I remember you!

The thing I both love AND hate the most about Romania is that there are about a gazillion intrinsically different cultures all found within a few miles of each other. The cities are each different from each other, the villages all have their own special dynamics, the country is different from the Suburbs, the Romanians are different from the Hungarians, the Gypsies are different from everyone, and the Gypsies have amongst themselves different tribes which in turn have different customs and cultural anomalies.

In Salaj I speak Hungarian, in Bihor and Cluj I speak Romanian. (Salaj, Bihor and Cluj are the different judets - or counties)

However this time I ended up TRANSLATING, which is good because it means that my brain grew a few more wrinkles and helps broaden thinking and communicating abilities, but on the flip side encourages headaches. ;-)
Anyway all that to say, I'm in Sancrieau right now :-D It has been SOOO nice to see the Hagiu family again, and hear Silvana's stories and Nicu's laugh.

The British Pest and Ramona took me to the train station and saw me on my way, both insisting that I call them when I got to my destination. :-) Yes, mom and dad!

The countryside changed from the outskirts of the Panonian plain into the rolling hills and small mountains of the bigginings of the Carpathian mountain range. I went out of the little room/car that our seats were in (think the train on "Narnia" and that's what I rode on) into the main 'hallway' of our car and opened the window and had a fun time feeling the breeze and watching the landscape zoom by. We passed lots of little villages with shirtless, browned men fishing or working in their fields, old women sitting on benches thinking their thoughts as we whizzed by, little kids looking up in surpise and waving and laughing when I waved back.

At each village the train would stop, and a conductor would walk to the door, watch to see if passengers were getting off or on, and then wave a yellow flag to the train driver (there is a technical word for it but I forget. BAH!) to signal we could keep moving. There were two conductors, and one had a very sour expression and said nothing the whole time. The other one wore a cap and suit and looked at me curiously as I was apparently the only passenger who so appreciated the scenery. Finally he asked in Romanian,
"Miss, why aren't you sitting down?"

Because I'm a hyperactive American who is totally jazzed to go work in a Gypsy village, of course! I thought. But instead said in Romanian,

"I just like to look out the window."

He laughed and said, "Then stay there at the window!" and would smile and shake his head whenever he walked by after that.

Silvana met me at the station and we hugged, and then began a rather nervous ride back to her house as she has only been driving for a few months.

The family was glad to see me but shy, and I was feeling a little shy myself. Nicu, Silvana and I sat at the kitchen table and tried to fit in as many updates as we could in a half an hour, and I emptied my bags of the vitamins, books and facepaints that I've been lugging all over kingdom come. Silvana was so blessed by the Ibiprophin I brought, as here one pill costs about $.75 at the least.

I brought a book on Gypsies by Jan Yoors which is awesome, and Silvana grabbed that right away, and another book on "Making Disciples of Oral learners" which Nicu gave a woot and grabbed as soon as he saw it. "MINE!" he laughed. "You know, I am like those birds on Finding Nemo! MINE MINE MINE!!"

(L2R: Silvana, Nicu, and Razvan, the pastor in Cluj)

I told them about my idea to write songs in the Gypsy style of singing to teach our Gypsies instead of telling them Bible stories. If a Gypsy is told a story, they will tell it again with exaggerations or important details added or forgotten. This is fine unless you are telling a BIBLE STORY. However, when they tell their HISTORIES, I think they SING it, and the tribe learns the song word-for-word, and it is told repeatedly unchanged. "Yeah, thats a good idea, but who is going to do the singing?" Nicu asked. "I'll do it." I said. I showed them the face paints I had brought and told them about my idea to teach the older Gypsy girls to do the face paints with us, and that way 'kill two birds with one stone;' that is, teaching the older girls the basics of holding writing utensils and also giving the kids a fun time.

"That's a great idea. Hey, do you want to take the kids ministry while you're here?" Nicu asked. "Uhhh.... sure?" I said. So... hey guess what. I'm the new kid's minister. lol. So pray for my Romanian language to grow incredibly so I can give the kids a fair telling of the Gospel!!

We heard a car coming and Silvana said it was Fery, our Gypsy brother who is one of the chieftans of the village and year-old, zealous Christian/Pastor-to-be. Quickly we stuffed all the vitamins in a bag and put it in a corner and cleared all the books into a nice pile. We then went to the door and greeted the 6ft 3 inch tall bear of a Gypsy man who bounced out of the red sports car.
"Pace Domnului!" He thundered. (Pace Domnului: It means like Peace of God with you, and yes Ramona I know my spelling and grammer suck. ;-D)
We laughed and returned the greeting. He shook Nicu's hand and gave him a bear hug then caught sight of me.

