Best/Worst day ever

It was a lot of fun today, it was the toughest day yet.

We started of the day headed to meet some fellow Canadians today to work with them.  Along the way we took some pictures of a steel factory that once was booming here.  In its day it was rumoured to employ 40,000 people.  Now it is nothing but rubble. There are many factories that look similar, only smaller.  My pictures don't even capture the size of this factory.

 I was also told that when this plant was running all of Calarasi was covered in thick black smoke.

 Parts of this track look like they are almost ready to fall onto the highway.  I didn't get any good pictures of that as we were driving down the highway as I Cole and I are taking turns with the camera out different sides of the van.

Everything that could be taken and sold as scrap metal is gone.

Next we were off to do some shopping we were spending 1000$ at a grocery store to make some food hampers for needy families. 

During our trip we found these bacon flavoured chips that actually look like bacon.  They didn't taste very good though.

These are what the hampers looked like when we were done.  Then off to deliver them.  Along the way we ran into many of these things on top of poles.  The are stork nests.  The storks are south for the winter but there nests are left behind.

Then the deliveries happened, not the storks but our food hampers.  :)  Okay stupid joke but I am really tired so it seems funny to me.

This is where the day became the best and worst day at the same time.  It was great to deliver these and everyone was very excited to see us.  One lady was so excited she said she couldn't find any words but continued to talk so fast and non stop that no one could get any words in between.  Some of them had run out of food and didn't know what they were going to do.  Some had run out of wood to burn and were cold. Many had no men around.  It is common for older guys (20) to marry 14 year olds, have a couple kids then run away.  There is a lot of alcoholism, depression that comes from having no hope and no job.  Unemployment is huge.  One family had 8 children living in one room about 12ft by 8ft.  Another place had kids everywhere but no adults.  One of these places needed social services to step in as it was obvious that these kids were being neglected. 

I just hope that our tiny gesture will be enough to lift some of these peoples spirits.  It was a great pleasure to do this today but you leave wishing you could do more.

Oltenita bound

Today we spent the morning with Marcel and Ionela Ene.  They have a neat family and live in Calarasi.  He is one of the interpreters so he either makes me sound good in Romanian or he could be making fun of me but either way if it brings joy to the people it is okay.  :)  He is very musical and was one of the guys that was in our carolling group.  He also does a lot of our driving.  The driving here is much different in our country.  We like lots of space but in this country everyone is on the road, dogs, walkers, scooters, pedal bikes and vehicles.  The streets are narrow and in winter there are no shoulders so people walk in the street and we drive by them at street speed a foot of two away.  The vehicles use a combination of horn beeps and signal lights to communicate with each other and the whole thing runs very well.  They also fed us "CRAP" for lunch

Actually the food was awesome and the company was very welcoming.  They have the ability to invite total strangers into their homes and make us feel like family.
The crap is some kind of fish spread.



Later we drove to Oltenita a village near the border of Bulgaria.  We could see Bulgaria in the distance just across the Danube.  They call it a village but we were told it is closer to 30,000 people.  The group we met with here were working with many youth.  They had 130 youth but only 50 of the Samaritan purse boxes so they had to do some sharing.  The people here are extremely grateful and for most of those kids these would have been the only Christmas gifts they would receive.

This is a picture of some of the homes.  I would have more but I forgot my camera today.








The unemployment rate here is massive.  People consider themselves lucky to have jobs, something I have always taken for granted.

The Hope Center

The Hope Center is a new building built out of shipping containers.  It located in the poorest of the poor neighbourhoods and kids can come to get help with their homework and hangout having a good time.  Education is a huge problem in these areas and most children do not go far continuing the cycle of poverty.

We were there again today but today started with a lengthy snowball fight.

During the boy's and Charity's hard work of snowball fighting the girls were baking cookies for the kids.

Later Vanessa taught the grade 4 kids to play the recorder.

