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.
You summed up Romania wonderfully - it is a place which you will fall in love with if you give it time.
ReplyDeleteAt the moment, I am trying to build up a photo library of great pictures of Romania, and I would be thrilled if you would consider adding one of your stunning pictures of Romania onto my site (http://www.Pictures-of-Romania.com ), along with a comment about why you liked that particular place so much.