Free In Romania

Part two of Romania 

The day comes when we we test again to see if we can leave or not. It’s a do it yourself test so we stick the long q-tip uncomfortably up our noses do a little science experiment and then 15 min later we get our results back. We’re all negative! Yay praise God! What does that mean for us, well first we have to move since there are people in the house who still are contagious. We ran upstairs and threw  everything in a bag and head out. When we arrive to what we call the safe house we hugged all our friends who have been there since it all started.

 As we are getting our bearings our ministry host comes in and asks if we would like to start ministering that night. Well why not that’s what we came here to do right. We’ve been inside for three weeks let’s get to work. So off we go to the church to get instructions. We partnered with Hope church, ran by Raul and his wife Anna. Who also were letting all 34 of us stay at their home, they are the best. We definitely started in a great place. 

They put us in pairs and told us to go out and evangelize. Wait hold up what. I’ve never evangelized in my entire life how do you do that? What about the language barrier? What do I say? I immediately got nervous. They asked us who here is bold go stand on one side of the room and for some crazy reason I walked over there. This is how they paired us one who was extroverted and one who is more introverted. That way the bolder one can take lead and get conversations going while the other comes in when felt lead or comfortable. Yeah don’t ask me why I thought I could do that. But I did. My buddy Michael and I go on our way and I have no idea what I’m doing. I see this guy sitting on a bench and just think huh why not. I go up introduce myself asks if he speaks English and he does. Great! We small talk for a little bit and then he asked me what I’m here for. I tell him on a mission trip telling people about Jesus. He’s like oh yeah I know a little bit about Jesus. I stumble through some questions. Then he asks “But don’t you think it’s possible you can find inner peace without Jesus though.” I was not prepared. I awkwardly gave an explanation, “Maybe but it’s easier and better with Jesus.” Y’all I just started laughing he probably thought I was crazy. I said sorry this is my first time doing this I’m still learning. And then he leaves. I attempt a few more times to reach out to some people. By the third person I was drained. We still had two hours of this to go. I wanted to run all the way back to the mission house and stay. It was a lot more then I realized I could handle. 
a few of my squad and I evangelizing

Michael wanted to go into the mall and see what we could do there. He sees these two guys and starts up a conversation, I had no more energy, I let him do all the work. They talk for awhile then  Michael invites them to meet the next day, one agreed and wanted to bring his girlfriend. He was talking about how much he wanted to go to Canada and guess what we have a Canadian in our squad. We invited Joanne, our one and only amazing Canadian, and we meet him and his girlfriend the next day. Turns out she wanted to move there and go to art school. Joanne who’s from Canada went to school for art. It was cool to see how that all unfolded.  

We still had two more weeks and everyday we had to evangelize, I was dreading it. Let’s be real it’s not my favorite part of ministering. They asked if I would like to go to children ministry in a Roma community. Yes please that’s my favorite kind. When the children saw the van they chased after it and as soon as we stepped out they held our hands and started hugging us. We sang a few songs and then shared a story from the Bible. We told them about  the lost sheep and we made a small skit out of it and had a few of the children be sheep. I got to be the lost sheep. The kids loved it. They they even got all the questions we asked correct. We played freeze dance that ended in a dance party. The time went by so fast. I was walking back to the van and the kids ran up to me and gave me a big group hug.

The next week we had another chance to go back for children’s ministry and you better believe I was going back. The kids remembered me and ran up to me. We did the same thing but this time it was the story of Zacchaeus. We asked if they remembered the story about the lost sheep and they laughed and pointed at me. It was so sweet they remembered. We told them that Zacchaeus was like the sheep and was lost and how Jesus found him. Then we sang the song Zacchaeus to go along with the story. We played red light green light and I was the one to say red or green. I tried to say it in Romania which is ro?u (red) and verde (green), which you think would be pronounced like the Spanish verde but it’s not. They sounded so much like it though I kept pronouncing it wrong. The kids got a kick out of that and even the adults there were laughing and trying to help. Even though I kept messing up and at one point said the wrong color all together they new what I was trying to say so they would run and stop at the right times. The laughter that filled the air was so sweet. About half way through the game I would wave my hands to go and stop which worked so much better. We stopped at one more community to do the same thing there. Then we went back a few days later to hand out clothes and pray for the family’s. 

The last week in Romania everyone was cleared and we all got to go back to the mission house and my team and I were reunited! 
 Team B.S.R.L.J.+D

I definitely learned a lot while there. Raul and Anna taught us so much and actually helped prepare me better for evangelizing later. Hope Church is doing amazing things in Craiova and I’m so glad I got to be a small part of it. I’m currently in Albania doing ATL (Ask the lord) we don’t have any hosts or ministry to work with. we just go and ask the Lord. 🙂

Goodie goodie