Week 1

(Interns praying for the week)

Last day of week 1 is tomorrow! My group for this week has been the Verde (Green) group. The past several days have been good but challenging. The camp groups are selected at random but mine ended up being one of the toughest. There's a diverse mix of personalities and interests. There are several older boys in my group and a few girls. One of the girls has special needs which makes my group's situation a little bit unique. It is honestly a God thing that she ended up on my team-I have missed being at Camp Barnabas and this week has given me a little taste of that in Romania! It is amazing how God equips us to do his will. 

(A small portion of the Verde group)

     The three volunteers that are in my group have been so helpful! Teo, Tudor, and Diana. All three of them have volunteered at camp in the past so they have a good understanding of how everything works. I also have one of the American team members in my group this week, Alaina. She is here for the week.They are all patient and willing to serve. This week would have been close to impossible without their help. 

(Alaina, Diana, & Teo)

(Goofball-Tudor)

     Every day we have an activity called "Team Time" where we talk about the Lord and get to know each other. On Tuesday I asked my kids, "Who is Jesus to you?". One girl, Ileana, said, "Jesus is the reason why I am here today". She told me that every summer she comes to camp and her leader (Intern)   reminds her of how much God loves her. She was abandoned by her parents when she was about 10 years old but she has an incredible perspective on life. I couldn't believe it when she said, "I'm glad that I live in the children's home because if I lived with my parents ,(Aka if she had never been abandoned), I never would have been able to come to camp and I never would have learned about Jesus". Her story, and so many others, inspire me on a daily basis. Unfortunately, not every kid has faith like Ileana. Please continue to pray for those who are lost!
   Tonight was our first night of "Youth Group" with the LOC kids. This will be a weekly event that we get to do with them. We have prepared messages, games, and fun activities for them to do with us every Thursday. We decided to focus all the messages on attributes of God. Tonight was "God is Holy". In future weeks we will talk about how God is faithful, God is just, God is a protector, etc..
Thursday nights are a really cool opportunity for us to spend intentional time with the LOC kids. Every summer they get to go to Livada's camp and every sunday they go to church BUT they have never experienced anything like youth group. Only a few of them claim to be Christians. (Just a reminder, these are the kids who live in Livada's two private group homes). 

(Youth group with the LOC kids)

   Wow-It feels good to almost have a week of camp under my belt. Thank you for your prayers and encouragement..it means so much to me and has really made a huge difference in the way this summer has gone so far.

Wild West Adventure

Tomorrow is the first day of camp! We have been working hard to get everything ready. Our first American team consists of 3 people so it is going to be a crazy week. Every week a team from the U.S. will be coming to help with camp. They vary in number and this is the smallest team we will be working with. We have 80 kids coming this week-AH! At this point we are as ready as we will ever be. The theme for this summer is “Wild West” (in Romania?) so everything we will be doing correlates with that theme. We have western skits, western games (such as pin the tail on the HORSE) and western crafts. We’ve definitely had a few good laughs at the whole concept.

Another source of laughter has come from the ongoing battle with the Romanian language. Linguistics is NOT my forte…although sometimes I like to think I can speak Spanish. This is where the translators come in handy! Camp would be impossible without them. Most of them are high school students who have decided to volunteer with Livada. Additionally, most of them do not know the Lord. It’s a cool side ministry that Livada has developed. It is not uncommon for a translator to come to know the Lord as a result of translating the gospel. How awesome!

 All in all, the Romanian staff has done an incredible job planning the summer. In the past, the American branch of Livada’s staff has planned the camp curriculum. This is the first summer for everything to be placed in the hands of Livada’s Romanian partners.  

            Now that things are kicking into high gear I will probably only be able to post once or twice a week but I will do my best to keep my blog up to date with everything that is going on here!

In the meantime, I would really appreciate your support through prayer! It’s truly an incredible tool. Here are a few things to be praying for:

·      Please pray for our American team of 3-that they have the energy to pour out everything they have with the confidence that the Lord will sustain them.

·      The volunteer translators who do not know the Lord

·      That things would run smoothly at camp! It’s going to be a trial and error week

·      For patience and self control when things don’t go the way I planned-It’s inevitable :)

·      Pray for the kids who are coming to camp this week. Pray that they hear the gospel with a receptive heart. Without going into specifics, this particular group of kids has been through a lot in the past year. 

Precious in His Sight

The 12 of us! It's too fun getting to live with them

Today we visited the hospital for abandoned babies and toddlers. I can’t put into words how heart breaking it was to see the pain in those beautiful children. “Break my heart for what breaks yours” are lyrics to a Christian song that are beyond applicable for this experience. It was a mix of emotions to be able to play with them and love on them. I’m studying child development at school and one of the things that I’ve learned is how crucial development is during the first few years of life. The lack of interaction with other people is so detrimental both physically and psychologically. The older children, who were about 2-3 years in age, were not at all where they should be developmentally and many, if not most, of them will have emotional and social disorders for the rest of their lives. Some will also have physical disabilities as a result of the neglect they have experienced. We were able to spend a few hours playing with them and holding them-it went by way too fast! When we had to leave I was caught off guard by how upset the babies were. The minute I put little Romeo (He’s in one of the pictures) back into his crib he started to sob. The babies cried and cried when we left..It was all I could do not to react in a similar manner.  Luckily I’ll be able to go back and visit them several more times this summer! I can already tell that spending time there will be one of my favorite parts of working with Livada.

(Romeo)

(Adina)

(Tibi)

(Kara & Tibi)

            I’ll never know or be able to understand why I was born into an incredible family when I could EASILY be in their place. God’s sovereignty is something that I had to remind myself of when I started to compare the life I’ve been blessed with to the current situation of those babies.

