Christmas Day

Christmas Day in Romania was very different than America but no less busy. The boys slept until 8:30 at which time Nolan exclaimed that Santa had found his presents and put them under the tree. We had breakfast before we even opened presents. I tell you this to contrast my American Christmas morning breakfast to my Romanian Christmas breakfast. In America we usually spend the night at my parents and when we wake up Christmas morning we have a huge breakfast- pancakes, homemade apple topping, egg omelet baked in the oven, donuts, oranges, bacon, etc.. Our breakfast this year was no less exciting although most of you will not think so. We all ate cereal. Not just any cereal. Our Christmas package from our church contained an 8 pack of little Kellogg's cereals. We each ate two of these and Melania finally opened her box of Lucky Charms she brought from America. This may not sound exciting to you but it was to us although I must say that there is a lot more sugar in American cereals. After that we opened presents. We had quite a variety from grandparents, aunts and uncles, and some we brought from America.

Around 12:30 we went to Roberta's house for Christmas dinner. Thanks to whoever sent me Raspberry jello I was able to make jello for dinner. I also made green bean casserole. You say- whats the big deal- a can of cream of mushroom soup, some Durkee french fried onions, and beans. Well it is not so easy when you have to make everything except the beans from scratch. I also made a banana cream pie which Maurice was nice enough to share his favorite pie with all of Roberta's guests. The banana cream pie was a real hit with the Romanian dinner guests. Dinner at Roberta's was like Thanksgiving dinner with turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, and cranberry sauce. It tasted wonderful.

Now this should have been the end of our busy afternoon until church that night but at the end of Christmas caroling last night we got another invitation for Christmas dinner. Of course I said yes- it was a Romanian family and you don't turn down Romanian hospitality. I also wanted the experience of a Romanian Christmas. As soon as we had finished eating at Roberta's we headed to the Ludu house. Dinner was started with the traditional molded potato salad. I love that stuff. There was also homemade grape juice. After that was done and cleared from the table they brought out a piece of homemade sausage and sarmale with sour cream. Sarmale is the traditional food for any celebration in Romania. It was really good. This was followed by plates of homemade cozonac. This is also a traditional bread for Christmas. There were several varieties- nuts, poppy seeds, turkish delight, and raisins. They were delicious. Then Mrs Ludu served mint tea made with leaves from their garden. That was really good. I had brought a fruit salad and that was brought out at the end. It was definitely an American fruit salad- oranges, pineapple, bananas, whip cream, cut up strawberry marshmallows, and white marshmallows. The Ludu girls loved it.

We relaxed and enjoyed some wonderful conversation. Most of the Ludu girls speak English but Mr and Mrs Ludu do not. Instead of making the girls translate we tried our best to speak Romanian. It was a lot of fun. But alas- on to the next event. We had church in Sighisoara at 6:00 that night. The church was all lit with candles and was beautiful. Melanie and I sang along with Sandy Ludu and Ligia. We sang traditional Romanian Christmas songs along with a couple American Christmas carols - only in Romanian. The group of us that went caroling the night before also had a chance to sing. The Christmas story was told but also the analogy that Christ came to the world to be a light in the world. That is when the last advent candle was lit. At this point oranges were passed out. Each orange had a candle in it. Roberta talked about how we were also called to be a light in our world. Each candle was lit and it was simply beautiful.

Our day was not quite finished though. Mel took the boys home and put them to bed but Maurice and I went back to Roberta's house. We warmed up leftovers for one last Christmas meal. This gave us energy to do the mountain of dishes left from Christmas dinner. This was a real service to Roberta. About two 1/2 hours later we finally headed home and Christmas was over.

Christmas Eve

Here in Romania there is a tradition on Christmas Eve, Christmas caroling. Romanians love to sing and visit their friends, so caroling combines both. We did not plan on participating, but we were asked by the Ludu family from our church here in Sighisoara to join them. Since we had no real plans, we said that we would love to join them. So we met them at there home at 6:00 PM to practice three Romanian Christmas carols, thankfully they printed them out for us to follow. Then we set out. We visited about nine homes in Baragon and Sighisoara, mainly older women from our church. We eventually ended up here in the Citadel, finishing at Roberta's house. It is customary that after you sing a song or two, you are invited in for sweets and a drink of some sweet beverage. I have to confess that after that many stops, I was starting to feel more than a little sick to my stomach. We got back around 10:00 PM and the boys went to sleep very easy and actually slept fairly good Christmas morning. We had a terrific time, it was so different from our usual American Christmas Eve routines. In our next post we will tell you about our very busy Christmas day. Maurice

God Asked, We Obeyed, and the Blessings

I thought I would give an update about the Canned Food Drive as well as some reflections on the whole experience now that it is finally done.

