Hello from Bihore, Romania, where we construct by day, care for orphans at night, and apparently I abuse alliterations…?
Life here has taken on a bit of a routine: wake up early, work out with Kristin, team worship, bundle up in work clothes to go build houses, clean up and go hang out with the orphans in their homes, come back to make family dinner, team time and bed. The last few days of construction have been shoveling dirt out of ditches to lay piping- a fairly brainless task that allows plenty of mind power leftover for conversations with the people trapped in the trenches with you.
On the flip side, our ministry to the kids involves seeing different kids every night, sometimes playing soccer, sometimes singing songs, one time we even watched Beauty and the Beast in Romanian (luckily I have that particular movie memorized). With the sporadic encounters with the kids, our team has become our family and our family has become our ministry. The conversations had around the dinner table and over the piles of dirt growing steadily over our heads become the place to open up, be vulnerable, minister to and be ministered to. Conversations over the last few days have ranged from favorite teachers to stories about friends to thoughts on what life will be like when we go home.
One of my favorite moments was a long discussion about parents. We verbally walked through our pasts, rehashing growing up experiences, commenting on what worked well and what was a total disaster, bragging and complaining and comparing, laughing and lamenting and questioning and listening. I’ve always loved hearing the way my friends were raised, because it explains so much about who they are today. Now, as I mature, the conversations are also becoming what kind of parents we think we’ll be.
The irony of the situation, the piece of the puzzle that added depth and complexity to the moment, was the fact that as we relived our childhood and planned out our days, we were simultaneously helping to build a future for a generation whose biological parents had severely messed up the parenting process by abandoning their children, but whose lives had been saved by the people at Caminul Felix, adults who gave up their own lives to love and cherish the abandoned children of Romania. As these kids reach adulthood, they’ll be able to purchase (for next to nothing) the houses we’re building and begin lives of their own, breaking the cycle of pain and death that the communist system had spawned and creating a new system for their own children.
I will never see the fruits of my labor here in Romania. I won’t get to see the houses completed, I won’t see the families move in, I won’t see the lives of people generations down the road from now, safe and healthy and secure. But what I do know is that these things are coming here in Bihore, and that I am playing a small part in that future.
It’s certainly a good work incentive.
"Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving."
Colossians 3:23-24
(L-R Elaina, Kristin, me, Kacie, April, Faith)
