Between Babel and Pentecost . . .

Fifteen of our Romany friends from Moldova are working just two hours away from us. They are picking tomatoes in the greenhouses in province of North Holland. Two hours isn't far to, say, a Texan, but here it's half-way across the country. And we have no language in common with our friends. About a month ago, we thought we had a Russian interpreter lined up to go with us, but that fell through the day before we had set to go. We prayed that the Lord would provide and set out anyway.
And the Lord did. Our friends work through a Polish employment agency. They found a young Pole who spoke good English. And one of them speaks good Polish. We had a good time together and invited them to visit us.

Polish friends in the center of  Moldovan friends,
Baptist Church Arnhem-Centrum

So a couple of weeks ago nine of them piled in a van and drove the two hours to Arnhem to  hear Keith preach.* We had lined up translators for the worship service and the lunch following. But what about the rest of the afternoon? Our Polish friends also came to hear Keith speak. During lunch, they sat next to one of the Moldovans who had worked in Poland for 8 or 9 years. So our Polish friends joined the party for the rest of the afternoon and evening, supplying sweets, a guitar, and translation. Who knew that Polish would turn out to be the new lingua franca?


*Missions Sunday. Our Romany friends also sang.

Warmth . . . For More Than One Winter . . . ?

In previous winters, people from the Roma village of Vulcanesti, Moldova, could pick up firewood off the forest floor. Not exactly legal, but the forest ranger looked the other way. Until this year. So what are people who cannot afford to buy fuel going to do? In a climate where people heat their homes 9 months out of the year?


Enter three different sources of help:  donations to our programming fund; donations from the Baptist Church Arnhem-Centrum, the Netherlands; and donations from Quelle des Lebens, a Roma-and-Sinti church near Bonn, Germany.
So far, we've been able to provide 11 families in Vulcanesti with 2 cubic meters of wood per household. We hope to provide the poorest families in two other Roma communities with firewood, too.



For this winter.
What about next winter?
And the winter after that?

We need help, too. Help in finding long-term, truly helpful solutions.
Help in offering development (sustainable solutions for the future) rather than just aid (firewood for right now).