Widow's Mite? Mighty Widows!

Do you remember the story of the widow's mite? A couple of weeks ago, my friend Erika led a women's Bible study on this (Mark 12:41-44). Erika's the one with short hair and glasses. Our friend Alina translated for her. She's the one with reddish hair and bluejeans. The rest of the ladies, the ones with long hair, really long skirts, and--if they're old married ladies--head scarves, live in this Romany village in the Republic of Moldova.

Sister Galia with her gifts

Some of these ladies cannot read. But they can listen. They listened to the story of the widow's mite in the Moldovan national languages (Russian and Romanian) and their own language, Ursari Romani. Did hearing the story in their own language drive it deeper into their hearts. Because we saw that these sisters not only listen to Jesus' words--they put those words into action.

The first day, we provided refreshments. The next day one of the ladies showed up early with a bottle of soft drink and a box of deluxe cookies to share! She gave gladly, but definitely not out of an abundance of wealth.

Maria with her gift

 

A week later another lady, Maria, also gladly gave. Erika, Alina, and Els (another team member) were all staying in the village. The weather turned cold, and they had also all gotten sore throats and bad colds. Maria had gone to the forest to collect fallen sticks and tree limbs to fuel her wood heater. No central heating, no indoor plumbing--Maria lives a labor-intensive life. Still, she made time to gather fresh rose hips for Erika, Els, and Alina. Vitamin C! The women immediately began picking out the seeds and eating the tart fruit.
  
As Jesus also told us, "By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” What a privilege to see His words put into action!

Recorded in the Gospel of John 12:35, NIV

You have provoked me today...

   The Baptist Church in Nesvady had a dilemma.  One of the church members, a cantankerous old man who, following his wife’s passing a couple of years ago has only become more a pain the pastor’s side, began inviting his Roma neighbors to church.  He would go and visit with them often, taken them Bible-themed movies and copies of several translations of Scripture (Romanes, Hungarian, Slovak) in an attempt to help them study Scripture together.  Well, all of his relationship-building paid off.  The matriarch of the family accepted Christ, came to church, and wanted to be baptized.  On the day she was Baptized, twenty-something of her relatives attended the service, sending the church into full-blown panic mode!  What if these people start attending church?  What if they want to join too?  How do we minister to them?
   Because I have known the pastor since our first week in Slovakia and have come to know many of the members including the elders of the church, they decided to invite Dianne and me to come and lead them in a discussion about ministry with Roma.  Their three main questions:  Roma history and culture?  What does the Bible say about ministry with minorities?  What are some practical things we should do?
   The first two topics are able to be done in a weekend conference setting.  The last question, much to their disappointment, cannot be answered from a distance but must be discovered through genuine relationships rooted in their context.  While we will continue to walk with them as they discover their practical ways of ministering in their community, the comment from one of their elders as he left church Sunday morning provides a bit of hope.
   “You have provoked me today,” he said.
   “Well, Marian, I think that is a good thing.  How did I provoke you?” I asked.
   “I have never considered Roma to be created in the image of God.  I will have to keep thinking over what that means.”  He said with a nod that the journey his church is undertaking is likely to be more provocative then they ever expected.

LESSONS LEARNED

Camp Fire with Polish Sausages

You'd expect a lot of learning to go on at a week-long camp with daily English lessons and Bible study sessions. Last month we helped out with such a camp in Poland, where Keith's brother Ted and sister-in-law Bev work with a new Polish Baptist church. This local church is very focused on evangelism and had organized the camp as an opportunity to share the Gospel. A group of American volunteers, also very focused on evangelism, also came to help. They learned some unexpected things--and so did we.

Lesson A:  a very sweet American woman had never, to her knowledge, met anyone with autism. There were two young people at the camp with different forms of autism. During the course of the week, this lady learned more about the autism spectrum and became more comfortable interacting with these folks. I would love to know how God is going to use these lessons!

Lesson B:  Bev and I were to teach the beginners' group. After the first day, we split the group. Bev took the beginners who could actually speak English. The other three campers went with me and Monika, a young Polish woman fluent in English. Began with sentences like "I am Polish"  and progressed to "She drives a truck underwater" and "Monika fishes for pigs." Silliness proved to be a good learning tool.

Lesson C:  I didn't grow up traditional Baptist, and I am not a typical American. After a bit, I wondered whether this camp program and I were a good fit. But God had called me there for a reason. I was able to pass on ways of meeting God with my Bible study group which are not typically Baptist. My experiences with Romany believers, with illiterate believers, with Mennonites and Pentecostals and Roman Catholics all enriched our time together. At the end, a member of our group wrote, "I have had great advantage from talking with you." She had not prayed the sinner's prayer, but she left with a firm affirmation that she, too, had been adopted into God's family. 

Fellow Camper in Keith's Hat

Lesson D:  Dancing isn't just for squares. One evening Bev taught us how to dance like they do in Tennessee, where she and the volunteers are from. We danced the night away in groups of 1, 2, 3, 4, and 6. Great Blue Grass music; great fun!

Lesson E:  Every night one or two people shared their faith story. Powerful evangelism. 

Lesson F:  Finish strong. 