(Fery is the big guy in the plaid shirt reclining on the grass. His son is sitting on the guitar case)

"Hey!" he yelled. "Aren't you that girl from the States who was here last year?" I laughed and nodded. "What! You liked the Gypsies so much you just couldn't stay away, hunh?" he laughed and walked up and the next thing I knew I was envaloped in a huge crushing bear hug. "Welcome back!"
I thanked him and tried not to show that I felt like my ribs had almost been broken. Love hurts I guess. ;-)
His brother had to go to Timisoara that night, and Feri was picking up Nicu so they could drive together on the way back. It was four hours one way, and the would be driving all night.
They left and Silvana and I talked some more before I took my stuff to my room and then came back down for a bath. We went to bed after midnight as we were so busy still catching up that we lost track of the time.

(me on the stairs up to my room, in the loft/attic. The window leads to the kitchen)

Nicu didn't get back until 6:30 AM, slept for two hours, and then we all got up and got ready to go to church at the small Calvary Chapel in Cluj Napoca, which is an hour drive away. The Church was started by a Romanian, an American was sent from the States to help out, and the church grew some, but the American had to go back to the States and now the Church consists of Razvan and his family, another family, a University student, and the Hagiu's go every other week. So... its a teeny tiny church plant. But it was sooo good. I was able to understand the concept of the Sermon and actually helped Razvan out when he was trying to use an example from the movie "Princess Bride" and forgot Wesley's name. Hehehe!!! See! "Princess Bride" is such a classic, they use it in Romania even for SERMON illustrations! Made my day, anyway. I love that movie. Okay back to the mission work... :-D

(a street in Cluj Napoca. It's FILLED with miles of apartment blocks)

It was funny because again when I walked in, Razvan and his wife were like, "HEY! Aren't you that girl who was here last year? Welcome back!"

Razvan said I looked like a girl he met once at the Calvary Chapel Bible college in Hungary, and that both that girl and I were "like queens" in our mannerisms. I think he was trying to say graceful. I've gotten a lot of compliments on how beautiful I am since coming here, which strikes me as funny because I've always considered myself good looking or pretty but not BEAUTIFUL or GORGEOUS or anything. SO pray that I don't get a big head!!!

(To the Right is Anca, Razvan's wife, who said my Romanian was excellent and to not be afraid of talking, even if my grammar was terrible. lol)

After Church we went to the mall or "Cornea Shop" to find a female Parakeet for Naomi (Nicu and Silvana's daughter) and her male parakeet, and ended up looking at a dog show that was there. I liked the Chow's the best. :-) We couldn't find a healthy bird, so Silvana bought us ice cream and then we dragged Naomi and Leo - their son - away and drove the hour back to Sancrieau for a brief lunch of sandwhiches. Naomi and Leo and I played "I spy" in Romanian, which helped me in learning some sentance structuring and different words for colors and things in the car and outside. I learned "Yarba" means grass (not how you spell it) and "Yeo vud" (again, phonetic spelling) means "I spy/I see".

After a quick lunch, Silvana, Nicu and I climbed back into the dilapidating Dacia and made our bumpy way to the Gypsy village in Sacueau.

(some guys relaxing in the shade while we hammered out a conversation with Lemoia's help)

Silvana and I found Lemoia, a woman who became a Christian last year when I was here, sitting in the shade with some guys.

"Do you remember her?" Silvana asked me.

"How could I forget Lemon!!" I asked, calling her by her English name.

"Hey... I remember you!" Lemon said, her eyes lighting up with recognition. "You are that girl... from America, right?" she asked. Silvana went to go find someone but said I could stay and Lemon and the guys insisted I stay with them. So Lemon translated my broken Romanian into better Romanian or Gypsy while the guys asked me where I was from, if I spoke Spanish (most of them have been migrant workers in Spain, and Silvana said all foreign lanugaes are Spanish in their minds) how old I was, if I was married, how much it cost to fly to Romania, how many hours I was in the plane, did I like Romania, etc. I was glad Lemon was there because when they started asking if I was married Lemon gave them a long look and they changed the subject.

"You are so beautiful." Lemon said at one point.

"Thanks, so are you!" I replied. She really is. I don't have a good picture of her yet, but she is a GORGEOUS woman, and very polite and graceful. I think she is only about 23 or 24, but she loves the Lord and became a Christian through her home and her mom being delivered of Demonic Oppression and attacks.

(Me and Bubba)

Silvana called us up the hill for the Church service to start and I saw Bubba and Feri. "Bubba" means Grandmother in Gypsy.

"Do you remember this girl?" Silvana asked Bubba.

"Of course I do! How is it possible to forget her! I remember you, you came to my house and drank my coffee and took some video clips of you playing with the kids."

"Thats right! And I watched that movie a lot when I was in the States and thought of you." I replied.

