Gata

I'm happy to say that we all made it back to the States safe and sound! But let me back up a little to the last few days of our trip.

Thursday and Friday we had classes as normal. Friday's classes were a little sad since we had to say goodbye to all of the students. But it was very neat to see them be able to remember everything that we had taught through out the week and how much they had improved on their typing skills.

Thursday night we had the neat opportunity to participate in a small church service in a near by village. We arrived in the village a few hours before the church service started and went around in groups talking to the people and inviting them to come later that night. My group ended up talking to some men for a long time, it was a good relationship builder for the Romanians. The church service went really well, the Romanian missions team that was there helped in the service by leading singing and sharing a few testimonies and then Dr. G, with the help of Jordan for the demonstration, gave a short message. It was really neat to see all of the different people come together and share the Good News with the villagers.

Friday night was a little more relaxing for us and laid back. We had a bonfire with the Missionaries from Drăgăneşti. It was a very nice time to just hang out, talk to them and also to say good bye to most of them since we had to head out the next day for Bucharest.


After breakfast on Saturday we loaded up Pastor Raul's van and headed for the church, where we helped out in a children's class. They were learning about how God was the creator, and how we needed to keep the earth clean. They broke up the children in teams with one of our team members as a leader of each group, and then we went out with a garbage bag and picked up some of the trash around the city for about 10 minutes. It was neat to see the children participating and enjoying helping out their city. Once class was over it was time to head out to Bucharest, with a short stop at one of the missionary's house. She was a doctor and had set up a clinic in a small village out side of Drăgăneşti. She told us that on an average day she would see about 20 patients. She also had a good supply of medicine which she gave out to the people free of charge. Her clinic was known as one of the best in the area and it was really nice to have the chance to go see the work that she is doing there before we left. Saturday night we made it to the hotel, and after dinner at McDonald's we relaxed and went to bed a little early since we had to start our trip back home the next day at 4 AM.

The trip back went very smoothly and fairly fast. Thank you for all of your prayers these past 3 weeks, it was a great encouragement to know that we had people praying both for our team and for the Romanians. Please continue to pray for the people in Romania, the children that we ministered to, and the pastors and missionaries who work with them.

Sunt cântând în ploaie

Someone who actually speaks Romanian will probably correct me, but I believe today's title means "I'm singing in the rain." It has definitely been a bit on the wetter side here tonight. Let me back up a bit though.

Saturday we said goodbye to the Vasile family and went further south in Romania near the town of Drăgăneşti-Olt. Like Jordan said, we're staying with Kevin and Michelle, a Canadian missionary couple here. Sunday we got a chance to visit a smaller church out in a village about an hour away. After church we went and saw ruins of an old Roman fortress on the Bulgarian border. Those were pretty cool - we'll hopefully have some pictures up soon. Sunday night we joined the Romanians at the church here in Drăgăneşti. This was probably the biggest church we'd been to so far, with somewhere around 75 people we think. The service was very upbeat and we made a bunch of new friends that spoke English, so we had plenty of translators, which definitely helps.

Each morning here, we have a computer class in the church in Drăgăneşti, followed by a break for a few hours (which we've recently been filling with computer repair appointments), and then another class here at Kevin and Michelle's house. Our evenings have been filled with various activities. Monday night we played soccer at a nearby field with a bunch of youth from the church and the town, and then we went around inviting people to a concert that would be held here on Tuesday night. Tuesday night, obviously, we went to said concert in the church. From what I could tell, we had even more people in the church than on Sunday night, and it seemed like quite a few of them were people that hadn't attended there before. The concert was for a famous Christian Romanian singer. He was quite good, and even did a few songs that we recognized. Tonight, we did some evangelism in a nearby village followed by another soccer game with youth from the church and the village. Like I mentioned, it ended up raining most of the night, and we had quite an adventure driving back in the pouring rain with somewhere around 16 people in a 9 passenger van. Despite the rain, from what we heard God opened several doors tonight, and the people here will continue to minister in these villages after we leave.

We're quickly approaching the end of our trip here. Thanks for your continued prayers:

• Pray we'll continue to be enthusiastic and full of energy for the kids in our classes as we finish up our last two days
  
• Continue to pray that God will work in the hearts of those we've encountered throughout all three weeks we've been here
• Pray especially for the people of southern Romania. (Câmpina and Drăgăneşti both are a part of this area.) We had known this area was more unreached than the northern part of Romania, but we recently learned that only 0.2% of the population here is Christian.
• Pray for all of the missionaries and their families that are working here. God has sent a fantastic team of people to work in this area.

A couple of pictures

Since it is getting late, I will be brief. We made it to new village/town and are now staying at the house of a very nice Canadian missionary couple.

