romania • week 9

I am sitting here, in the community center in Medgidia, Romania. It is a beautiful day with the sun coming through the windows. The rest of the week will be full of time spent with little ones who have next to nothing. Today, though, is a day of rest.

A friend has lent me a book to read so I spent a few hours this morning reading A Simple Path, a biography about Mother Teresa. It is beautiful and her life speaks of love, which especially inspiring for me and in light of the way we spend our days looking for ways to share God's love. 

"The success of love is in the loving--it is not in the result of loving." - Mother Teresa

And I think that is beautiful. We have spent our time here engaging in children's ministry at a few churches as well as at the community center. We usually have two or three programs each day, each at a separate location. The Roma children come to the community center from Tuesday to Friday for Bible lessons, meals and showers. There is always love and light in their little eyes! As exhausted as I feel by the end of the day, I do feel extraordinarily blessed to have gotten tired from doing ministry work. Here is a video about the ministry our team is involved with: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ClbrlPbSsv8&sns=em


The journey last week from Macedonia to Romania was totally blessed. The bus from Skopje, Macedonia to Bulgaria had enough space for our team to sprawl out and relax. And then what should have been a long layover followed by an overnight journey on a potentially uncomfortable bus ended up being a short layover followed by discounted tickets on sleeper cabins in a train. That was Bulgaria to Bucharest, Romania. And then for the final leg of the trip, Bucharest to Medgidia, we caught a train that we should have missed, but it was delayed to depart even later than we were late. God's fingerprint was all over that day and a half of travel. 

Today is the first day of week 9 of outreach. I can't believe it is almost over! But it isn't just yet... we still have two and a half weeks until we return to the YWAM base in Herrnhut, Germany to debrief. 
If you are looking for a good read, I want to take the opportunity to recommend a book by Donald Miller, the author of Blue Like Jazz (which I haven't yet read). A Million Miles in A Thousand Years was the book that kept me occupied for the first half of the journey from Macedonia to Romania and it was so good. Here is a quote from it for you: "A story is based on what people think is important, so when we live a story, we are telling people around us what we think is important."


Thanks for joining me on my journey by reading this! 
-m.