Romania: When Rest Looks a Lot Like Work

Hey all! 

Let me just tell you right now Romania was beautiful in every sense of the word! I entered this place feeling exhausted and worn out, I desperately needed a restart. After all my time spent in different quarantines I was beginning to feel a bit like Ecclesiastes (you know, life is meaningless), but our time in Craiova was certainly not meaningless.

Our ministry hosts were so kind and genuinely love Christ and their city so well. Our main ministry was evangelism and building relationships with the young people of the community. I don’t really know how to describe it other than walking you through an average day for us.  

Each morning would start with group intercession AKA prayer for different things in the ministry. Then we would have a couple hours of Admin help, mostly packing these bags of different items that we would hand out during evangelism. Then we’d have an hour or so of “team time” (think small groups, sometimes hanging out, sometimes deep God talk) followed by 3ish hours of free time. At 4pm we would all meet at the church to get with our translators and go out from there in groups of 3 or 4 to do four hours of evangelism. Sometimes this looked like handing out bags to everyone we saw at a local park, sometimes it looked like sitting on a park bench or getting coffee with a new friend, and sometimes it looked like asking people if we could pray with them. At 8pm we were free to go have dinner and do whatever our hearts desire. 

For some this schedule seems very open (me) but to others it’s crazy structured. I think it’s so beautiful how the Lord has made us all so different. Doing ministry in Craiova was hard in the best possible way. Talking to strangers is already out of my comfort zone but going up to random people on the street and starting conversations is a whole other level of uncomfortable. Everyday Evangelism time was so hard but I also couldn’t wait for it. I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that every good encounter was Holy Spirit working through me and I could see him moving in people’s hearts too. 

Less than 1 percent of the people in southern Romania are Christ followers and the region is known as a missionary graveyard because the difference you make is so hard to see. But these people are so worth loving, they are beautiful and should be told about the greatest love anyone could ever know. When seeds are planted they don’t always grow right away. Sometimes it takes a little extra TLC and sometimes it just takes years of waiting, not all seeds are sweet peas, some are cacti. 

Romania re-energized me in a way I didn’t know I needed and gave me so many wonderful opportunities to love and serve people well. Ways that I hadn’t realized I’d been craving. We were so busy there but it was actually the most restful country we’ve been to on the Race. 

Joy and Peace,

Rebekah Sartain