"Do you want some coffee now?" she asked. I asked if she had any and she handed me her cup of coffee. I prayed for protection against any diseases or anything and drank deeply. You know on Hidalgo when Frank is in the tent of the Bedoin Sheik and downs the coffee, and the sheik asks of its too strong? Frank says, "Back home we toss a horseshoe in the pot, and when it stands up straight, we say it's done." That about describes Gypsy coffee. Toss a horseshoe in the pot along with a bag of sugar. ;-) But it was good, and I told Bubba so.

Feri saw me and said hi, and that he had only gotten three hours of sleep like Nicu.

"That's what you do when you are a Medical Student!" I teased. He laughed and agreed and we started church. He had trouble staying awake, and at one point one of the women got up and started hitting his legs with a small stick. He laughed and sat up straight, but later reclined and I saw his eyes closed. He opened them and saw me staring and smiled and sat up.

After the service Nicu was hit with nausea and a headache, so we went back to Sancrieau. As soon as we walked in the door the pipe to the toilet, which had been leaking before, burst. Poor Nicu spent the next hour or two trying to fix it and we had to turn off the water.

"Do you think it is interesting, Rachel, that Nicu feels fine the whole day, but as soon as the service is done he feels sick. And this pipe bursts the moment we walk in the house? Now the only thing missing is for the landlady to come and see her bathroom like this." Silvana told me.We both were thinking the same thing: Spiritual warfare. Praise God the landlady DIDN'T come, but we all went to bed at 10. I ended up praying for a few hours for protection and for some friends. Fear hit me as soon as I left the house and I knew I needed to pray for the Hagiu's and for myself. So prayers for this would be appreciated!!

(The ladies talking after the service)

This morning we prayed for the British Pest as he is going through a rough time and Nicu and Silvana prayed for God to bring him here to Sancrieau so they could meet him and talk with him.
"He sounds like an interesting guy. I would like to meet him and get his perspective on things." Nicu said.

We also prayed for Feri. The car broke on his and Nicu's way back, and now two of his brothers and trying to make some sort of scandal about it.

Feri is one of five brothers, and was the most feared of all of them. Even the rich Gypsies feared making him angry. Now he is a Christian, and it is a huge testimony amongst the Gypsies in this whole area. He is not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but God is using him mightily with Feri's childlike faith and deep generosity. Please pray that God will protect and strengthen him through this time and keep him from backsliding. His brothers have cut his electricity and are harrassing him. But no one dares to do anything serious to him, because they know what he was. An example would be a dog irritated him once, so he took a buzz saw and cut the animal in two.

Ok time to get off the computer. Quick recap, Prayer requests are:

~God to continue to use Silvana, Nicu and me amongst the Gypsies. To educate us about the Gypsy ways and His ways, and give us HIS wisdom and discernment. We really need discernment.

~Protection, strength, and blessings on Feri and his immediate family. And that his brothers will come to know the Lord.

~For my friend the British Pest, that God will bring him here. He - my friend - has seen some very very bad examples of Christianity, and I want him to see the Hagiu's and their faith and joy. He needs peace and Joy, and he wants to hear God's voice clearly. So pray that God speaks to him clearly in the next week.

~For me as I take the kid's ministry. For ideas, wisdom while I work with the kids, and please pray for my language. The Grammar is hard in Romanian (not as hard as Hungarian tho!) and I've already had a conflict with Ramona when I was trying to say one thing in Romanian and she thought I was insulting her.

Okay time to get off the computer. God bless!!

~PrincessOuch~

Update

Thought I'd just kill two birds with one stone and get my blog updated as well as my 'college life newsletter' sent out for this.... time frame. ;-D Have lamed out as far as updating people regularly via email. Woops. Anyway, hope you enjoy reading about the crazy adventures we have in Bible College. Hehehe.

Dear Friends,

Well, the Semester is about over. Sorry for my lame-ing out on "ya'll" as far as this newsletter goes. My apologies.

Today we went "surveying" for a class and also to help out the church my pastor goes to. It was pretty interesting, going to "inner city" Louisville. Micah, Kristi and I were on a team and walked down a street that was surrounded by about three to five bars. Woot. I have done door-to-door stuff for as long as I can remember. Selling Girl Scout cookies or some sort of pocket-change/fundraiser catalog thingy, collecting canned foods for the local food pantry, etc. was all part of the normal growing up activities in Eastern New Mexico and Ohio. Micah's parents are missionaries in South America, so he was pretty cool with whatever as well. Poor Kristi, however, is from a good homeschooling family from Minnesota where one simply DOES NOT DO THIS. One does NOT go into rough-er neighborhoods and one does NOT knock on doors unless selling something or one is Jehovah's witness or Mormon. She wasn't wierd about it, just extreemely nervous as only her sweet-hearted self can be. And she had just gotten over the flu, which didn't help anything.
We started off by her saying something about how the weather was perfect for someone who had just gotten over the flu, and Micah took off his huge neon-yellow coat and put it on her while she argued with me about putting it on. It was rather reminicent of me trying to boss my younger sister Kendra and reason her into doing something she was determined NOT to do. Kristi humphed almost exactly like Kendra does and good naturedly snarled, "oh you big sister you!" At the end of the day she was glad she listened to me as we all got chilled and damp and she would most definately have gotten sick again if she hadn't taken the jacket (I restrained from telling her "I told-you-so" when I was with her, so that's why I did it here. Forgive me for bragging over my sagacity and wisdom ) Kristi has eight younger brothers and sisters so wasn't used to being 'big-sistered'.

