The ministry we’ve been doing in Romania is unlike anything I thought it would be.
Our contact is an American by the name of John Fracker. Since John didn’t want to turn away any World Race teams, our entire squad is in this small town, as well as three teams from the new World Race squads, with yet more teams in other villages nearby. Unfortunately, the large number of Americans in a small town means that there aren’t an abundance of ministry opportunities. My team is camping behind his house with team Tikvah, and we’re working directly with John this month. He gives us projects as they come to him, and here’s what we’ve been doing:
Our first week here, we built what John refers to as “The Great Wall of Viile Tecii”. John has a vision to fill in the land behind his house and build a small workshop on the land. This workshop will be used to make jams which will be sold to the magazines (shops) in town. It will also be a place for locals to come and make some money, which will be a big blessing for them. The second floor of this building will be a dormitory for missionaries. The wall had to be built to keep dirt from flowing into the stream behind John’s house, and also to serve as a barrier when the water level rises in winter/springtime.
So, we dug a trench, made cement, and placed cement blocks in true Romanian style. The overseer of the project was a Romanian individual, so things weren’t done terribly efficiently nor was it constructed in the manner many of us proposed, but…it’s finished and we’re praying it’s structurally sound. This is the World Race, and sometimes you just have to go with the flow. We completed the wall and prepared for a new ministry the following week.
About 40 of us were recruited to go and pick apples from a field just a little ways out of the city. On Tuesday morning, we hiked over there and found not an apple orchard, but several apple trees scattered over the hillside. Instead of picking the apples off the trees, we were instructed to shake the trees until every last apple fell, and then pick up any apple that was not too badly rotted. We put in our four hours of work and filled eight large wagons full of apples, with bags of apples left over. When we returned home, we discovered that we were supposed to fill 25 wagons fill of apples to meet quota. As it turns out, the owner of t
he apple trees made an impossible demand so that he wouldn’t have to pay us when we were finished. That was the one and only day we worked there.
The rest of our time here has been filled with odds and ends. We built a pigpen for two baby pigs that John purchased to eat our leftovers. We’ve also visited some homes and showed some love to families that have nothing. We’ve cleaned and played with the kids there. We’ve also run the church services on Sunday mornings and evenings, preaching, taking care of the kids, singing, all that stuff.
I’m not sure what the rest of this week has to offer, but I am sure it will be more random goodness. There’s talk of doing more cement work, and we can always visit more homes to show people we care. The villagers that walk by all smile and wave, and that leads me to believe that we’re doing something right. It’s hard come to terms with the fact that we’re already in our last week of ministry for September, but I pray that we all keep commiting to God and that we don’t focus on anything else. Yeah, we’ll be home before we know it, but God still has a lot in store for us. After all, the Race is just the beginning of what life will be like in the future!
