gypsies.

The other day we were walking to the most beautiful and breathtaking park (the third largest natural park in Europe) for games with a portion of the kids coming to camp. It was about fourty-five minutes away, so as we walked Lisa told Cassidy and I about the Gypsies. I had never really thought of them except what I have seen in movies or heard of their deep and beautiful music. But as Lisa explained, the Gypsies came from India and are not looked kindly upon. (for example, In World War II they were targeted along with the jews, homosexuals, and invalid.) They do not have Romanian citizenship and do not really follow the laws of Romania. Lisa told me to talk to our host family to see how they view the Gypsies and about their history. For this reason I will elaborate on how this topic showed us a small bit of the character of the people we are working with. One morning our host family (of Hanna and I) and another host family (of Esther, Mackensy, and Tess) let us wake up early to go to a market for clothing. It is run by Gypsies and quite inexpensive. While we were there we saw the compassion and love that they showed to those that are viewed as the "lowest" in their society. At the end of our time there, instead of a sardonic thank you, they chatted with this one lady and were more kind than most are to even storekeepers in america. I have such great respect for the people of Dan's church youthgroup they are simply amazing and have such great influence in this city.

hope all are doing well!

audra

Hot dogs and honey

Greetings from Romania,

It's your friend Lizzi. The other day during breakfest at our host family something quite funny happened. Bryanna and I sat down to a table full of food. On the table was bread, cheese, sausage slices, hot dogs, butter, sugar, tea and honey. We took the food we felt comfortable eating (the bread and hot dogs and began to eat) the hot dogs were stuck together in pairs so we each took two. When we had finished one our host girl told us the honey was good with the bread, but she pointed to it and from my angle it looked like she was pointing at the hot dogs. So I decided to try it. I put some honey on my plate, thinking this was an Romanian treat. The daughter, DeAnna and mother, Carmen both looked at me like I was crazy. They asked if I ate this at home and I replied an awkward, "..no" realizing this was not an Romanian food, "I just wanted to try it...?" Actually it wasn't as bad as I thought, but it does have a weird after taste. When we were done eating Bryanna and I laughed about the whole thing. We went to church and had team time later that morning and it came up when the team was telling funny stories and EVERYONE told me I HAD to post it on the blog. So there's my story, thank you for all your prayers and support, it means a lot to us!

Love, Lizzi

Aqua Project

Hey Friends and Family!
Yesterday we took a bus for 2 hours until we reached a medium sized town with a super-long name I can't pronounce. While we were there, we did a clean-up Madison Mission style project called Aqua Project. We picked up trash in the park and around the city. Laying in the trash, we found a tiny dying puppy laying under a car. We adopted it and took it back to Craiova with us. It didn't make it through the night. Side-by-side with Romanians from various churches, we tidied up the city. After a two course lunch, we ventured down to the longest river in Europe, the Danube. Across the river, we could see Serbia. We dipped our feet in and a few brave people [Paul and Daniel] went swimming in the most likely toxic water. After that, we painted the walls of a stadium kind of area and prepared for the concert that was planned for later in the evening. Dinner was simpler than lunch; we had salami and salty cheese sandwiches. We wandered around the dock and then found a spot to have a soda. Finally, at 9:00pm we grabbed seats in the stadium and the concert began. The music was great. There were two bands that played. The first was a christian rock group and the second was more mellow worship music. It was really cool to see all the people coming into the freshly painted stadium since it hadn't been used in around 20 years. After the concert, we were super tired and we piled onto the bus. We reached Craiova at 2:00 am, it was a really late night. Today we slept in really late. I woke up at noon, but some of the team awoke at 2:00pm. We're doing great [especially with the extra sleep] and feeling great.
Miss you all,
Cassidy Trier

Camp: Urgent Need for Prayer and Funds

In the past few posts, we have been writing about our opportunity to take students who do not have the personal financial means (many of them orphans) to a mountain camp in northern Romania for a week. As many of you know, the primary reason we came to Romania was to serve at this English/Sports camp. All this week we have been preparing and planning for it, spending evenings building relationships with the 50 or so students, not including ourselves or the Romanian leadership team.

