Is Someone Going to Fix that Lady's Roof?

The last post told of an elderly Roma lady in Moldova who had serious holes in her roof. Someone responded by asking, "Is someone gong to fix that lady's roof?"
Is that someone you?
You could join us in praying, the next two weeks, for a solution.
You could come to Moldova and swing a hammer (or whatever Pastor Petru Ciochina has in his hand there).
You could move to Moldova and help develop employment there.
You could donate funds (Holmes/Van Rheenen Programming) and let us know that they are going specifically towards this lady's roof.
I'm curious to see what God--and you?--are going to do.

Every Mother's Child Deserves a Meal

Sunday is Mothers' Day in much of the Western world. This lady's story is particularly fitting because she has never been a mother. She lives in a Romany village in Moldova, a country with a really minimal "old age pension." So minimal, that without the help of adult children, ordinary village women like her are almost certain to live in poverty.

Last October I was able to go with Pastor Petru Ciochina and his wife Olesea as they picked out items for food packages and as they delivered them. Each time they deliver food packages, they choose 10 different community members most in need. This lady lived in a home as neat as a pin. Flowers bloomed from the inside windowsills. A crocheted rag rug graced the floor in the entrance way. She herself had carefully combed and pulled back her hair. She was as clean and well-groomed as she could make herself. What she could not make was repairs to her roof. 

As we stood in that entrance way, I could look straight up through one hole in the ceiling to the rafters on through several other holes in the roof to the blue sky above. The lady thanked us for the food package with manners as gracious and pretty she was. We could not fix the holes in her roof. Thanks to the Texas Hunger Offering, we could supply a bag of staples chosen to see her through the next month and beyond.

We thank the Texas Christian Life Commission. Their offering to combat hunger makes programs like this possible. Want to know more? Check out their Mothers' Day Offering. Might be just the gift your mother--or a non-mother like this woman--is looking for!

Grandmother Speaks—From Where?!

Each year, PASSPORTkids Camps gives kids a different hands-on missions experience. This summer they will focus on CBF's Romany Ministries. This is a story we went which they may (or may not) use at part of the camp. We thought you would enjoy this story, too.

What kind of stories do you like to tell around a campfire? We used to tell ghost stories. This is not exactly a ghost story, though it is about someone’s grave. Sister Aliona’s grave, to be exact.

In the Roma village where Sister Aliona lived, people dug graves at least three feet deeper than normal. Why did they do this? Did they like to dig? Did they need the dirt? No, not at all. They put stuff in the grave, lots of stuff, before they even started lowering the casket down into it. What do you think they put in a grave? They would start with expensive things to drink. Fancy bottles. Colored bottles. Vintage CocaCola! Well, maybe not that. Then they would put in things to eat. Expensive things that were hard to get in Moldova, where they lived. Pineapples and kiwis. Exotic fruit. They might not have much money, but they used all they could to just load that grave all up.

Why did they do that? I don’t know. Maybe they thought the person they were burying would need all that in their next life or on their journey to that next life. Or maybe they thought that would make the dead person happy, so the dead person wouldn’t come back and haunt them. I don’t know. I do know it was not because they believed in Jesus.

Sister Aliona believed in Jesus. She believed that He forgave all her sins when she asked Him to. She believed that He loved her, that He lived with her all through her life of raising children, of burying her own husband, of watching her grandchildren grow up around her. She grew old herself. Her ears stopped hearing very well. Her eyes stopped seeing very well. She knew one day her old body would stop altogether. She was not afraid of this because she knew that then she would live with Jesus forever.

Sister Aliona

And that’s just what happened. Last year Sister Aliona died. Her grown children wanted to honor their mother with the best funeral they could give her. But two nights after she died, Sister Aliona’s oldest daughter, Silvika, had a dream. Her mother, Aliona, came and spoke to her. Aliona told her that the place where she was incredibly beautiful. It was so very beautiful that she wished Silvika and all of her other children would believe in Jesus. Then they could go to that beautiful place, too. Aliona also said she wanted a Christian funeral.

Silvika listened to her mother. After all, her mother had spoken to her in a dream all the way from Heaven! So she and her brothers and sisters gave their mother a Christian funeral. Sister Aliona’s grave was not any deeper than it needed to be. There was nothing in it but Sister Aliona’s worn-out old body. And everyone said it was a beautiful funeral.

