The two ladies in the middle had fixed a feast for us in an old Dutch farmhouse. They are sharing the building, with its 11 bedrooms, with about ten other Romany from their village in Moldova plus a few Polish workers. These Poles and Moldovans have temporary contracts to pick tomatoes and other vegetables in the vast greenhouses of North Holland. The days are long, the work is hard, but there is no work in Moldova.
They prepared a feast for us. You can see the remains still on the table: plates of chicken, bowls of potato salad, fresh cheese, fresh tomatoes, and platters of stuffed vegetables--cabbage, grape leaves, sweet peppers.
We had driven 2 hours from Arnhem, where we live, to this place, on the very tip of the province of North Holland. To be more accurate, the young man in the photo had driven all two hours there (and later all two hours back). He and his wife are also Polish, also guest workers, but in warehouses for the import and export of clothing. Over the past several years they've become like adopted son and daughter to us. They met the Moldovan Roma when the group visited our church in Arnhem, and they wanted to visit with these brothers and sisters in Christ again.
The tall lady on the left made five trips to Moldova for the same purpose. She and other Dutch volunteers stayed in the Moldovan village, visited especially women in their homes to encourage them and pray with them, organized ground-breaking day camps for teen-aged girls.
We broke bread together. We prayed together. We sang together. We shared photos of our families. And we made this family photo.
Still praying,
Mary
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