We then drove to our assigned street. The first house reminded me very much of a Gypsy house, as the living room was about the same size, smelled almost the same way, and had almost the same decor. It was very messy with a new TV blaring in the corner and stuff tossed hither and thither in no apparent order. Every surface was covered in clutter and the windows were covered in plastic wrap or cheap plastic sheets serving as glass. The lady we talked with looked like she was still in her teens but had a very cute golden haired two year old running around.
We asked her what she thought the community struggled with, what problems it had, what she thought Jesus would do if He were to go to that neighborhood to fix it, what she would look for in a church were she to go to one, what the local church could do to help the community.
She wasn't really sure on any of the answers, but she said she guessed they could help the gangs to stop shooting people as there was a lot of shooting going on in that neighborhood.
We didn't write the survey, so it was a little akward when we said, "what are the needs of this community" and then said "what do you think Jesus would do to fix the problems?" We got the same reaction from just about everyone. Their eyebrows raised, they sort of blinked, gupled, thought for a minute, then said, "Well, I don't know exactly. Fix the problems I guess."

The main problems voiced were bad housing (which we agreed with), bad drug problem (which we didn't see blatant evidence of, but thought very likely) too much shooting (which we thankfully had no experience with while we were there) and programs for children that parents could participate in and learn how to interact with their children were needed.
I thought it was interesting they all said they really wanted programs to teach their kids and to teach them how to teach their kids.
They all also said that the reason the local churches weren't being attended was due to laziness on the community's part. They didn't think the church was too much to blame, they were just too lazy to get up and go on Sunday morning.
There was one point where two guys in a pickup truck slowed down and stopped the truck at the corner and checked us out for about five minutes. I was knocking on a door when Kristi said rather nervously,
"We're being watched."
"Yup." Micah said and knocked on the door again. "Welcome to Portland!" He said. Portland is the name of a road that runs through that community. Portland is also the by-word for 'inner city, disfunctional' for this part of the world.
But they eventually drove away and didn't say or do anything.

In all it was a good experience, I think the church got some good feed back, and the community was made aware of the fact that there is a church in the area that is trying to start ministries. There were a few points where I was like,
"Oooooohkaaaaay... Lord, protect us!" Nothing blatantly dangerous, just the guys watching us which made Kristi and me nervous.

In other news, the Church planting praxis that I'm a part of has officially decided that we are going to target the Bosnian-Herzegovnian and Ukrainian people groups that are by the church I'm becoming a member of. There are over 300 Bosnians in the area and over 100 Ukranians. We found out that the church used to have an English as a Second Language program/ministry a while ago, but since it has ended the church has recieved a lot of calls about when they are going to start it up again. So David, one of the two other guys on my team, has thought about becoming a certified ESL teacher over the summer and re-opening the program. Jordan, the other guy, wants to integrate ESL and a sports ministry. Bosnians are usually either Muslim or Orthodox, so apparently I will be taking charge of teaching and interacting with the women. David is engaged, so when his fiance-soon-to-be-wife moves here, she'll be working with me. We want to do some sort of women's fellowship, as we know a lot of the women are stay at home moms and don't get out much due to lifestyle and language/culture barriers. So if you could please be praying for the doors to open for that, we'd really appreciate it!

Academically, classes are going well. I'm taking Intro to Psychology, Ancient and Near Eastern History, Cross-cultural Evangelism, Spiritual Warfare, and English Comp 2. I'm loving all of them except for English - which is at 8 in the morning, and is soooo basic but I can't test out of it - and Psychology, as the professor and I have had rather different experiences with Psych in the Christian and Secular world. But that's okay, we've talked during and after class and have agreed to disagree. Although there have been a few times when I think I've bitten my tongue so bad it's almost bled. :-D

Alrighty well speaking of PSych class I have to go read for that class. :-S
And I need to make potatoe soup, because I and a few other girls have officially decided that we do n't care HOW much better our cafeteria is compared to other schools, WE WANT REAL, HOMECOOKED FOOD!!! That does NOT include fried chicken!

According to Kentuckians, Fried Chicken is a food group. I like fried chicken, just not EVERY SINGLE PICKING MEAL!!!!

*ahem*

Anyway, I hope your spring is going well!
God bless you all!