Families . . . Basic for Education

A colleague recently shared this information about
an initiative for basic education of Roma. It is aimed at Roma adults and families (for inter-generational learning) in Europe. It consists of manuals in the different national languages of a number of countries, that will assist those who want to help Roma people learn to read and write. The program encourages the use of whatever local language the Roma people speak.

There will be a presentation of the handbook/manual for Romania on May 10 in Targu Mures.


https://ec.europa.eu/epale/en/blog/bera-basic-education-roma-adults

Another Pile of Stones

Today on Stille Zaterdag (Silent Saturday), I am remembering a Tuesday morning about 10 years ago. I know it was a Tuesday because that's the day of the weekly market in Duiven, the next village. I planned to go after I'd taken the girls to school. Maybe that's why I drove that morning. Usually they biked to school. I had dropped them off and was waiting at the traffic light on the edge of town with my right blinker on, all set to go to Duiven, when I got the distinct feeling I should turn around and go home instead.
At home there was a telephone message waiting for me--the one we had been expecting ever since my father went into hospice. He had left his worn-out 86-year-old body and gone on to the next life.
Have you ever had anything like that happen to you? Remember it on those silent Saturdays, when Hope seems dead and buried.
And if you haven't, if every day seems silent, remember this:  if death truly were the end, who or what told me to turn around and go back home?

*Photo of my dad, Ralph Van Rheenen, taken for his graduation from Western Theological Seminary, 1951.

Voting . . . Dutch Style

Keith and I did our civic duty today. Because we have been legal residents of the town of Westervoort for at least five years, we are eligible to vote in local elections, such as for members of the city council. A couple of weeks ago, the city mailed us each our stempas or voting pass. (Interestingly, stem also means "voice.")

The town thoughtfully included a list of candidates. Americans might look at this and think, "Wow! What a lot of candidates for city council! This must be a big town!!" Westervoort has a population of around 15,000. Seventeen people sit on the town council. 

The six columns are the six political parties involved in this election. The lists under the party names are the candidates each party is offering. We could choose one candidate (marked our choice with a red pencil, then folded our ballot up and dropped it into something that looked like a padlocked trash can with a big slit on top). 

Now here comes the difference between a parliamentarian democracy and whatever it is we do at home. Those 17 seats on the city council will be divided proportionally among the 5 parties according to the proportion of votes each party receives.  Last time the party on the right (Groen Links) won one seat. Suppose they win 2 seats this time. The two top-ranking Groen Links candidates will become part of the new town council. 

What effect does this have? Candidates rarely campaign. Parties campaign, largely based on their platforms. Personalities, especially in a local election, play very little part in the proceedings.

Smaller parties have a voice in the government. In order to increase their voice, parties sometimes form coalitions so that they will have a majority in the government. This is necessary on the national level and can lead to some really strange bedfellows. In Westervoort, three parties formed a coalition on the last town council (6 seats, 4 seats, 2 seats). 

We'll see what happens this time.

Stacking Stones

Little piles of rocks—have you seen these around, maybe on a hike or on a trip? I’ve seen them in the States, in the mountains of Switzerland, and now in the desert in Egypt. (We needed some sunshine, and the price for the package get-away to Egypt was very right.) Who, I wondered, would stop to make a decorative stack of rocks in the middle of absolutely nowhere?

If God is for us
who can be against us.
Banner in Sinti Church

 The Israelites used to pile up big stacks of rocks after God had done something like part the Jordan River so they could cross on dry land.  when their children asked about that stack, they would remember to retell the story. Our Sinti Romany friends do something similar. They don’t pile up stones here and there—but they do regularly share their own sacred stories. Here is one of them.

A Sinti woman whom we'll call "Anna" already had a number of children. She and her husband were expecting yet another one. The doctors told her that this baby endangered her health; the birth would be problematic. She and her husband prayed. As they prayed, God revealed to her that the baby would not die but be born healthy. The baby would be a boy and grow up to be an evangelist.

Keith and I know that "baby." He did grow up and is a preacher who does freely share the Good News with other Sinti, both in the Netherlands and in neighboring countries.

What sacred stories do you have to share?