Trip 13-16 December 2019

New travellers… native speakers!

After hosting Ela during our team’s most recent trip to Romania, we had the honour of having Diana as our travel companion, another Romanian girl from Craiova who’s lived in Italy for years and who’d only heard of Bethesda a week before the trip. She didn’t hesitate and responded quickly and enthusiastically to the invitation to join the trip. We were more than happy to be able to have her with us, and pray to God that this partnership will continue for a long time.

During this last trip we also started the first lot of aid distribution thanks to the donations received following the 2019-2020 winter campaign.

We hope to continue raising funds to be able to distribute more fleece trousers, boots and food packs to families during the next trips at the start of 2020 as well.

During our stay in Rebricea we celebrated 2 years of the kids being at the farm. It was 21 December 2017 when they arrived dirty and mistreated, and to see them happy, smiling and full of hope for their future, also considering the amazing progress they’ve made, fills us with joy as well as pride.

For now, we’ll leave you with the short account of our guest Diana and her impressions of her super short trip to her homeland.

Before going on this trip, it’d been years since verses like these had come to mind and weighed on my heart:

James 1:27 “Pure and undefiled religion before God and the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their trouble, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world.”

Psalm 82:3-4 “Defend the poor and fatherless; Do justice to the afflicted and needy. Deliver the poor and needy; Free them from the hand of the wicked.”

When I was invited to take part in this mission, it all seemed so natural… I can’t explain my spontaneity, the ease with which I said “yes”, the way everything fell into place for me… except that it was the hand of God that did all this, by first preparing me in advance for what was to happen, for that moment.

What surprised me most that weekend were not so much the muddy roads, the grey landscapes, the children walking on the side of the road, the conditions in which the sister was living next to the church, or the little girl who’d come to church without shoes on Sunday morning. No, because I already knew these realities from personal experience, as I too was born in Romania and affected in one way or another by poverty. What struck me most were the heartfelt and incessant prayers of Denis and other children like him, who, despite having suffered terrible things, have realised that the only comforter is Jesus Christ, and that thanks to the help of the Stroi family they’re led in the ways of the Lord, which is already apparent in their lives.

With the help of God, I hope to continue being a help for the mission.

Thank you!

Diana Bica

Immagini collegate: