Last time I wrote about the journey to Moldova and our adventures at the border. This time I’m going to explain a little of what we did there, and I’m going to cheat a little by including some photos from our time there not just stuff from the case (I believe I’m allowed to break the rules if I made them myself right?).
The main bulk of the work we did out there was in two villages near where we were staying. Since there were two places to work we split into two groups of I believe 8 people each plus a couple of locals. We were sent out to work with a group of about 30 children in each of the two villages, giving them some very practical help in the form of teaching them english, and some very important help in the form of giving them the gospel! This amounted to playing lots of silly games with them to teach them english, and telling them stories (usually through the medium of drama) from the Bible to teach them the gospel.
The time spent with the children was fantastic and it was really amazing how eager they were to learn from us. It was also really great to see the other guys from my youth group getting excited about working with the children and sharing the gospel with them! Apart from the work in the two villages, we also did a bunch of stuff with the Church we were in contact with in Tintareni, they had some youth meetings in the evenings and we also took part in their main Church service. For the youth stuff we did a short drama for them and one of the youth did a short talk. Once again it was great to see them using their gifts to share something of their faith with others, very exciting stuff! I have to say, it was one of the strangest parts of the week being involved in the worship during the youth and main services. Worshipping in english whilst everyone around you is singing in a different language but to the same tune is a very weird experience!
As well as all the seriousness of the work we were doing, we had a great deal of fun together during our time there. There was an incident one night which I still laugh out loud at occasionally when I remember it; I was staying in a house with Ian, and he needed the loo in the night. There are no street lights in Moldova, so in the night you rely totally on torches. On top of that the toilets are continental, which means they are holes in the ground over which you crouch. Ian popped outside with his torch and loo roll in hand, and somehow (the details are unknown to me) managed to drop his torch down the hole. Apparently his torch was made of stern stuff, and didn’t die immediately, thus emitting a faint glow from the inside of the loo. Embarrassed, Ian attempted to cover up his mistake with some carefully placed loo roll. Unfortunately it wasn’t thick enough, so all this did was change the faint glow into a faint coloured glow. Thankfully the torch had died by the next day, but that image will be with me for some time!