Each year Daniel Vieru sends out support letters all over the world in hopes to provide this camp opportunity to students who would never otherwise have the chance for something like this - in hopes that a week-long trip would build relationships that would change these students lives forever. Every year, he raises thousands of dollars to send these students to camp. Last night, while we were celebrating together over traditional Romanian dinner, he got a much anticipated call from the partner church receiving funds in Minnesota (he had been waiting all week) - the news was not good. He found out that some of the money they were depending on did not come through. We realize now that we are short about what it takes to support about 15-20 students to come to camp. The last 24 hours has been a challenge to say the least. We have considered all the options, including the possibility of canceling the camp. After prayer and discussion as the two teams, we have decided to trust God and move forward with camp preparations in hopes that the financial means would be provided for not just those students who we expect to go, but that every student interested would have the opportunity to participate in camp (regardless of their financial situation).

We then met as the Blackhawk team alone and decided to trust God with this and how to move forward. We have changed some of our plans over the next two days to free up some of our budget to go towards camp and also have considered tithing our own spending money to go towards students at camp. We also wanted to make our church community aware of this situation and give each of you (and the greater body) an opportunity to join us in prayer that all of these students would be able to come to camp. While we understand that many of you have sacrificed much for this trip already, we are also asking that if it is financially possible, you consider giving towards this opportunity as well - whatever that means.

This was included in an email that Kristen Emerson sent out today after we spoke with her:

"Each students registration fee is $175. Consider sponsoring a Romanian student to participate in the week of camp. As you know, we are going to be in a long-term partnership with this camp in Romania, and this would be a way to further strengthen and support their mission. If you could commit to sponsor one student’s participation—or half—or anything, that would really help us out.

The camp starts on Sunday, so if you are considering donating money to sponsor a kid to participate in the life-changing camp, we need to know by Saturday night (yes, in two days). Please email your commitment to kemerson@blackhawkchurch.org by Saturday night at 10 pm *(or earlier), so we can contact the crew in Romania to tell them how many additional students can participate. (We will reply to let you know how to designate the funds; if you want to pay by credit card online, that may be an option.)"

Thank you for everything you've done for us, especially for your prayers - they make a world of difference as we face each day with new blessings and challenges. As for tomorrow - we're off to an early start (just 6 hours from now!) to a project 2 hours south from here on the Romania-Bulgaria border. There is a service day similar to what we do for Madison Missions (doing a range of community service projects) that we will take part in along with our Romanian student-leadership team. There is a concert celebration at the end of the service day. It should be a good day. We hope it further binds us together as a unified team as we serve alongside one-another. We'll hopefully post again tomorrow night. Until then, noapte buna!

-Lief and the team

A Note From Tess...

Hey guys! It's Tess here. So far, our time in Romania has been awesome. We've met so many nice people and started to build relationships with them. For the past few days, we've started to plan for the camp. We split up into teams according to what part of camp we're working on (games, crafts etc.) It's been really fun to work with Daniel's leadership team from the church in planning too.
Last night, we went on another trip to the park to play games with the campers. We had a chance to walk through the park and talk to the people to get to know them better before we head to camp with them. They are really great people and some of them have amazing life stories. After walking through the park, we went out to dinner at a traditional Romanian restaurant with Daniel's leadership team. It was a great experience and the food was really good. During dinner, there was a lot of spontaneous Romanian dancing. It was so much fun. It was good to get a taste of the culture here.

Here are some prayer requests for our team:
-Energy as we have a very early day tomorrow
-Money for camp for some of the youth and orphans that can't afford it.
-Ani , a woman from the church who is dying of cancer. It's very hard for everyone involved.
-Boldness for our team to engage in conversations with Romanians who know little to no English.
-That camp will be a life changing experience for all of the youth involved.
-That we'll see God working through everything here.
-That we will grow in our faith.

