Sunday we all loaded up in the van and headed to church in Oradea. It's so cool to hear songs that we sing in church in America but they are doing it in Romanian. They sang 'The Stand' which is a powerful song in itself but in Romanian it was just even more powerful. You could definitely feel God's presence there. There was a team from Chicago there so the sermon was in English and they translated it into Romanian. It was nice to hear a familiar accent and language. The message was very powerful and charismatic, which was very different for me. After the sermon they had a time of healing for anyone who wanted to be healed. They also said that if anyone was touched by the sermon to come up to the front to be prayed for and probably 3/4ths of the congregation went up to the front. It was pretty awesome to see.
After church we did our weekly McDonald's tradition. We traveled back to Tinca to go to a big baptism celebration. Rodica, the woman who cooks at the Center, had a daughter who was being baptized. There were about 12 altogether and hundreds of people came out to see the event. I think it was even broadcasted on the radio because they brought in a famous Romanian speaker. It was neat to see how they approach baptisms here. They make the people take a class and they are generally 16-20 years old when they make that decision. They take it very seriously over here.
This was about a 5 hour event. Afterwards we went to Rodica's house to celebrate with some sarmale, aka cabbage rolls.
Monday we went over to Rachel's to just hang out and help her get ready for her parents' arrival.
Tuesday we picked up the kiddos and got them dressed. The team from church on Sunday from Chicago came to the center for a few hours and do some skits hang out with the kids. They wanted to pray for all of the staff so we got in the middle of their circle and they began to pray. Then they started speaking in tongues. Now, I'm not saying that I don't believe that this stuff can happen, but as far as I have been taught there needs to be a translator or something to interpret. And there wasn't. I know they were doing it out of a good spirit and heart but honestly it just made us feel kind of uncomfortable. After a little bit we went with them to the village to pray for the kids' families. We stopped at Abel and Samuel's house first, then Alex's, and then David and Naomi's. David and Naomi's mom became paralyzed from the waist down after she gave birth to David. The team prayed for her but they were like, if you have faith then you will start walking right now. I looked at Jordan and Brandi like whaaaaaaaat? It was just really hard for me to not cry and I was fighting back tears because this woman was sobbing saying that she believed but she couldn't walk. It was just heartbreaking. The team left the room and Dave stayed and talked with her to tell her it was okay and basically just made sure that our relationship with this family wasn't ruined because they are one of the few Christian families of the kids. We went back and hung out with the kids for the rest of the day.
Wednesday was Iza's 8th birthday. The girl loves Hunchback of Notre Dame because the main girl character is a gypsy. Rachel was talking about how Iza gets made fun of at school all the time because she is a gypsy and so it's pretty cool that she can find a strong female gypsy to look up to like Esmerelda. So Iza dressed up like Esmerelda, her grandpa dressed up as the jester, and Dave dressed up like Quasimodo. After the kids' nap they had a big party with chocolate cake from America, gypsy skirts, moustaches, and water guns. I was soaked and exhausted by the end of it.
Today the kids have varied from insane to cuddlebugs. They are napping right now and they probably will for about another hour. Today we taught Abel how to say "you cray-cray." He thinks it's hilarious and so do we. The team from Chicago came back to go into the gypsy village. Dave talked with the translator to have him tell that if any of them were planning on forcing miracles then they shouldn't go. Especially with all the superstition that the gypsy's believe in it probably would be a bad idea to tell a woman that it's basically her fault she can't walk. But one of the girls from the team came in and apologized for the other day so that was good.
Tonight we might go into Oradea with Rachel for a bit and then we'll probably all pass out for a good night's sleep.
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