Wednesday, March 19, 2008

As we write, here it is Friday already but we need to get you caught up on the past few days. Thank you all again for your prayers. It’s been absolutely amazing to see how the Lord has opened doors for us and blessed all aspects of this trip so far. We have prayed, along with you, that God would clear away obstacles from our path and allow us to walk uninhibited in His will this trip. Despite some colds, sinus congestion, and general fatigue, we have not been sick and thus able to participate in every ministry activity. Furthermore, we’ve been impacted and changed by our experiences and have planted seeds for the gospel that we pray will grow. Today we again started the day with prayer. Each day this week we committed to a prayer time of 7:30am-8am local time as part of the 24/7prayer week of Holy Week. These times of prayer have been a blessing to our team and we feel united with you, our FPC family, as we pray.

We were invited to the junior high classrooms of an English teacher, Magda, that we have known for many years. Magda is an excellent English teacher and it showed in her students. They had prepared some songs and special activities for us, which were impressive, and we shared songs, skits, and dialogue with them to practice their English. The Lord opened doors to discuss Christ through our team’s somewhat silly dramatization of Matthew 7:24-29 where Jesus tells a story of two men who each built a house.

From The Message:
"These words I speak to you are not incidental additions to your life, homeowner improvements to your standard of living. They are foundational words, words to build a life on. If you work these words into your life, you are like a smart carpenter who built his house on solid rock. Rain poured down, the river flooded, a tornado hit--but nothing moved that house. It was fixed to the rock. "But if you just use my words in Bible studies and don't work them into your life, you are like a stupid carpenter who built his house on the sandy beach. When a storm rolled in and the waves came up, it collapsed like a house of cards." When Jesus concluded his address, the crowd burst into applause. They had never heard teaching like this. It was apparent that he was living everything he was saying--quite a contrast to their religion teachers! This was the best teaching they had ever heard.

But when asked what the point of the story was, and what Jesus meant when he instructs us to built our “house on the rock,” the classes all seemed to understand that “the rock” was faith in Christ and trusting in him for both eternal life and our foundation here on earth. Speaking English with these students had many funny moments, including our “lost in translation” skit where we invited a Romanian student to say anything in Romanian and our team’s best and brightest representatives (we settled for Zach, John, and Josh!) would translate the phrase into English. Of course we didn’t understand most of what was said but the translation was hilarious none the less. For example, the English translation of “my favorite animal is a bird” came out “the school is under attack by a pack of mad dogs!” which of course drew lots of laughs.

The afternoon brought a wonderful (to us anyway!) surprise…it snowed! Though the cold and wet weather has kept us from some ministry opportunities, like visiting our friends in the nearby gypsy village of Petreasa, it has also been fun to see a different season here, where the sun goes down early and people stay inside much more than the spring or summer. Some of the team went on an another Agape run and the rest of the team worked at Casa Josef chopping wood for their wood-burning furnaces or helping clean us a kitchen/dining room space which will be used this summer for a children’s Christian camp.

On the Agape run today, our driver Pastor Johnny gave Carol and Elaine the blessing to visit their old friend – literally - Ana, who is a 96 year old woman who lives alone in a tiny 1-room house with a dirt floor. This will likely be the last visit we will make to see her as she was sick and near death. The team prayed for her and was deeply moved by the experience.

After a really fun time with the girls at Casa Josef, who get home from school about 4:30pm or so, our team was invited to a special youth service at a local evangelical church. It was awesome to see the youth of Romania praising God together, especially since so many youth are fleeing the country in search of higher paying jobs in Western Europe. We were very encouraged to find that they sing many of the same worship songs we do in America. They essentially “gave” us the service to lead – for almost 2 hours! The youth leader had found out the day before that his father who is far from Christ has cancer. He shared that he almost was going to cancel the service, because he was very distraught. He saw our coming as the Lord at work. We worshipped through songs and then Stephanie gave an awesome testimony, which was very well received.

After their testimony Josh shared a message from Ecclesiastes on living a life of meaning. What a powerful evening this was, especially given the fact that we are missing the Maundy Thursday and Good Friday services this week at FPC. All in all, praise the Lord for another amazing day here in Romania.