A few more Christmas boxes and food hampers were handed out.  It was another great day.

More blood spots around the neighborhood

People were asking me if I was serious the other day about the pool of blood thing.  Actually a few more pools of blood turned up around the neighborhood but I was telling the truth. They kill and butcher pigs all over the city.  This is the one at our doors to our apartment.

It has been an interesting journey.  We have been to many towns talking to many people here in Romania.  We are suppose to be on a mission but it feels like they are the ones ministering to us.  I hope we are doing some good and are encouraging people here but I have a hard time believing we could be impacting their lives anywhere near the level they are impacting ours.  Below is the picture of our team that traveled from Canada.

I know the children here were very excited to receive the Christmas boxes and I showed you a couple of pictures from that but look at the smiles on my kids.

Merry Christmas everyone.

Feasted on pig skin today.

Well maybe not feasted but I did try some, others were feasting on the treat though.  Others ate the ears but I was gone by then.

We started the day by being awaken by a band in the street.  They will go around playing and people throw money at them.  I didn't have any money but I did talk to the leader and asked if I could take his picture.  He said it was okay.  If I see them tomorrow I will go give them some Canadian money.  They walked all over with the one guy dancing in the bird suit while the rest played.  They were pretty good.  The one trumpet player was very good.

We moved on to the town of Chiselet where we enjoyed the pig.  We were too late for the killing of the pig part but arrived in plenty of time for the eating of the pig.  A few more pigs were killed near our apartment so the place is surrounded by little pools of blood now.  The snow is suppose to start melting tomorrow so that should clean it up a bit.

While there after our feast we were invited into a number of homes where the people wanted us to pray for them.  It was a great time of visiting and connecting with people.  As we walked I took a picture of one of the forms of transportation around here.  There are bikes, scooters, cars and horses with wagons all travelling the highways at the same time.  You can see horses on the highways and as Audi in a farmer's field.

When we met with people in their homes we usually met in a bedroom because that is the room that is heated.  Most of the houses had ceramic wood stoves in the corner to heat the room, some were baking bread and drying the laundry in that same room which would be no bigger than 10' by 8'.



We went Christmas caroling with a large number of youth from the church which ended with another feast.  Basically I spent most of the day eating.

Below is a picture of our guide Elisei, with Vanessa and Bret.  He an awesome guy with lots of love in his heart.

Walked out of the apartment today and almost stepped into a giant puddle of blood.

Walked out of the apartment today and almost stepped into a giant puddle of blood.

Apparently there is a tradition for Christmas of killing a pig.  I didn't think anything of it as it sounded like a great barbecue party.  What I didn't know was that they bring the pigs in the city and kill them wherever they are.  This one happened to be on our sidewalk.  Once they kill the pig they burn all the hair off with a blowtorch till it is black, then they use a hatchet to gut it and cut it into pieces.  I think i might have an idea as to why they have so many wild dogs around.

We went to church in the town of Calarasis, to a small gypsy church.  They had the most beautiful singing I have heard in awhile.

Calarasis is one of the poorest parts of Romania and today we went to the poorest part of Calarasis to hand out Christmas boxes.  Some of the highlights were when the leader talked about the boxes.  He told the children that these boxes came from kids in other countries who did this for them because they cared about them.  Then the children were told that they should give something out of there boxes to someone who wasn't at the Hope Center as there were many local kids who were not there.  Once they opened the boxes one of the smallest kids took some candy from his box and brought it over to another one of the leaders and gave him some.

Another highlight was showing my one and only magic trick off.  The looks on the faces were priceless.

Ever go Christmas Carolling?

How about in Romanian?  It went about as well as you might expect.  I was awful but we had a great time.

 Here is where we are living.  It is a good thing we have a guide because everything is quite similar so I would get lost in no time.

In the evening we went to a brand new church where we had a great Christmas service.  The pastor talked about our need for Jesus and why Jesus was born.