ROMANI IS A FIRST-CLASS LANGUAGE

Keith first met Stano and these other Romany brothers in 2014 when they helped record the New Testament in their Eastern Slovak Romani language. Now Stano & co. are helping to translate the Old Testament. (Excerpt below taken from:  https://seedcompany.exposure.co/unlikely-calling.)  

THE VALUE OF HEART-LANGUAGE SCRIPTURE goes even deeper. Several people have told Stano what it felt like to hold their New Testament for the first time. At first they felt shame in seeing God’s Word in what they saw as their second-class language. But soon the shame was eclipsed by joy.

“I believe that they’re not ashamed of their language anymore,” Stano says as he looks up a word in the dictionary. “They have tasted of something, like myself, that we have God’s Word in our language. That’s something wonderful.”
Pavol looks up from his screen.
“For our nation, for our people, this is something that is very precious.”

Sisters in Sweden

Last Sunday I met two extraordinary sisters. Keith and I worshiped in a Swedish church first built in the 12th century. We shared a pew with the sister sitting next to me in the photo. She's a Roma woman from Romania. Afterwards, the church offered all of us coffee or tea. The Swedish sister on the left is one of the church members. She sometimes bakes cakes for the coffee time.
I find it extraordinary that three women with such diverse backgrounds can meet around the same table. And yes, we did celebrate communion.

OUR MUSLIM NEIGHBORS

Yesterday as I was biking home from church, I saw an old man on the path ahead of me. He was wearing a dark blue suit; the rest of him was obscured by a very large dark-blue umbrella. We exchanged a brief greeting as I passed. The face under the umbrella was wrinkled and respectful. Just as I suspected, he was wearing a little cap. My neighbor is a practicing Muslim.
We have neighbors down the block who are non-practicing Muslims. They came here as Bosnian refugees. We got to know them through the retired Baptist preacher who was their backyard neighbor and a member of our church. She ironed the Baptist's shirts (this retired pastor always wore a suit, even when working in his beautiful and prolific garden). The Bosnian children enjoyed that garden, too. The preacher was a sort of grandfather to them. I do not know whether their biological grandfathers had survived the war.
We have other neighbors who are practicing Muslims. There's the old lady in a long dark robe and headscarf who used to ask me about cans and packages in the grocery store. I suspect she's illiterate--or at least illiterate in Latin letters and in Dutch. There's the Sudanese woman, Sarah, who was even more wrapped up. She had some Dutch lessons from a woman in our church. Then there's the teen-aged girls in jeans, trendy tops, and colored headscarves I see going to high school on the bus or on their bikes, and the guys from the local Muslim prayer group who helped renovate our neighborhood meeting place, and the boy one street over who fetched a 2-Euro coin for his grandmother to put in the collection box the time I went door-to-door for the Dutch Cancer Society . . . .
A lot of my friends in America do not have so many Muslim neighbors. One of my friends recently voiced concern because there were so many Muslims in this or that political party. This morning Keith read a news article about a motel receptionist whose fear resulted in the police confronting a customer who happened to be from a predominantly Muslim land.
Did I think twice about using an international transportation hub after the Brussels airport was bombed? Yes. I am a reasonable person who does not want to take unreasonable risks. Do people who happen to follow the Muslim faith frighten me? No. Do violent fanatics alarm me? Yes, be they soccer hooligans, neo-Nazis, radical Islamists, or Branch Davidians. And, I confess, I am a bit afraid of other people's fear--fear that some people in an American political party might follow this or that faith; fear that a man in Middle-eastern dress might be about to blow up my motel; fear that those people cannot be neighbors just because they happen to be Muslim.

Fellow Pilgrims for the Short-term or the Long-term?

This is the season when many of you go on pilgrimages called "short-term missions." There's some debate about the effectiveness of short-term verse long-term missions. I usually go on a short-term missions trip myself this time of year. A few regular volunteers go along to work with local Romany believers in Moldova. This year we won't be willing to go until September. But God knew that the children could use a summer program as well. A team from CERI just completed doing a week-long Vacation Bible School there.

Your support of our long-term presence made that short-term trip possible. Last February I went to the Ruth School (very long-term) in Budapest to work on an education project. One of the leaders of CERI was also there, working on a project with the Naomi Center (also long-term). He had met me in Moldova during one of his trips there and said if he could ever do anything for us, just let him know. Our partner there, Petru Ciochina (long-term), knew that teams from CERI sometimes provide shoes or boots for children. He could contact the CERI office in Moldova himself, but thought we would get better results if I contacted this American leader. The leader was very happy to make the connection. A group of Roma children enjoyed an afternoon program by CERI volunteers and received water-proof boots.

That connection led to the CERI volunteer team (short-term) coming this past week. They did great work. Would they have come if you had not been contributing for the last 20 years towards my long-term presence in the field? Maybe. Would they have been as effective if you had not been contributing to my long-term presence? Probably not. Because my being here is a major reason for Petru being there. And without Petru's being there, they would not have made the connections nor received an invitation to go there. 

So a big thank you to all of you who engage in short-term missions. Your pilgrimages can make lasting differences. And an even bigger thank you to all of you who support long-term missions. You make those short-term pilgrimages possible because there's a long-term presence for them to contribute to. And that long-term presence makes it possible for a week-long visit from such a team to have years-long impact. Thank you, fellow pilgrims all.