Moldova Made Me Weak

Thanks to all who prayed for me and our church's team while we were away in Moldova. We are back safe, but not sound. God answered my prayer, that I would be made weak by what I saw and experienced. Moldova is beautiful, the people are engaging and kind, the country seems to be growing. Nevertheless, those who live there are, as one person said to me, "in hell." I learned a lot about myself, poverty, the gospel and God on my trip and am grateful for it. I will try and write about my experiences over the next few months.

For your information, our main task in Moldova was to work with an organization called Little Samaritan Mission (LSM), distributing backpacks full of supplies and clothes for kids in the outlying villages of Moldova. And when I say "villages," I mean your prototypical 18/19th century village. For the most part, the villages we visited had little access to the main city of Chisinau, or anything else for that matter. Depressed by stagnant communist rule, a slowing economy, and few natural resources, Moldova is very poor. Many of the villages have no running water or indoor plumbing, limited quantities of food and only basic access to electricity. The backpacks we delivered were literally the only "gifts" these children would receive all year. LSM enlists the support of individuals and churches in the states to fill these backpacks for a project they call Face of a Child.

And so we traversed across the country in a van, sometimes four hours away, delivering bag after bag to smile after smile. "These are gifts not from us but from God" LSM would say to the kids, as they eagerly awaited their overweighted present. I pray they understand that.

Moldova is a crumbling, sad, desperate place. But it is real, and it didn't change much on account of my arrival, and definitely not on my departure. Kids there are still going hungry, wives are still getting beat up by their depressed, drunken husbands, and 16 year old girls too old to stay at the orphanage any longer are forced into a tumultuous world that has very little to offer them except more poverty and, possibly, brazen, profligate danger. No, I didn't change Moldova much at all. And yet, God is still working. He is working despite and through Moldovan corruption and American laziness and droughts and floods and persecution and inert Orthodox faith and me.

May the people of Tocuz, Suhat, Zu Zu Leniei and every in between be given shelter, water, food and the grace of God in Jesus Christ.