This week looks like it will be busier than that previous weeks, since we have 2 classes to teach, and then Raul (the local pastor) has us scheduled to do more general witnessing/relationship building activities in the evening. Tonight we got back to the house around 9:30pm after our evening activities, such as football and street evangelism.

A couple of the guys I met in the morning class today wanted me to post their picture, so I told them I would. Here they are:

Mi-e Foame

Sorry it has taken so long to get this updated… our nights have been a little busier lately spending time with the family and getting things ready for the following day. Anyways here is a little update on what has been going on these past few days.

Wednesday over all went pretty smoothly, in the morning we had a good sized group again and we learned all about Word and the kids all had a chance to write a letter to their mother. They all greatly enjoyed this, especially adding clip art and playing around with the font, color, and size of the text. The girls got a little more into it so it took them a little longer then the boys. All in all it was a very successful morning.

Normally we ate at the church thanks to the wonderful cooking of Coca, the pastor’s wife; however Wednesday afternoon Pastor Ion had to go back to Câmpina to take care of some important business, so in order to do that and get to Brādāşanca on time we were unable to eat there. Instead we packed up as quickly as possible and started back to Câmpina where we met up with Dan, one of Pastor Ion’s sons, who brought us pizza which we ate while Pastor Ion took care of things. In the end everything worked out great.

Upon arriving in Brādāşanca there were a few kids ahead of us all ready to use the computer. About as fast as we could set up the computers, they were filled with children playing their favorite games. In the afternoon we once again went over Word and did Draga Mama letters. It took a little bit of time for everyone to get the hang of it, and a few of the boys struggled with staying on topic. In some ways the afternoon seemed long, since the kids were very energetic and didn’t always want to listen to us but in the end the day was a success.

Thursday, also went very well. We once again had new students in the morning which was exciting. Giving the students the letters that they had written the day before was also a highlight of the day. They loved seeing what they had made actually on a piece of paper and not just on the computer screen. We also went over Power Point, which they had a lot of fun with. As a group we went over a lot of the basics and then let each student make one slide with information about themselves on it. After break we continued with Power Point and showed them some of the cool effect that they could put in and the older ones especially liked that part.

Our numbers reached around 35 on Thursday afternoon and we had some new fairly young ones too. The teaching style had to be modified since we had so many kids, and such a large range of skill level. So after doing a short intro to Power Point we mostly taught each group individually. Though some of the younger kids didn’t totally understand everything I think they all had a very enjoyable time.

That brings us up to today. We arrived to find almost all of the students waiting for us which is very cool, since most of the time the Baptist church is looked down upon. Dr. G did his lesson on the internet and the children greatly enjoyed sending e-mail and instant messages to each other. Since it was Friday it was also the day for graduation, which is always bittersweet. After many hugs and goodbyes we saw all the children off. It was Filip’s (the pastor’s son) birthday and so him mom had made a special lunch for everyone and we had cake and ice cream. There were many thank yous that went around the dinner table and before long it was time to leave Pitulicea for the last time.

As we arrived in Brādāşanca we were swarmed by students, there were 44 students in all, which made for a very full and exciting class. Once again the students loved sending IM’s and e-mail, though we had a few problems with the e-mail on a couple computers. During break all the kids went outside to play and Krista worked very hard on getting all the certificates together since there were so many new students. Then it was time for chapel. It was very encouraging to see the children remembering the previous lessons, and the major points from each day. Then all too soon it was once again time for graduation and goodbyes.

This evening we had the opportunity to spend with Pastor Ion’s family. We all went out to eat so that we could give Elena a little break from making us dinner every night. It was a lot of fun to just relax with the family and remember some of the more memorable events of the past few weeks. We also said our thank yous and gave them our gifts. The Romanians are very giving people, and so we also got a gift ourselves. It was a little sad thinking about how this was our last night with this wonderful family.

Tomorrow we head out. We are unsure if we will have internet access or not next week. If we do we will be sure to keep the blog updates as much as possible. Please continue to pray for the students that we have had the opportunity to come in contact with these past two weeks and also for those who we will work with this coming week.

New Pictures!

Pictures are up and some videos too! Hopefully we will have an opportunity to update the blog again before too long. Thank you for all your prayers!

