Back in January, Joe and I went up to Jersey to visit his family. I forgot I had pictures on my camera until recently, and now I wish I had a great bakery down the street. All because of this picture:

from here:

Someone want to send me some?

While we were in Lipcani, we were very thankful to have the opportunity to visit both the Romanian and the Russian schools. In Moldova kids are raised speaking either language, as decided upon by their parents. Kids that speak Romanian often speak Russian, but if they are raised speaking Russian, they don’t learn much Romanian. We were told that the schools provide equal educational opportunities for the kids, regardless of which language the speak. But something in my heart didn’t see that as the case.

The kids though, they were awesome. They, like the rest of the people we encountered, fell in love with Richard- one of our team members who is a police officer. They wanted his autograph, swore they saw him on tv on Wrestle Mania, and would literally follow him aaround. It was definitely entertainment for us! We fed them candy and then gave them toothbrushes and toothpaste! Richard gave them real police badges and the kids thought that was better than the candy!

My prayer is that the children will be more curious about the Jesus we talked about and will want to learn more about  Him.

Russian School

Romanian School

Kids hanging out with Val

 

Kids before church service

 

Wrestle Mania star Richard signing autographs!Junior Wake Forest police officer

 

Kids at the Russian school

 

Boy at the Russian school

This young girl wrote a poem that she shared after church service

A few weeks ago we had the privilege to travel to Moldova with a few others from our church. We visited the village of Lipcani (pronounced lipcon), with a goal to reach out to the village of 6,000 people and share the love of Christ with them. The local pastor, Pastor Val, has a very small congregation there right now. While there we were able to make incredible connections for him. We met with the mayor, the police, went into schools and businesses, met people as they shopped in the market, visited people in their homes, visited the hospital and a nursing home, met with the head of the prison, went to the Moldovan/Romanian border and the Moldovan/Ukrainian border.

We had an incredible time and will be sharing more details of our trip over the next week or two.  So keep checking back!  Here are a few pictures of the village of Lipcani