Beautiful Love

There is this little girl I want to tell you all about. For the sake of protecting her identity, I will call her Julia.

Julia is an orphan. She lives at the school where I work, and is 9 years old... but looking at her you would think she is only 7 at the most. She has these giant brown eyes and a very serious face, loves to draw and make cards for people, and rarely talks.

This week the kids at the school were on vacation. For most of them, this means spending a week with their parents (if they have any) or visiting a relative. Julia had no one to go to, so the Word Made Flesh staff decided to make her a part of their family. For the week, Julia got to takes turns staying with different members of the community (all who wanted to spend as much time as possible with her).

It was so beautiful to watch this little child, who is deemed an orphan by most of the world, be cared for by so many people. When it was Annie's turn to keep her, she was over at our place all the time (she kicked my butt in checkers!) As I was sitting playing with her, it struck me how amazing it is that so many people would be devestated if she were adopted. If Julia were not there, she would be missed so much! I know many tears would be shed... by the staff and by Julia. She is truely loved and cared for. She has a family.

The more I hung out with her, the more I fell in love as well! I would spend 10 minutes trying to communicate a simple question to her in Romanian and she would just sit there with her big eyse and patiently wait until she understood. Then she would give me a quick answer and we would keep playing. A couple times she would run to Annie and say something in quick Romanian and then Annie would translate a sweet little phrase to me. She even made me a card (I'm pretty sure I will treasure it forever!)

I am so honored to be a part of this organization after I watched how they treat orphans. I am so honored to be a part of Julia's life.

Piata (The Market)

Today I had my first experience in the Moldovan "Piata" (pronounced pee-ah-t-za). But before that, we went to out first Moldovan church service. After my teammates and I met up with Annie (Our hair covered and our skirts long) we took the autobus to church in Cientra (Chee-en-truh) which is pretty much down-town Chisinau. We walked to the main church right in the center of the city which is an orthodox church. Pretty much everyone here is Orthodox. It was soooo packed that people were standing smushed up against one another even outside the building. It made me think how crazy it is that we have such big churches in America and they are never really fully filled, and here they have smaller churches where people are desperate to get in and willing to stand for 4 hours for the sermon. That church was so full, Annie actually took us to another church close by (also Orthodox) . There were a lot of people begging there, and it was so hard to walk past mothers holding children on church steps begging for money and not give anything! After church, we went for lunch and coffee/hot chocolate! We got to order in Romanian, so that was a lot fun.

Next came the Piata. The Moldovan market. It was crazy and hectic and stressful and wonderful. I loved it so much, it was a huge outdoor place where you could get anything in the world. We did some grocery shopping  and we got things like shampoo, pillows, and head scarves for church. I was so proud of myself  for knowing numbers because it sure came in helpful. Everyone there was really nice and it was quite obvious we were American! Although, one woman thought we were French =) We ordered lots and got very good at saying "half a kilo" in Romanian. After today, I'm pretty convinced that anyone should make a trip to Moldova sometime in their life just to experience this!

I am so excited for my adventure here, I can't believe it has only been 3 days! I am already exhausted, but it is so much fun. I adore the culture and the people, and playing Romanian Bulderdash with my teammates at night. I hope you all are well too, thank you for all of your support and helping me come to this wonderful place. Annie said to us all the other day "It is not the story of me and God together, it is the story of you and you and you and me and God. It is all of our stories wrapped together!"

If you would like to keep up to date with my teammates blog as well (for a different perspective... or to see if she's writing and crazy stuff about me) here is her link:
www.amandajomartin.wordpress.com

Love you all,
Nopte Buna!

Things I have learned about Moldova

Moldova is a BEAUTIFUL country and I absolutely love being here. My teammates and i are getting along great, and the WMF Staff are the most amazing people ever (besides you, of course). They are a mixture of Moldovan's and North American's, last night we had some of the over for dinner in our little tiny kitchen and shared our stories and laughed a lot! Although I have only been her for 3 full days, here are some things I have learned thus far:

*Moldovan's really really like beets. They eat some form of beets at pretty much every meal.

*Don't talk on public transportation. 

*American's are really loud

*Putting your hands in your pocket it consider the ultimate disprestful action in church

*Personal space does not matter to Moldovan's.

*The language "Moldovan" is spoken Romanian, but written Russian

*You can know anyone's political standing pretty much by the language that they choose to speak. If they are speaking in Russian, they are most likely communist.

*Don't throw your toilet paper in the toilet. It has to go in a trash can.

*Church pretty much goes on all the time! (We have a church very close to our apartment and you can always hear the bells and the choir. It is beautiful)

Buna!

Hi everyone!