Saturday morning we woke up to find at least 4 inches of snow on the ground. Maybe not the best weather for the food collection but at least it was not raining. When we got to the school the only kids that showed up were the two Ludu girls (Alexandra and Loridana) with their little sister Bianca. They go to church with us. Dragoste ( one of the Romanian leaders) also came with us. After meeting with the Veritas staff it had been determined that we only needed packages for 75 families rather than 100. That meant on Saturday we set our goal for at least 27 food items. We had already received a large cash donation from a store owner who also hung up signs in her store. We collected until 1pm and met our goal for the day. With more people resources we would have been able to collect more as there were still at least 300 apartments we weren't able to get to.

The day had it's fair share of downs and ups and I want to share those with you. Early on in the day the Ludu girls with Mel got yelled at by a not very nice women and the women's neighbor. They were called all kinds of names like beggar and gypsy and they just felt miserable and lost almost all courage to continue. It is to be expected that things like this will happen. Some people in this world are just really unhappy people. Knowing that though doesn't make it any easier when you experience these unhappy people. I give a lot of credit to those girls though. They stuck it out and kept collecting. I kept praying after that for them to have a really good experience somewhere that would ease the hurt. It came towards the end for them and it really was a blessing. The girls knocked on the door and when the elderly couple answered the door they were so excited and said "They came, they came". The couple had two large bags of flour just waiting for us. The couple was so sweet and wonderful to the girls.

I had a blessing of a different sort that day. I knocked on one door. A man answered and we gave him the paper explaining what we were doing. I think he told us to wait although I am not sure so when he closed the door I waited. Eventually the door opened again and an elderly woman was there who was about to leave. She came out in the hallway and seeing as I was still waiting for them to send me away or give me something I thought I would help the women to the stairs. That led to helping her go up the one flight of stairs to her apartment. When we got up there she asked me to come it. I decided to be more like Romanians and take her up on the offer- the collecting would just have to wait. I talked with her a little bit and understood enough to realize that she rarely ever leaves the apartment. I asked her if we could come sing Christmas carols for her on Monday night. She thought that would be wonderful although she said she had nothing to give us if we came caroling. Not to worry I said- we would bring oranges. When I finally left, the woman from the apartment on the floor below came out with a bag of sugar. I will tell how the Monday night went later on.

After the food drive we took the girls out for pizza at a restaurant. That was a real treat for them (as it would be for many Romanians). I am not sure if they had ever been in a restaurant before. For a Romanian- restaurants are very expensive. I sat there and thought about the contrast. Nolan and Liam have been in so many restaurants that they take it for granted and here these three girls are sitting having pizza and bottles of sprite and it is a real treat. Americans really don't realize how other parts of the world live or what we take for granted.

Tuesday night we took the money that had been raised (240 Ron) and went and purchased 62 bottles of oil, 57 bags of sugar, and 52 bags of flour. Alexandra and Dragoste went with us. This was also quite a new experience for them. Dragoste said he felt like Mos Nicolai (St Nicolas). The cost of cooking oil, flour, and sugar has really gone up in price since the summer. I just looked our receipts from the summer and the same bottle of oil in July cost 2.59 and when we bought it the cost was up to 4.59. Flour and sugar have each gone up about .50. That may not seem like much but when a good wage is around 2.5 an hour, it is a lot. Cooking oil is used a lot in Romanian diets so it is particularly painful for the price of oil to be going up so much. We matched what the Romanians donated using ministry money in our budget. So each one of you that contributes financially know that this month you helped provide oil, sugar, and flour to families who will really appreciate getting it.

Maurice and I packed the bags this morning and then got two unexpected surprises when we went to check on the details of distributing the food items this evening. The first was that we had just asked that the story be put in the local newspaper. Turns out that the thanks to our friend Petra it will also be on the radio and television. This is really important that the kids and those that contributed can see the results of their efforts. The other surprise was that the Hochland cheese company wanted to be a sponsor and donated one cheese wheel for each packet

Tonight was the night that Veritas held a dinner for the families that would be recipients of the the food packages. It was really a beautiful evening and after dinner we were asked to come up and talk about the food packages. All of us that had collected came up and I talked to them about what we had done and explained that these packages weren't from Veritas or from the church. These packages came from their neighbors and people in the community. That is what really made this special. Dragoste and Alexandra both talked about how they had prayed for courage and found it and how much this has changed them. Andreia (she works with the teens from the Family Center) asked if she could share a few words. She shared how much it meant not only that people collected food but that people were wiling to give. She said that this would change the way they look at things and believing in things that might seem impossible. Then one of the men stood up and thanked us and told us how special what we did was. The really touching part was that they all stood up and sang the traditional song that it sung at all celebrations in Romania. It made me cry and I am pretty sure Maurice was tearing up.

