Today we visited with Romanian gypsys in their village outside of Beius. For those of you out of the know, gypsys are the lowest class in the Romanian (and really all of European) society. They cannot get jobs and cannot get anything from the government. They are very poor, and steal and beg out of desperation. We visited them to share the love of Jesus Christ and his message of hope.
The village was a collection of 9-11 shack houses and maybe 1-2 other town buildings. One shack was about 8×8 ft, houses a family, was cardboard (no, literally!) thin, with a collapsing “roof”. The children in this house were in and out of the REMM medical clinic all winter because of the cold. It is amazing to think a family survived the winter in that place! When we arrived in our van, the kids came runnning up to meet us. The village came out to greet us and sang us a song, accompanied by an 80 year old playing the acordian. They sang to us and greated in God’s name.
After our greeting, we sang a song, shared a devotional using a prop/example which I’ll get to in a minute, had a testimony of how life with Jesus changed them, and sang another song. We ended by asking them what they need and how we can pray for them. They said they needed a well for water. In this village, they have no source of drinking water. They must walk to a mountain spring which is atleast a mile away, collect rain run-off, or walk to some closer streams which are dirty and infested with disease. Because they barely have water for themselves, they cannot wash there cloths, something one of the woman in the village explained to us almost in tears. They asked us to pray for a well for clean water, so we did.
What was ironic, and very sad and almost shameful, is that the example used 2 bottled-water bottles. One was empty to signify our empty life and how we try to fill it with other things to satisfy and the other was a full bottle of clean, filtered water which represented Jesus and life in him. The gal doing the illustration then poured the water into the bottle to show how Jesus fills our life like the other things can’t. Afterwards, she was in tears about their desperation for water and the use of this example, and the fact we had access to clean water and could even throw it away in an illustration. Needless to say we were all moved by the encounter and all agreed to purchase a well for this village. It will only cost around $800, which is so cheap and will do so much for these people in very practical ways. We hope to arrange some of the details in the next few days and then return to tell them about the gift and explain more the significance of relationship with God through Christ.
Well, as you can see each day is impactful in so many ways, so many different ways. Thanks for the continued prayer and look back soon for more updates…
-jeremy
