Moldova Missions Trip – Day 7 – Wednesday

Two Rules

As was mentioned in a previous post, Andy Raatz shared with us that the number one rule of a missionary is: When a bathroom is available, use it, because you don’t know when the next time will be.
Rule #2 states: Be Flexible.

Today we used both rules to the max.  We woke up with no water.  That could not stop us, however.  We modified our early morning routine, and made do.

Several good things happened to day.  We worked a long day, about 12 hours today.  In the morning, four guys (Jim, Steve, Dave F., and Jerry) went to a men’s prison.  They came back very excited.  They really believe, that at least some of the guys in prison were touched by the teams stories.  I will try to get some pictures from their meeting.

Carol and Sharon took some time in the afternoon to visit a couple of elderly ladies from the church at Orhie.  A girl named Angella brought them to the ladies houses and interpreted for them all.  Carol said that the ladies were just so pleased and honored that someone would come and visit them.

While the main crew continued to work on the church, Sharon, Dave and Jan, Craig and Courtney, and Brianon, went to a medical university meeting on family, relationships, and love.  They talked and answered questions about those topics, that the students posed to them.  Brianon played the guitar and sang for them.

By the time that part of the team was done, we had finished our time with the church at Orhei, the church we have been working on this week.  We ran out of day light, so had to wrap things up since we had no lights.  We got very much accomplished.  The downstairs team finished most of the tile work,and the upstairs team got a very good amount of the sheet rock work done, that involved installing steel studs on the limestone rock walls, insulating, and sheeting.  Take a look at the pictures for the past three days and see all of the progress being made.  Unfortunately, we are all done with our work at this church because we have more commitments at another church who could lose thier building any day.

We need to do some concrete work for the foundation of the church next on our schedule.  It will all be done by hand (with the help of a cement mixer), and poured bucket by bucket.  This is the typical way it is done here in Moldova.   As we travel on the streets, the sight of piles of sand, and gravel sitting on the curb is not uncommon.  Many time, there is also a pile of limestone blocks also.  The blocks are never in a nice order as they are just dumped from the back of a truck.  The blocks are quarried a few miles outside of town; and it is not uncommon to find seashells embedded in the limestone blocks.

Typically, when we are done with our jobs, and wind down for the night, there is a lot of talking and laughter going on in a small living space on our floor of the Pentecostal Union.  Tonight it is silent.  Everyone is tired and going to bed.  It has been a busy, hard day, but a good day.  God is so good!