ministry which ministers to adult women who have been
orphaned and abused their entire lives.
The girls were able to love on these girls for the 3 weeks we’ve been
here and saw a few of the girls come to know Christ and begin showing
affection. There was also a few
opportunities for us to street evangelize to the people of Bucharest (we
should’ve done this more). Two different
children’s camps came to Casa Shalom also during our time here so we were able
to run a VBS style camp in which we played with the kids and shared Bible
stories.
There were many great things about this month. For one we worked with two other teams so the
fellowship was even better. We also had
very nice accommodations with air conditioning and wi-fi. But I also felt at times we were
underutilized with our ministry. With 3
teams we had a lot of bodies to do work so they would give us a task and we
would get done before lunch and have the afternoons with nothing to do. At times we took advantage of this, but at
times we just slept (which is nice I love naps), but as far as serving,
definitely felt that we could’ve done more.
I’m hoping that our next stops we will be able to complete more work
that God has called us to do. Like last
month I wanted to give a brief picture of what our month in Romania looked
like, here it is.
What
we did
-Played a lot of ping pong.
-Also played a lot of bump/knockout/”gotcha” (basketball
game)
-Managed to complete a few amazing basketball relay shots
(the swing-off the treehouse-to the man sliding down the slide-to the merry go
round-to the trampoline-to the man sliding down the slide- into the goal).
-Pushed kids in swings for hours.
-Started and stopped the merry go round for the children
thousands of times.
-Played laser tag and saw Toy Story 3 for Alex’s
birthday.
-Set up and used a slip-n-slide
-Acted out Bible stories for the children (I was Daniel
in the Lion’s Den and Noah on 2 separate occasions)
-Unloaded multiple shipments to Casa Shalom
-Reorganized an entire basement of furniture/spare
parts/junk
-Went to a European soccer game.
(Chad and I celebrating victory for the home team)
-Prayed with homeless people.
-Shared the gospel with people who could speak English
downtown.
-Washed gypsy children’s feet.
-Gave piggy back rides to and played soccer with Gypsy
children.
What
Romania is Like
(Disclaimer:
these are observations of our experience in Romania; this may not be true of
the country as a whole but is true of our experience)
-Bucharest is a city full of beautiful buildings (its
nickname is Paris of the East).
-Bucharest also has a mixture of very ugly communist
style apartment buildings. It is amazing
how the beautiful ancient architecture is intermingled with the ugly simple
communist style architecture.
-Bucharest is very flat.
-Bucharest has many stray dogs, thousands, and they use
the crosswalk when the cross the street.
-Bucharest is very urban and technologically advanced
-The Orthodox Church is very strong in Romania but it is
also very off-based by Biblical standards.
-A good deal of people speak English in Romania.
-Romania is more “westernized” i.e. McDonalds, fashion,
movies than Ukraine.
-The people are friendly for Eastern European standards.
-The bus system runs strictly on the honor code (which we
followed at times).
-The food is very good and brings a good bit of variety.