I'm here in Moldova and we are having a fantastic time! I am living with 3 other women (Amanda, Jessie, and Heather) and we have our own little apartment! It is a really cute place, we have 2 bedrooms, a room where we will have meetings and stuff, and a kitchen. The kitchen is my favorite part because the table has little benches that go around the wall and make it really cozy to sit in. Like a little breakfast nook!

Last night, we arrived and Annie (our leader) picked us up from the airport. We took a taxi to our apartment and loved looking at all of the buildings. It kind of looks like you would expect Eastern Europe to look like. Really big buildings, mostly housing, kind of gray. Everything here is written in Russian and Romanian, so I've got to work on getting my language better! I kept trying to read the labels on the things we were having for dinner and forgetting that it wasn't English. Lucky we had people there to translate for us!

Today we got to go to the Internat, which is the state run boarding school/orphanage where we will be working. It was really hard not to be able to communicate with the kids, but they won my heart all the same! One of the little girls gave me a lot of hugs and we painted each others nails. She kept following me around and helping me learn how to say things in Romanian. They were all frumas copii (beautiful children). I can not wait to build relationships with them!

An Excerpt from One of my Papers

Before leaving for Moldova, each of the girls on our team is required to read and write papers about 5 books. Here is a short excerpt from one of my papers, in which I was responding to "The Irresistible Revolution" by Shane Claiborne.

“Jesus came not just to prepare us to die, but to teach us how to live.” (p.117) I heard a song on the way to work yesterday about how earth is not our home and heaven is really where we are meant to be. I disagree. Earth is our home, and if we were never meant to be here, we wouldn’t be here! We might have messed our home up, but that doesn’t make it a place we came to be in by mistake. I think a lot of Christians in this world, or at least in America, are just waiting for Jesus to sweep down to earth and remove us from the chaos we created ourselves. But what about redemption? What about restoration? I think it is all possible (though extremely difficult) and if we all quit thinking that our only option is to tear down this house and start over somewhere else, some real change might be possible. Bit by bit, through God (who is Love) we can once again make our home fit to live in. We can create a place where people want to be, where we can see God’s beauty and glory everywhere we turn… in every created thing!

Old Romanian Folk Songs I Like

  

Tara noastra-i tara noastra

Dulce pajiste albastra

Aripa sculpta-n dor

De lumina ochilor

Daca-i dor, nu-l stingi cu apa

Daca-i timp, nu-l poti intrece

Daca-i gand, nu-l poti strabe

Noi suntem romani, noi suntem romani

Noi suntem romani ca brazii

Noi suntem romani ca graul

Noi suntem romani ca focul

NOI SUNTEM ROMANI !

Tara noastra e a noastra

Varf de jale si de dor

Dulce arsita albastra

Ca lumina ochilor

Tara noastra-i tara noastra

Dulce pajiste albastra

Aripa sculpta-n dor

De lumina ochilor

Unexpected Answers to my Prayers

This evening I had the chance to speak with some families at a church I volunteer with about my trip to Moldova. My hopes for this time was that I would find a couple families who would be able to support me on my trip (fundraising is going painstakingly slow). I have been very worried lately that I will have to zero out my bank account completely, and possibly even have to sell my car in order to be able to go on this trip. With all these fears weighing on my heart, I made up a flyer, practiced a speech, and got ready to ask for help!

When I got to the place, nothing really went as planned. A lot of the families I have had an ongoing relationship with were not able to attend tonight, and things got moved around so there was not really a good opportunity for me to speak to the group as a whole. So, very awkwardly, I went around to the families individually and handed out my flyer and asked for support. I was feeling pretty foolish (and maybe a tad bit hopeless) when I encountered the mother of one of my favorite Kindergarteners.

I had never met her mother before, so as I awkwardly tried to explain who I was I handed her a paper, and her face lit up with excitement! It turns out that is from the Ukraine and spent a lot of time in Moldova. I could see in her face and hear in her voice how much she wanted to talk about her home. She talked away for about an hour, teaching me some Romanian, telling me the best things to eat, how to best protect myself and my belongings, and what the best methods of transportation are. She described to me the terrible struggles people of Moldova have faced in the recent past, recounting her own tales. She opened up to me in a beautiful way, even telling me little things that she does now as a result of the things she experienced back home. She also told me to make sure I spent time with the poor because I could not know the true beauty of the country unless I did.

I did not get to hand out as many of my papers as I had hoped, and I don't think that I got a lot of people to sponsor me, but I got way more out of my conversation tonight than I ever could have imagined. Through being vulnerable and awkward, I gave else the chance to be reminisce about a place that she really misses. I gained a friend and saw a deep sense of pride for a country most of us have never even heard of. Though I still need to kick it up a notch with my fundraising, tonight renewed my faith that God provides. He will give me exactly what I need in order to be present in Moldova, and I think I really needed this beautiful woman he allowed me to meet tonight. Not to mention, she got me really excited to go swimming in the Black Sea!!!