Here are some reflections on the whole experience:
1. We will never understand as Americans what this means to Romanians who spent more than 50 years under a communist regime and see very little hope, even now that communism is gone, for a better life. It is hard to describe but you get the sense that no one believed it was possible and were more than pleasantly surprised when it did. They may actually begin to find hope in their community again.

2. As Americans we take most things for granted. We contributed the equivalent of $120 to complete the food packages. To Romanians that feels more like $1200. Even more amazing is that is what Romanians themselves contributed. We probably also find it hard to imagine what the big deal is with a bag of sugar, a bottle of oil, and a small sack of flour. For many that may be as much as a day's wages.

3. I am not sure what God's plan was in all of this and it would be easy to get discouraged that no other kids showed up on Saturday to collect food. Instead I like to focus on the positive things where I can see God really working. To see the courage that God gave the Romanians who did this is amazing. To see that if we just answer his call he will provide.

4. From my devotional:

II Kings 3: 17-18
"You will see neither wind nor rain, yet this valley will be filled with water, and you, your cattle and animals will drink. This is an easy thing in the eyes of the Lord.." To human reason, what God was promising seemed simply impossible, but nothing is too difficult for him. It is the role of faith not to question but to simply obey. In the story above from the scriptures, the people were asked to "make this valley full of ditches" (II Kings 3:16). The people obeyed, and then water came pouring in from some supernatural source to fill them. What a lesson for our faith! (Excerpt from Streams in the Desert by LB Cowman)

5. Lastly- I promised I would share about the woman we went to sing with. She loved it and it was really a blessing for me to be a part of that. Her story is sad. She is a 79 year old women who lost her husband and one son 3 years ago. She lost her daughter at the age of 7 when she fell off the back of a wagon and she doesn't speak with her other son due to some conflict. She has a pace maker and lives on the 4th floor of an apartment building. She almost never leaves the apartment building as there is not an elevator. In fact in all of Sighisoara there is only one apartment building with an elevator. During communist times only buildings with more than 5 floors needed an elevator. Thus most buildings were only built with 5 floors. As an American who grew up with the Americans with Disabilities Act it is incomprehensible the difficulty faced by the elderly and people with special needs in this country. As Americans we take it for granted that there are always elevators, escalators, handicap ramps, and handicap parking. You won't find much of that here. So next time you ride one- be thankful and remember the people who are not as fortunate.

6. Thanks so much to everyone who supports us with prayer. Those prayers have been invaluable.

-Karen

Prayer Need

We are in a situation that could really use your prayer help. It all has to do with our house back in America. When we decided to come to Romania for a year, it was clear that we needed to rent our home for one year to cover our costs for the house and not have it be a burden to our Romania missions budget. We were able to make arrangements to rent our home to group of five young men and make it a "Discipleship House" for Young Life in our area. This sounded great at the time and was really an answer to prayer. Unfortunately things have not been working out as well as we had hoped and prayed that they would. Due to many unforeseen circumstances this group of five has been a constantly fluctuating group of two or three. They have been unable to meet the full rent amount each month. This has quickly become a financial burden that we can no longer carry on our own. We need your prayer as to how to best handle this situation. Also that God would help give us wisdom how to handle this situation. If you know of any possible renters who would be interested in a 6 month lease- please let us know. We are still trusting that God has this situation in His hands but being so far from home just makes it more difficult and that much more necessary to rely on God. Maybe that's His point. He has so often taught us here that He will meet our needs and to trust Him. Maurice & Karen

Canned Food Drive- A Crazy Idea

Today was a great day.

Our teen group at the Baragan school is primarily boys with generally one exception. Over the last month we have talked about "respect" and what that means. What does respect for the earth, other people, elderly, disabled, school property, and for ourselves look like? That last question about respect for ourselves became even more important when we smoking and drinking came up as topics. Most of the boys in our group range from 12-15 with a couple older than that. Some of these kids have been smoking for years and quite likely drinking almost as long. One really great kid has been smoking since he was seven. The tactics used in America just don't work here when trying to convince kids that smoking isn't good. "It's bad for your health" is often followed by the response "so what" or "what does it matter anyway". The kids often feel there is no hope for their future anyway.

This in turn leads not to telling kids "you do have a future, you should care" but rather showing these kids you care about them and giving them opportunities to show that they can make a positive impact on the world around them. This is what we have been doing these last couple of weeks. I used the American idea of a canned food drive for Thanksgiving as the main idea. As there is no Thanksgiving here we are doing this for Christmas. The theme is 'Hope for One Hundred this Christmas". The one hundred referred to are 100 families in a local social services program (Veritas).