Vanessa and Cole played a Christmas song.  I have some videos but will post more of that after the  trip is done.

For those of you who are praying for us here are some requests.  We are all struggling with sleeping at night.  I go to bed exhausted and fall asleep in about 10 seconds after I close my eyes but the eyes pop open around 3A.M. every morning.  We are all very tired and when we travel anywhere kids drift off.  A second item would be I received some emails from work that are causing me to be distracted.  Pray for focus on what we are doing here.

The Romanian gypsies are a people group that are marginalized in their own country.  The struggle with unemployment, broken homes, depression lack of hope is much like we see on some native reserves in Canada.  Pray that the cycle will begin to break and these people would find hope.  What a great time of year to share teh hope we have in Jesus.

 

The world ended today but I was too busy to notice

The world ended today but I was too busy to notice.

Today we got to go to a building to see how many people can fit into one room in the small town of Roseti.

There we got to hand out Samaritan purse Christmas boxes to kids.  I have a hard time describing the chaos and fun.  If I was more eloquent a writer and I could write in such away that you would understand what this felt like, you would all want to do this trip as well.  Since I don't have the words to describe the awesome event I will just post some pictures.

Why are we in Romania

Lots of people are asking me why did you take your family to Romania for Christmas. Back home I tell people that Janelle Schellenberg, a friend of ours who organized the trip, told us we would get to Scuba dive.  The climate here is much like our winter and I thought my joke was funny but when our Romanian drivers showed up and I told them the joke they didn't know what scuba diving was.  Maybe it wasn't a funny joke anyways.

We are here for the holidays working with a group called, Outstretched Hands of Romania.  The group works in an area of Romania that is quite poor with high unemployment. Lack of education is an issue that forces this area to continue the cycle of poverty and lack of hope.

During our trip to Romania we spoke to a number of people from Romania and told them where we were going.  They all said the same thing, stay in Bucharest, don't go to Calarasis, there is nothing but poor there nothing for us to see.

It is for that exact reason that we are where we are.  I just hope that our groups small efforts to share with these people will have some positive effect.  If the Christmas season is about giving then we are in the right place.

So far the group we ave met from the mission are awesome.  We are living in a cement housing complex that looks like out of a movie from the outside.  I will have pictures later but it was dark when we arrived.

None of us have gotten much sleep in the last three days and my entire family is now sleeping but in a couple of hours our whirlwind trip in Romania begins.

3 Minutes about Jesus

 

3 minutes to share something about Jesus, where to start?  In Youth Sunday School class the students will answer “Jesus” to any question they don’t know the answer to.  If they weren’t paying attention and didn’t even hear the question they will give that answer. The funny thing is they are often right.

Over the past couple of days the world has been faced with some horrifying events.  These events happen quite often but we seem to not care about them until they happen close to home.  In Canada we look at the events that happened in Newtown and explain them away as an American problem but the truth is evil abounds here as well.

Here's the thing, this world that we live in is broken. The indelible stain of sin marks each and every human on this planet. We go through our lives pretending that this is not the case, but then every once and awhile we see evil up close are horrified by that which we see.

I am horrified by the levels of evil some people will go to causing pain and suffering to many but if I am honest with myself the evil is inside me as well.  Sinful thoughts go through my mind and if I was to give into them what a trail of selfishness, arrogance and anger I would leave behind.  The Bible is clear that we have all sinned and fall short of God’s glory.

When we see evil we are forced to look for a solution.

The solution will not be legislation, funding for counselors, mental health screening, or gun control (though I'm not against any of those). The solution is strong families, love for one another and kindness to all. Basically, the solution is us humans turning back to God and paying attention to the wisdom of the scriptures.

Ultimately, this world will never be free from evil until the return of Christ. But things get significantly better when the people turn back to God.

Once again the youth Sunday School class is right.  Jesus is the answer.  It is only through him the veil of sin can be lifted from our hearts.