Romania = Instant Humility

Returned from the missions trip to Romania on Sunday afternoon. Wow, what an amazing week. I had never been to a post-communist country before, and it was really something. Very unclean and run-down looking; lots of stray dogs running around. Very humbling environment. It's amazing what a blessed life I live. God is so much more than good to me.
We flew into Budapest Monday afternoon and got on a bus for the 6 hour ride to Beius, Romania. Beius is a town of about 12,000 people; many of which are orphans and gypsies. After arriving in Beius we were split (boys and girls) and taken to the places we would be staying for the week. I never saw where the boys were staying, but the girls were at a church, in a building that was much like a regular house. Downstairs there was a tiny kitchen and a large room with a lot of chairs-maybe for some kind of church service-and upstairs were 3 rooms and a toilet, shower, and sink. Two rooms had 2 beds each, and electric heaters. The third room had 7 cots and a wood burning heater. It was really cold because there was miscommunication between the church and Good Samaratin Beius, so the church thought we were coming Tuesday and had not turned on the heaters. Well, we turned the heaters on and began to settle in, and then the power went out. So the pastor came and flipped the fuse or whatever, and it was okay again. After he was gone it went out again, so that was it for the night. No heat and no hot water for showers. This experience in itself was quite humbling for me. I guess I think that I have the right to heat and electricity and indoor plumbing, things like this that we all take for granted. But the truth is, I am blessed to have those luxuries in my daily life. I don't deserve them any more than all of those poor people in Romania and thousands of other places, but I thank God that he more than meets my needs. Throughout the week we did various works such as scraping the paint off of the walls in an apartment, and then repainting; working in a field-shoveling, raking rocks up, chopping wood, laying cement, planting, pulling weeds; playing with children and interacting with the orphans of various ages. It's interesting-no matter what age a person is, if they grew up as an orphan, they are always referred to as an orphan. So if a person is 30 and married with a child of their own, they are still referred to as an orphan. I thought that would be degrading for the orphans, to be introduced that way, but it didn't seem to be at all.
One day we went to this amazing cave/cavern called the Bear Caves. It was awesome! Very beautiful formations of stalactites and stalagmites. We also went to an animal market, for a bit of Romanian culture. That was interesting. The animal market happens weekly and it's a pretty big deal. Everyone comes from the surrounding towns to buy and sell animals, mostly pigs, and buy potatoes and who knows what else. There were many people on the road headed to the market driving horse drawn carriages and pulling carts with pigs in them! One lady at the market had several baby pigs in her car trunk for sale. It was pretty awesome. Another cultural experience we had was the Romanian folk dancing. We were so lucky to get to watch a group of young dancers/singers do their traditional performance. That was one of my favorite things.
Food in Romania is not so good for the most part. Not a huge selection, and not a lot of vegetables really. I ate grilled chicken and boiled potatoes for dinner pretty much every night. And I often had goulash soup for a starter. Goulash is a Hungarian dish and it is fantastic! Romanians also put ketchup on their pizza instead of proper tomato sauce. Not a great idea.
The organization we worked with was Good Samaritan Beius-which was started 12 years ago by Adrian Ciorna. He lived in a big house with his mom and brothers, and saw a huge need in the orphan community. Orphans would come out of the orphanages and have no support system, no real skills to get a job, and basically just hopelessness. So the Ciorna's began taking in orphans and housing them for a month or two, and providing for their physical and spiritual needs, as well as helping them develop skills to enable each person with what they needed to get a job and help themselves. They converted the living room and an upstairs bedroom; stacking beds 3 high when needed! They had varied numbers of people, but sometimes as many as 16 living with them. The house only has one bathroom!! Adrian's mom did all of the cooking for everyone. So our group actually got to go to the Ciorna's house and see where GSB began, meet Adrian and hear him speak about the whole thing. He actually works full time for Habitat for Humanity as their National Director for Romania. It's amazing how much one or two people can change the lives of others. I love it!
Saturday we left Beius and took the bus to Budapest, where we got to spend a good few hours. Budapest is really a beautiful city with a lot of great things to see. We had dinner at this restaurant called Fatal--which means "wooden plate" in Hungarian, which serves massive quantities of food on huge serving plates. Quite a variety of choices as well. Good stuff! Definitely would like to go back there.
Sunday morning we got up early and flew back to London. So that's sort of our trip in a nutshell. Thanks for reading!