Domnul este bun

God is good!
We have had another great week so far. Yesterday (Monday) we began teaching in two new villages, Pitulicea and Brādāshanca (those may not be the correct spellings). In Pitulicea we had about 20 kids, which was a bit interesting, because as you can see in the picutres, we were meeting in a fairly small room. The church has not yet built an actual church building, and the building they are in now is a house being used as a church. Most of the kids were 3rd grade and up to one ninth grader, but there were a few little ones running around too. After we got the older kids started with the computers, Alissa was able to take the littlest ones outside and play with them. After class and lunch we had the priveledge of being able to head down the street a ways and see their new church building. The pastor has been doing most of the work to get the building built. It was especially cool for Dr. G to see this building as when he was in this village a year ago the team was able to mark out the boundaries of where the building would go. The faith of the pastor in Pitulicea was amazing to see. He has a very small congregation, yet they have managed to build the walls of a small church on land he had purchased for his own home. He has done most of the work to get the church building up and has done so without owing anyone any money. All the work has been done by members of the church. What struck me most was the pastor's willingness to give up the place where he had been planning on building his own home so that the church could have a proper place to meet. I'm not sure that would have ever happened in America.
Today we had about 15 kids in that village, assumedly due to the thunderstorm that started as we left Câmpina. Arriving at the village we discovered that there was no power... which posed a potential problem, but once we got all the computers unpacked and set up the power came back on and we had no further problems. The kids are very well behaved and very affectionate. They are a joy to work with and even though we are still struggling with the language barrier we are learning to show love in actions not words :-).
Brādāshanca is a bit different than Pitulicea. We are able to meet in a very nice church building, but the kids are more rambunctious... maybe because there are more boys? :-) Brādāshanca seems to be a poorer area than the other villages we have been in. We have had around 30-35 kids over the past couple days, but it is difficult to keep track as they tend to walk in and out at their own pleasure. In other villages the kids sit in the same seat, or at least at the same table every day, not so in Brādāshanca. It's hard to teach the kids because as soon as they get bored they get up and go talk to thier friends or go outside, which makes this village a bit of a challenge, but seeing the kids who came back today from yesterday and seeing some of them stay for the entire session is rewarding.
Both villages were very engaged in the chapel sessions, they love to sing, even if we sing in English and they aren't sure what we're saying they love to do the motions with us and are very patient with our attempts to sing in Romanian. They answer the questions from the lessons and seem to be understanding what we are trying to teach them about Christ.
Pray for:
-the kids in both villages, that they will hear what we have to say during the chapel times and apply it to thier lives and ask the pastor if they have questions
-that we will be a blessing to the pastors and churches in the villages
-that our computer classes will give the villagers a favorable impression of the Baptist churches
-team health, a couple sneezes and coughs are being heard amoungst the team
-endurance, doing the same thing two weeks in a row can be a little rough

Dar Dumnezeu

We've had a couple of relaxing days this weekend. Saturday we went to the Peleş Castle in Sinaia, which was pretty neat. It was actually more like a palace - I think it was used as a summer home by one or more of Romania's kings. (Romania is no longer a monarchy...the castle seems to be mostly a tourist attraction now.) We were able to take a 45-ish minute tour in English. Here's a picture of the outside...we didn't want to pay the "tax" to take pictures inside:


Afterward we had lunch at a little place on the street and then drove to a nearby market that had a bunch of vendors selling souvenirs. The guys especially thought that they all started looking the same once we made it past the first couple booths, but we faithfully plodded through looking for gifts and mementos.

Saturday evening we joined Pastor Ion's church here in Campina after a business meeting for dinner. This was the church we went to last Sunday evening. The people were once again very welcoming and giving. We all tried our hand at some ping pong and hung out with the people there. We then as a group watched a "video concert," which ended up being Andre Rieu and his orchestra performing live in New York. A couple of team members were hesitant about watching an hour and a half of classical music, but in the end I think we all agreed that it was quite good and entertaining.

Sunday morning we worshipped again at the church here in Campina. Unlike the other church services we've been to here, we started the morning with Sunday School, so the four of us went off with the youth while Dr. G. stayed with the adults. The youth group mostly consisted of Pastor Ion's kids, whom we've been able to get to know fairly well over the past few days, so we had a good time singing and praying with them. Dr. G. preached a new sermon today entitled "Dar Dumnezeu," which is Romanian for "but God." His text was Ephesians 2 - it talks about how we were dead in our sins, gratifying our sinful natures. Verse 4, though, starts with "but God" - you probably know the verse: "But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ— by grace you have been saved." It's cool going through the Bible and seeing places where it says "but God" and seeing how God has shown He's still the one ultimately in control of the world.

After yet another delicious meal, we all did our best to sleep and rest for a few hours before going to Brătăşanca for the evening church service. We had not been there before, but this will be the church at which we will hold our afternoon classes throughout this coming week. The church was fairly small - about 20 people this evening - but we're told that there will be 40 or so young smiling faces waiting for us tomorrow afternoon.

So that takes us up through this evening. Please continue to pray for us. Specifically:

• That we'll be able to begin our second week with as much enthusiasm and energy as our first.
• That God would start to work in the hearts of the children and teens we'll be encountering in the two villages we'll be working in this week.
• That God would continue to work in the hearts of those we worked with last week.
• That our work here would open doors for the local pastors to be able to get into homes which were previously closed off to them. Specifically pray for Pastor Chezar, the pastor of the church in both villages we were at last week.