I’m so happy I got to spend another Christmas on mission. I’m left standing in awe yet again, full of wonder for all I have received and for how much I still receive since I have extended my time here. It really is a gift...
Our last stop in Pe Deal was to a house where I saw another version of life with small means — Alexandra and her three children. When we arrived, the baby was sleeping on the bed of their one room besides the kitchen...
Far from home, our missionaries discover their American roots with new eyes as they dive into their country of mission and share life with a culturally diverse team. Thanksgiving is one beautiful tradition that our missionaries enjoy sharing...
In the course of the year, we had found out Margareta was pregnant. This was her fifth child: one of them miscarried, and the rest have been adopted or are living at the children's home. They are taken from her because she is unable to take care of them with her handicap...
My orientation with Con-solatio got me fired up to go on mission. Of course, I had already committed to leaving for Romania this fall: I had begun my fundraising, been learning Romanian, and had a decent sense of the beauty and purpose of this mission...
During my orientation time I learned that Con-solatio offers a Re-entry weekend after a volunteer comes back from his/her time serving in another country. At that point I thought “what a logical thing to offer; I am sure it is so helpful.” I was not prepared for the reality of the gift of this weekend....
One rest day, we got to go on a hiking excursion in the mountains a couple hours away. It was so beautiful, especially since I had been missing the mountains we have in Colorado. We got to a stopping point of the hike where we sat down to eat, and suddenly, coming up out of...
Our house here in Romania was opened just after communism ended in 1994, which means that our community turned 30 this past year! It’s events like this that really allow us to invite people from all of our different groups of friends to come and celebrate with us. One of the harder realities about our...
Every Wednesday we take a short bus ride to the hills outside the city, to a town called Mintia, where we visit many Roma families and play with the kids. Many of the families here live in poverty, and the conditions are hard to see and harder to forget. However it’s the beauty of the...
Many of the children in our colonies are used to getting attention only for negative behaviors. So naturally, many of them act out around us in order to get our attention. As all kids do, each one is walking the line and testing the limits. Parker and his siblings continued to come back every day...