Day 6 - "Forming a New Kind of Future" (Daniel)

Mihaela Cornilescu is raising her 8 children in a tiny apartment in the poorest area of Bucharest, Romania. At night, their sleeping bodies cover nearly every square foot of the home's floor.  The building is a concrete shell, sporadically laced with drugs, alcohol, crime, and despair.  In this small cell of a room in the belly of a grafittied and littered ghetto, she struggles to raise the children and make ends meet while her husband works all day, 6 days a week.

She and her husband are working to form a better future for these eight children. They could have sent their children to the local public school. Instead, they chose to send them to the Ruth School, a free Christian school in their own neighborhood. They made this choice because people at the school care for their children almost as much as they do. In addition to receiving school supplies and a hot lunch, the school also provides medical care, clothing, counseling, tutoring . . . even chapel each Wednesday morning.

Mihaela and her husband are pleased that the children are getting more than just a formal education. The children are also excited by this learning environment. Last year, her eldest daughter did not miss a single day of school.

Mihaela cannot read or write. Her husband works at a dead-end, low-paying job. They want their children’s minds transformed and empowered to understand their world more broadly, to journey out into it more bravely, to take care of it more shrewdly, and to love it and the God who made it more excellently.  In this way, the redemption that Ruth School brings to these Roma children is a redemption offered to us all.

Prayer Requests:

• For the Cornilescu family, that each of their children will reach their fullest potential in life, and come to know Christ as Lord and Savior.
• For Ruth School to successfully begin a Special Education program, in order to maximize the potential for many of their struggling students, including some of the Cornilescu children.
• For Project Ruth, that it will thrive in its ministry of educating and empowering the Romany people for the glory of God.

 Skyler and Ronella Daniel, Romania