Thank you so much for all of the prayer. It has really helped us out a lot knowing that there are people on the other side of the world praying for us. We love and miss you all very much and can't wait to see you. Keep the comments coming!
Love, Tess

Craiova (Day 3) - Pictures and a Quick Note

Here is the larger batch of pictures I promised - more to come. Notice especially the series of pictures where the birthday boy is hoisted in the air - apparently John felt it necessary to show the Romanians the American birthday tradition of "Birthday Spankings" (All 18 - and that last one was a pretty good one). The last two days have been incredible for our team (we've bonded well with each other, with the Romanian leadership team, and with next week's campers that we've met in the park the last two days). We'll try to have a few students post about the their experiences in the past two days tomorrow. Today was a LATE night - traditional Romanian dinner and dancing - quite the celebration. You'll hear more about this later. For now, noapte buna!

Madison-Craiova Partnership

We’ve now spent a day and a half in the city of our host church, the Biserica Eveanghelica Libera (Evangelical Free Church of Craiova). While we did not spend too much time in Bucharest, I believe that Craiova is a city that is much easier to love as it was less visibly impacted by the staunch architectural vision of Nicolai Ceausescu (Romanian dictator for 30+ years). We’ve learned that he felt it was important to strip Romania of its culture and identity by tearing down old buildings and neighborhoods and building huge ugly cement apartment buildings to house the masses. We saw many of these buildings in Bucharest. Craiova, on the other hand, for the most part has been much more preserved and remains a beautiful Eastern-European city with a lot of character.

On the three hour trip from Bucharest, I rode with Daniel Vieru, the youth pastor we are working with. He spoke to me about the history of Romania, growing up as a teen during the revolution, and the repercussions for a Christian church in both communist and post-communist Romania. He told me about how 45 years of communist rule had specifically affected children and teens in Romania. Even after the revolution in 1989 and the fall of Ceausescu and communism, major problems persisted. For the first time in decades, the poor majority was able to escape Romania more easily and many left behind their children in hopes to make a living wage in the West. Abandonment had already been a major issue in Romania, but this only heightened once the borders were open. As a youth pastor for the past 10 years, Daniel has experienced this first hand, as many of his students are orphans themselves. He has also started a non-profit organization called Humanitas Pro Deus (People for God) which assists older orphans who are ready to live in their own apartment, move into one with little or no costs (at first). They teach them basic life skills (cooking, budgeting, getting and keeping a job) as they slowly transition them into a self-sufficient lifestyle. This is an amazing ministry that has impacted so many orphans (some we have met since coming to town - some are now leaders in the church). And there is the potential for so much more to be done. I couldn’t help but wonder how our Blackhawk church community could be part of this particular ministry in the future, offering both physical and financial support with the possibility of adult teams being involved as well. We also talked about the possibility of having Daniel and his leadership visit our church in the US with a similar vision as our own trip here. He is excited about this possibility and what kind of impact that might have on his leadership team (a group of 10 older HS students and young adults who are passionate about ministry in Romania). I am excited to see how their leadership team might impact our ministry and our lives during this “reversed” short-term trip.

Since coming to Craiova we have learned a lot about our camp experience next week. We will be traveling to the mountains with about 80 people total. This includes our own 20, Daniel’s 10 leaders and 25 students, and 25 completely new students, most of whom are orphans from the city that have shown interest and have been supported to come to camp with us. We met many of these students tonight as we played games (Ultimate Frisbee & “Energy”- a Romanian game) in the city park. It was so great to start to get to know them so early. They are a lovable bunch and we had a great time. I can’t wait to see how camp might impact both their lives and the faith journeys of us all as we are challenged to grow together at camp next week. What an amazing opportunity we have here in Craiova. Many of these kids have been rejected and abandoned their whole lives, with no parent around to raise them, love them, care for them. You can easily see how ministry specifically to youth in this country is so contextually imperative - that these students would know about a God who not only accepts them, but knows every thing about them, who loves and pursues each of them deeply. I think we are all starting to realize a little bit about why we came here, and why we should continue to come to and receive teams from Romania. What an awesome thing we’ve found ourselves a part of. Praise God.

Thanks for your prayers and love. It’s making a huge difference over here. We’ll hopefully put up a bunch of pictures in the morning when we get the camera (I put up a few pics from Paul's camera and a video in the meantime). Until then – noapte buna! Goodnight!

-Lief