Tales from Our Fairytale: 2nd Full Day in Vulcanesti

I slept about the same last night, waking up periodically. The first time I woke up last night, I actually thought it was early morning – It was ONLY 11 pm! I woke up off and on all night and got up around 5:00 or 5:30.

I’m glad to say – today was a good day!!

We had breakfast again at the church in Vulcanesti and had some down time afterwards before a whole slew of kids came at 10:00 for VBS.

After breakfast, we had a time with our entire team to worship and I had been asked to share a devotional. Richard shared his testimony, and so did my new friend Irina. She has a beautiful testimony of coming to love the Lord and having a personal relationship with Him. We ended with prayer time among our group and felt (mostly) ready for the day.

VBS went great; we made stained glass windows with them and played lots of games with them (even teaching them some new ones).

We had lunch, which included chicken and potatoes (flavored somehow – almost like scalloped potatoes) and I actually ate! I didn’t even have to reach for my crackers. If I knew a phone call with Brad would have made such a difference, I would have called him sooner! And I’m thinking it would be even better with him here – still open to coming back again.

Lunch was also great because I sat across from Jeff and Robin, and I enjoyed getting to know them better!

We were able to rest a little before going out to the village and talking with people. We would simply walk up to a person and introduce ourselves (through our interpreter). We talked with 2 people and a group with 5 guys. The first woman said that she was in fact a believer. The 2^nd woman just flat out said she would be going to hell because she does bad things and doesn’t want to do good things at this time. The guys were a mix between the 2. Some said yes, they would go to heaven (at first, simply because they do not smoke or drink).

The people from the Orthodox church KNOW about Jesus Christ and what he did, but they have no comprehension of a personal relationship with Him and believe that no one can really know if you are going to heaven or hell. Some are just walking around feeling like they are not good enough to go to heaven, so they have settled on the fact that they will spend an eternity in hell.

Once we got back from doing the spiritual surveys, we already had some kids waiting for our 4:00 to 5:30 VBS time. We had about 10 kids – a lot of the younger boys ended up going to the sports camp – and we made picture frames with them. We took their pictures and printed them out so they could take them home right away. It was a huge hit! The pastor even came in to see if we could take his picture and a picture of his kids…it’s not something they have very often!

VBS was followed with dinner at 6:00/:30 and then we headed to the village park where we had an evangelistic service. The local youth group sang, Michael and Jen gave their testimonies, and Dr. Joe gave a message challenging us to look into our lives to make sure we have that personal relationship with Christ. I loved listening to he and his interpreter going back and forth.

We were blessed once again by our host home. They had picked fresh cherries (from their ENORMOUS garden with every fruit or vegetable you can imagine). I even ate 2! And we spent some more time, quite a bit of that laughing, with them until we went to bed around 10:30.