After our initial shock and acceptance of our circumstances for the month, our team got started on ministry.
It seems as though a lot of what we’ve been doing on the race thus far is trying to repair some of the hurt people have felt in God’s name.
Last month, people were turned off by the church because of abuse.
This month, the gypsy people we are working with have been hurt by another Christian church that has not accepted them because they are gypsy and/or because they don’t have money.
I had a conversation with Gabby, our hostess for the month, and the first thing she asked me when she and I were alone was if I’d have problems growing up because I am not white. Sure, while there have always been instances where I felt insecure, looked down on and there were times at my first reporting job when I saw the hatred some people felt for Hispanics, me included, I didn’t experience it really until I was an adult.
I never felt it in a place that was supposed to teach acceptance and love.
We did three house visits on one of the first nights here and in each visit the person we spoke with told us how they’d been hurt, but in the same breath, they’d mention forgiveness–God’s forgiveness.
We all felt that our job here was to pray for forgiveness and help them look forward.
So when our teams were trying to figure out who was going to preach at the first Sunday service (two men) and who would give testimonies (two women), I randomly said, “I’ll do it.”
And immediately clapped my hand over my mouth and said, “I don’t know where that came from!” My team encouraged me to pray about it and said they felt I should go for it.
(If anybody knows me you know my three fears are heights, water and public speaking so really I have NO IDEA why I said I’d do it.)
I didn’t know what I’d say. I never prepared anything.
But minutes before I was going to go up, I looked in my journal to what I’d prayed for for the church just a few days before.
I’d prayed that they’d forgive the hurts they’d felt and move forward.
But what happened that day that I prayed this for them was interesting. I was writing those words and I stopped. I felt I had no right to be praying that they forgive when I’d held on to a lot of hurts and had been unwilling to forgive. So that day I forgave a lot.
I forgave the person who hurt me the most in life and I shared that with this new church.
I don’t know if my act of forgiving someone will have an impact on their church. But I do know that on September 5, 2009, in Romania, I was able to forgive like I, too, have been forgiven.
