Feb
22
2008
The Village as Second Home
During my first few months living in Romania, the village became my second home, and one of the church families (the Miculas) became my second family.
After school on Fridays, I would travel by train to the village.
Friday nights, I would participate in a church-wide Bible study.
On Saturday mornings, we did work with the children from the church.
Saturday afternoons, we held youth services.
And of course, there were Sunday morning and evening services, with a youth service in between. I began spending Friday and Saturday nights in the village, at the Micula home.
The Micula family welcomed me with open arms. Brother Nelu and Sister Mariana had four children, three boys and a girl. Marius was my age. The twins, Alin and Florin were three years younger than me. Ela was the youngest, still in lower elementary. As the months went by, I began to feel as if I had a Romanian family. Marius, Alin and Florin were like my brothers, and Ela was like my sister. I looked forward to spending the weekends with them. It was always the high point of my week.
Adjusting to the rural conditions of the village often proved to be a challenge. Outhouses, wood-burning stoves, the absence of drinking water – I found myself adapting to a variety of new experiences, a new way of living that differed sharply from how I had lived all my life up until then. It was one thing to see poverty from a distance and to be taken by surprise. It was quite another thing to live in the poverty that you saw, becoming just like the people to whom you were ministering.