Ce mai faci amigos!?
We started with morning prayers at 7.45, followed by a cheeky (young Daniel’s new word) breakfast of poached eggs in white rolls (like eggs in baskets). Around this time, the chubby cat was off having kittens, which are now somewhere around the Charis site and yet to be found. The cat is now considerably slimmer. On a separate note, Clare accidentally kicked the other cat, which is now limping.
Meanwhile, during the ongoing cat birth, we headed off to the gypsy church. Turns out that the minibus driver was also the “pianist”! The main singer has a great voice and perfectly plucked eyebrows. Even Wendy noticed his beautiful eyebrows.
The karaoke/Greek taverna style worship leader (no plate smashing took place) tweaked the sound desk from the front. We sang some songs, Glynis and Wendy gave a testimony and I (Matt) preached. We then had a couple more sermons (!!) about two and a half hours later, we prayed for some of the congregation and the “pianist” took us back again. We should also mention the the toilet was a wooden hut, and we have a photo with a member of the team in… Can you guess who? Yes, it’s Bex! Moving on… we had a three course meal for lunch, followed by the epic gift sorting saga, where we sorted our gifts for the children’s home.
And then, the Hungarian baptist church, which we walked to. The service and songs were in Hungarian, and we had a translator for our contributions. The preacher wasn’t sure about the Hungarian word for “unpack”, as in unpack the passage, so I just repeated the word in a more Hungarian accent… which didn’t work. We sang again, spoke testimonies and a sermon. This church was air conditioned. After a conversation with the pastor at the end of the service, I was abandoned and had to make my way home (half-hour walk). I caught up with Glynis and Dave, and then we successfully got lost together. We had a lovely walk around the houses, saw an ice cream parlour (that was closed) and a motorised office chair. When we came out in a field and couldn’t see the Charis centre anywhere, we decided to head back to the church. We thought that if we were going to have a good ‘getting lost’ testimony, we should pray to be rescued. Shortly after praying, a fingerless man pulled up, spoke some Romanian at us, and we got in his car. I couldn’t help but notice the knife on the dashboard. Naturally, I thought that cracking a joke would break the ice, so I yielded the knife and shouted poftă bună (eat well!) He offered to take us to a hotel, and again, we obliged…. But we did eventually arrive back at Charis. When we did get back, people had noticed that Glynis and Dave were missing, but not me! Rude. At least Jesus loves me.
Another great meal and some dangerous table tennis from Jill, plus Belgium Kung-fu from Claire, who caught a mosquito. Over and out!