Summaries: Romania

The last four months of the race would be spent on our final continent: Europe. First stop, Romania. 

 

The only thing I knew about Romania prior to going was that Transylvania, the home of the Vampires, was located in the country. 

 

Our team and another team would stay in a smaller city called Pitesti and work with a ministry called Living Hope ran by two Romanians, Christi and Cami, and their family. 

 

We lived in the church, which was two stories and had a full kitchen, two full baths and lots of room for us to spread out. The girls took the upstairs and slept on our sleeping pads on the giant open floor. The guys slept in a small room used for children’s church and crashed on some couches. The church’s kitchen was the nicest one we had all Race so we cooked all of our meals together there, and served it family style. Team dinners around the table was one of our favorite parts of the day. 

 

We also had access to the church’s projector which we used to display movies on and lyrics for karaoke nights. The rest of our free time was spent shopping in the many second hand stores around town to vamp up our wardrobe a bit to blend in better with the high fashion Europeans we were now surrounded by. 

 

Being in Eastern Europe was so strange as it was the most westernized area we had been in on the race. Cars drove on the right side of the road, the grocery stores were similar to the states and Christianity was the number one religion. 

 

Even though Christianity makes up the largest percentage on a pie chart when looking at religious demographics in Romania, true followers of Jesus is actually pretty rare. Many Christians either fall into Catholicism or Eastern Orthodox, with very few Protestant christians. This meant we had to dig deeper with people and not just take their answer of “I’m a Christian” at face value, but really try to see if they understand what Jesus’ death on the cross means and how it effects our lives today. 

 

For ministry, we would visit the ghetto and play foot tennis, table tennis, or volleyball with kids out in the parking lot or we would do house visits to pray with families connected to the ministry. We also held small group sessions in trailers set up in the parking lot and shared testimonies with the young adults who lived in the ghetto. 

 

We would also have what our host called “homeless church” when homeless men and women from the city would come to the church and be given the opportunity to shower, shave, do laundry, play ping pong, engage in a devotional and prayer and be fed a hot meal. We helped to prepare food, played countless games of ping pong and tried our best to love on the men and women well. 

 

On Fridays, we had kids from the ghetto come to the church and we hosted an event where we would sing a few Romanian worship songs, dance and play games, teach a lesson, make a craft and share testimonies centered around a biblical principle. This was one of my favorite types of ministry we did  because I got to be silly and love on kids who didn’t have the best home life and very often are at risk for human trafficking in order to bring in some income for their families. 

 

Lastly, we would help with some manual labor projects that needed to be done such as chopping wood for a friend of the church so he can keep his family warm in the winter; cleaning out the basement of the church so the space could be usable and organized; and lastly clearing out the weeds and thorns from the backyard so it can be a place where the church youth can play at during the summer. 

 

For one of my off days, I went to Dracula’s castle and Peles castle. Both of which are beautiful and extravagant. Seeing the countryside of Romania on our way to the castles was also a huge plus! 

 

We had access to the church’s washing machine for laundry, which was such a blessing. Since we didn’t have wifi we all got local Romanian SIM cards as it was super cheap. 

 

Some traditional Romanian food we got to try was cabbage rolls and corn bread (very different than American corn bread). We also had a traditional pig roast at our host’s home with pigs slaughtered that morning by our host and one of my squad mates (way to go Katie!) 

 

Pitesti was also covered with walk up pastry shops where I spent lots of Romanian Lei on chocolate croissant twists and apple danishes. Yum!

 

. . . 

 

I’ll miss team times with team Seqouia. 

 

I’ll miss family dinners around the table with our “mood” lighting. 

 

I’ll miss Friday nights dancing around with my buddy.  

 

I’ll miss playing foot tennis in the ghetto with the locals. 

 

I’ll miss our host family a lot!