Romania Team – Update #11
Monday – Wednesday:
As we debrief and explore Vienna, here are some more stories from our teammembers about their experiences at camp.
From Maddie:
Maddie befriended a lot of the girls at camp, one of whom was raised Orthodox and, like many, didn’t see much of a need to read the Bible. The girl told Maddie about how she loved poetry and Maddie told her, “Hey, there is beautiful poetry in the Psalms; you should read them and see what you think.” The girl took Maddie’s advice and discovered that yes, the Bible DOES contain beautiful poetry, but also she started to show interest in how the Bible might have deeper relevance to her life than she was raised to believe and even started encouraging some of the other kids to join in the prayer and worship at the camp tent meetings. Maddie was excited to see this change and intends to keep in contact with this girl and others to encourage them in whatever way she can.
From Eli:
Eli was sitting in the soccer field watching the kids play when one of the boys came up to him and told him, “I’m sad.” The boy didn’t speak much English, so they used Google Translate to communicate and the boy went on to say that he had recently been refused by a girl and that he felt ugly and unlikable. Eli told the boy how we are all made in the image of God and that he has worth beyond the social qualities he was using to measure his worth, and while the boy was still sad about being rejected he got to hear truth spoken to him and Eli was very glad he could be there to speak that truth.
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I could share more stories, but we will be home by Thursday evening so we hope to be able to share our stories in person then. Currently we are resting after a long day of debrief and walking around the city, and we will end our debrief with the assignment we have all been looking forward to the most: sharing our appreciation for each other. This team is made of so many very different people who have experienced what happened on this trip in so many very different ways, so it has been wonderful to see team unity survive disappointments, frustrations, and conflicts (which I should probably admit I had a very large share of on this trip) and to see prayer and open conversations bring us back together again.
Please pray for one last day of travel for our team tomorrow, and that even when we get home and get back to our normal routines that we would remember that we are still on mission: the mission of reaching out to the people around us for Christ, whether those people are in Romania or Oregon or anywhere God calls us.