Psalm 143:8 “Let the morning bring me word of your unfailing love, for I have put my trust in you.”

All In a Days Work

Salut!(Hello)

The past two days have been a test of my weed pulling abilities, bathroom cleaning skills, and overall maintenance competency. There is so much work to do! I am in awe of how hard the Romanian staff has worked these past few months. The interior of the house has been completely remodeled and now we have started to clean up the outside. You wouldn’t believe how many weeds we have pulled. It’s starting to look like a home! In case I didn’t’ do a good job of explaining our current status I will summarize for you. Until June 25^th (when camp starts) we will mainly be:

·      Renovating and cleaning up Livada’s new housing facility.  This giant house is where teams will stay when they come from the U.S. to volunteer in various Livada ministries (primarily camp). This is also where the 12 interns are living for the summer.

·      Prepping camp supplies-crafts, games, skit materials, bible study materials, etc..

·      Setting up Vetca. Vetca (Vet-skuh) is a small town about an our away from Targue Mures where Livada owns some land. This land is used on the last day of camp. We will be taking the kids there every Friday, which is the last day of each camp session.

·      Prepping for “Youth Group” which the interns will hold every Thursday night specifically for the kids who live in Livada’s private group homes (LOC). This is different than the day camp we will be holding for at-risk gypsy children and other state group homes.

One of the most important things that Livada strives to do is stress the gospel in all things. Something that has been weighing heavily on my heart is this-How do you tell someone that God is good and that he loves them when they have experienced unimaginable things? Not only that, but how do you convince a child that they are loved when they don’t have any picture of what love is? To many, love is either cheap or something they have never truly experienced. I guess my fear is that I won’t adequately communicate the depth of the gospel. I know that I have been called to obedience in proclaiming the gospel but that ultimately it is God's grace that changes lives. All I can do is be faithful in that and not let the fear of being ineffective keep me from being proactive.

This fear has pushed me to recognize the power of prayer and how ineffective ministry is without it.

Several years ago, when Livada was rather young, a boy intern was assigned to work in the abandoned baby hospital. He knew that these babies and toddlers would have no understanding of the gospel so he asked his Livada administrator what he should do. The administrator told him to pray over every child, every day. This is exactly what the intern did. He spent his days at the baby hospital in prayer. He prayed that they would find a family who loved them and who loved Jesus and that they would grow up to be followers of Christ.

Several years later, after this intern had graduated college, he ran into the Livada supervisor who had encouraged him to pray for the Romanian babies. The supervisor and his wife were so excited to see this intern and share with him their good news-they had adopted! Two brothers from one of the orphanages that Livada works with. After they showed the intern the pictures of their two new sons he fell silent and walked into another room. When he returned he had several baby pictures in his hand that he took during his time at the baby hospital. The pictures were of the two adopted sons! He had prayed for them every day. WOW.

I had chills when I heard that story. PRAYER is so important. Please be praying that God is glorified through the lives of the children who I am so humbled to be able to serve this summer. 

Simply Living

We received all but ONE of our bags! Having to go several days without our luggage was a blessing in disguise..I had no idea how thankful I would be for something as simple as a clean pair of socks. renovations on Casa Rene (Livada's new housing facility) are coming along slowly but surely. The portion of the house where the Interns are living is finished but we only have the bare essentials. Bunk beds, a kitchen table, shower curtains, refrigerator and a coffee pot. It's been incredible to see that YES, life goes on without a couch, chairs to sit in, or anything else that relates to living comfortably. 

Us having coffee our first morning here

Yesterday we took our first trip to one of the near by Gypsy villages, called Ogra. Many of the kids who will be coming to Livada's day camp will be from Ogra. When we pulled up in our vans we had an entourage of children waiting for us! It took them no time at all to each grab one of our hands and pull us towards the village. We were able to see their home as we walked with them through the dusty streets. The next few hours we spent there were occupied with playing soccer, learning their favorite games, and laughing with them at our incompetency with the Romanian language. It was such a joy to be with them and learn about their lives.

(In Ogra)

This is Isabella! She couldn't be more precious. (In Ogra)

We were also able to go meet the 21 kids (several are siblings) who live year round in Livada's private group homes. They were hilarious. Over the course of the summer we will be spending time with them several times a week. I'm excited to see how those relationships develop! 

Land of the Roma

The long wait is over! After a day and a half of traveling we’ve made it safely to Romania! When we landed all I could see from the plane was hill after hill after hill carpeted in every shade of green; it was a warm welcome. When you travel and go to a foreign country there is always the small thought of, “What if they lose my bag…”. I tried my hardest to keep that thought away until we arrived at the CLUJ airport in Romania and found out that the airline had misplaced ALL of our team’s luggage. All 30+ bags. Such is life right? Despite that minor set back I could not be more thrilled to be here! The house where we (12 Interns) are staying is located just outside of Targu-Mures. It is absolutely beautiful here. It took us about two hours of driving to reach TM but I didn't mind it one bit; there was way to much to see! The country side looks as if it's been untouched by time, which is more than I can say for the infrastructure of the small towns we passed through. Every structure looks like it has been around for years and years. Aged brick and crumbling red tiled roofs dot the countryside. 

Tomorrow is our first full day here in TM. Livada was blessed with a new facility to host volunteers and team members but renovations were desperately needed. The section of this house where we are staying is livable and has been repaired to a certain extent but the rest of the house still has a long way to go. We will spend the next week getting the house ready and preparing camp for the kids-Let the games begin!