Believe me when I say that this idea in Romania has met with no shortage of skepticism, criticism, and cynicism from Romanians and non-Romanians alike. No such thing has been done in this area before. An intriguing idea, a great idea, but no such thing has ever been done like that in this area and we are not sure when everyone is struggling if anyone would be willing to give anything. But for those of you that know me- when someone says it can't be done- it just serves as a challenge for me. The kids asked- "what if no one gives?". I said that all we can do is what God asked us to do and the rest is up to him. When one looks at the impact that 100 small food packages may have for the families who receive them- one may ask why even do it. But the bigger objective was to show these kids who see no hope that there is meaning to their lives and they can change the world around them. That this little group can change the community just by asking for a donation and showing that they do care about others.

Tuesday night we went with 7 of the teens from our group around a section of the Baragan apartments and hung up 45 posters asking for people to donate oil, sugar, flour, or can fruits or vegetables. We asked that each family donate one. On Thursday, Maurice and I walked around and hung up 45 more posters. We figured that 45 posters would be seen by approximately 1000 people. Based on that number I would be happy with 100 people donating something.

Today was a beautiful sunny day and when we got to the school two of our Romanian leaders and the two American students (Courtney and Rebekah) but there were only 4 kids. It didn't matter. Dragoste prayed and we set on our way. I was confident that this would work- I had really felt God calling me to do this- but we just needed patience and some early successes. In the beginning the 3 boys were very shy and embarrassed to ask for food. Remember that it probably has the connotation of begging. Even the Romanian leaders- Sandy and Dragoste were very nervous. But you know what- God had everything in his hands. Dragoste had prayed for courage and watching him today you would never know that he is very shy. After only 3 apartment blocks the three boys decided that they just couldn't do it- people knew them here and they just couldn't handle it- so they left. I felt confident though that we would see them again. We kept going though. Little Loredana was amazing. Few people could resist her cute little voice and she got braver every apartment we went to. I began to ponder what would come of today and part of me really believes that we gave confidence to the Romanian leaders and that today would have a lasting impact on them. Dragoste was beaming every time someone responded to his request. Once we moved to a different section of Baragon the boys came back. They started knocking on doors and speaking to the people that answered. It was amazing to see.

At the end of the day we had collected 68 Ron (Romanian currency) to be used for food purchases and 45 food items such as sugar, flour, and oil. Seeing as we only covered approximately 300 apartments. We are going to collect again next Saturday to cover the rest of the apartments we couldn't get to today.

I want to share some of the really great stories from today to show that Romanians do care about their community and their neighbors. There were several apartments we went to where people had clearly read our poster and were prepared for us to come. They had food waiting for us at the door. One woman had sugar, flour, and oil all tied up in a bag for us. Another man said to come back and them we saw him leaving. He went to the little store next door and bought oil, sugar, flour and then gave it to us. Another women who hadn't answered her door walked downstairs just to give us a bag of flour. Another women originally said no but after we had already moved to the next floor she came out to give a donation. Some people donated lots of clothes instead. There were three women who are part of the elderly club whose apartments we stopped at. They clearly did not have much but each one of them gave something. Is was very touching. These are just some of the many blessings we witnessed today but for me the biggest blessing was the look on the faces of all those who participated.

Please continue to pray for this little group of kids and leaders, for the hearts of the people of Baragan, and the community these kids live in. Pray also for the mayor of the city as we intend to ask the primeria (city hall) for a donation as well. Please also pray that the light of Christ will shine though us as we spend time with these kids and they will be drawn to ask questions about him.

(The picture is Nolan's rendition of collecting food today)- Thanks for all your prayers- Karen

It's Official

This past Saturday was a huge day for us and many people here. The church in Tsigmandru was officially organized and the building was dedicated. This was the culmination of four years of work and planning. Our church, Pearce Memorial, has sent a group every year to work on the building. It has been a blessing for everyone who came on those short term missions trips, to see the building go from concept, with four stakes in the ground, to completion. It has been a frantic three weeks working up the the dedication day getting everything completed. It was especially inspiring to me to see the people of the village come together and work night and day to finish their church. There now are three Church of the Nazarene in Romania, one in Bucharest, Sighisoara, and now Tsigmandru. Pastors, church leaders, and people from all these churches came together in Tsigmandu for the building dedication, official church organization, and their district conference. Twenty-two people were made the first members of the church after it was officially organized. Here are some pictures, I will put up an album of pictures with the finished church, it is amazing indeed. The main theme of the weekend was that this is not the end, but only the beginning of a Ministry Center that will change lives in Tsigmandru and the surrounding villages. Maurice