And Here We Go...

September 15th is the first day of school here in Romania and will also be the first day of our "AfterSchool Program". The weather is cold and dark and will probably be wet so I need to plan some games that we can play inside the sanctuary of the church. We are partially using a curriculum that Liviu found and today is "Antarctica Day" (how fitting!). I'll try and see if I can adapt some common games to a more polar and penguin theme. For our craft, we are making snowmen out of white craft foam...Ana spent hours cutting circles on Friday while I was dealing with jet lag.

Yesterday at church, I could distinctly feel God chuckling at me and I had to smile back in return. As some of you know, despite my love for Romania and her people, I really did not want to come back this fall. My call to this country has not been easy and my last trip here in 2006 left me feeling pretty bleak about it. I could not see the path ahead of me and was ready to just give up and try something else.

God, however, definitely has plans for me, even though my circle of lantern light feels so very small. I really felt pushed to come here...pushed by a series of little "coincidences" that did not feel at all random. I suppose that I could have said "NO!" anyway, but my life experience has taught me the folly of that. :) So I came and the first couple days, as I struggled with jetlag and squatty potties and Liviu bouncing all over the place and my poor Romanian, I really wondered what I was doing here again. Then I went to church on Sunday morning and felt that love that I always feel when I am here (and probably will never be able to articulate) and I felt God chuckling at me and I just had to smile at my own lack of faith and God's never-ending patience with His little child who has so much trouble giving up control and carrying on when the path ahead is so unclear.

I still can only see a tiny bit of the path in front of me. I have dreams, I have ideas, I have schemes...but I really do not know how God is going to work through me in the next two weeks and on into the future. Patience NOT being one of my strengths, this path is going to require prayer and lots of it. :)

Please pray today for the church of Buturugeni as they open their doors to the children of the village. I praise God for the pastor, Liviu, and his vision to see his church reach out to the children around them. Pray that members of the church will recognize in these children the seeds of God's kingdom and nurture them with patience and love. Please also pray for the children, that they will feel the presence of the Holy Spirit and want more. Pray that they will come to see the church as their "place of refuge"...a place where they can come to be loved and cared for, no matter what life throws at them. Pray that this church will be filled with so much light that the whole village is drawn to it.

One example of those "God coincidences" that I keep experiencing... As you know from the top of my blog, I chose to call "my ministry" Lanterns of Hope and chose as my theme verses the passage from Matthew about light. Last night for his Bible Study, without us ever discussing it, the pastor chose these same verses and spoke about the church being light for the village. It's good to be on the same page!