Today I was so happy. It’s funny because I don’t know why I was. . . I just was. It was surprising, even to me, because I had only gotten about three hours of sleep the night before, which, generally, reduces me to a walking corpse – angry at the sun and at the world for existing. But today, I was happy. I woke up at 8:30 and by some miraculous force of physics, got out of bed. I shoveled snow for two hours (an enlightening experience for a southern Californian girl). What should have been a miserably cold work of labor, turned out to be a fun challenge: which one wins? The shovelhead attached to its rod with a single screw, or the 4-inch layer of ice underneath the 4 feet of snow? (Mostly it was the ice.) While we shoveled, piled, shoveled, and sang some tunes, the next door neighbor, who I believe is named Doru (or something like that… phonetically) with a loud barking foofy dog/polar bear came running over with a jar of pickled cherries from his own cherry tree. He insisted that we eat the cherries and drink the cherry juice. ALL of it. Although he spoke little to no English at all, his eager grin and enthusiastic hand gestures spoke warmth and love more than it spoke “poisoned cherry jar.” The cherries were delicious. Before we left, he found out that I spoke French, and little by little, he tried to forge a connection.
What’s amazing about language barriers is that in the end, they’re not actual barriers. . . they just allow louder things to be said.
After some backbreaking manual labor, I was able to return to the Kid’s Club in the nearby town of Maruntei with Wendy, Veronica, and Tavi. Last week, I visited for the first time while Veronica taught the lesson, and I fell in love with those kids. A boy named Florin that I remembered lit up with a grin when I remembered his name. Since it was Valentine’s Day, Wendy and I decided to talk to the kids about love. We shared 1 Corinthians 13: 5 – 7 with them, and asked questions. Afterward, I had drawn a little worksheet with hearts on it so that they could copy down the 14 different manifestations and attributes of love that Paul talks about. It was fun to see the kids get so excited about writing on the worksheets and answering the questions. I wanted so badly for these kids to grow up fully understanding the love of Christ because sitting there, in that room, I felt Daddy just showering joy in my heart because He loved them so much.
As the kids left, I gave them a morsel of the dark chocolate raspberry tart that Megan and I crafted together. Tavi and Veronica were especially excited.
The day ended with singing, feasting, and laughing.
Thanks, Dad. Wink
PS. Romanian vocabulary lesson!
“Te Iubeste” is “I love you” in Romanian, and “dragoste” is “love”
