Oct. 1, 2007

Newness

Dear friends and family,

Packs of street dogs roaming around along the cobblestone streets, old women walking home from the market carrying bags in each hand, full of eggplant, peppers and tomatoes to can, preparing for the winter, Orthodox church bells ringing, signaling the hour to the beginning of the daily prayers and liturgy, boys kicking a soccer ball back and forth in the middle of the street, horses pulling carts, filled with a family, or lumber, or manure. We are still adjusting to the sights and smells and sounds of life in Galati.

And the language still processes "foreign" to us. Of course we understand a lot more now as we roam amidst the crowds in the Main Market to shop for food and are able to converse with our friends at the Community Center, but we are still gathering words, still trying to unravel the different meanings. We have written notebooks full of words and phrases, trying to utter them once in awhile, trying to say shoes instead of potatoes. (Robin accidentally said she was going to change her potatoes today when she wanted to say that she was going to change her shoes. The words are very similar.)

And we are now pretty much settled in to the simple things of everyday life: every morning walking 35 minutes to the Center (downhill), cramming in the trolleys and public buses with strangers right up against us, heating up water on our butane-gas stove to have a hot bath every couple days, and canning and freezing foods to enjoy the taste of strawberries and applesauce when a layer of snow blankets the earth outside in the winter.

Alongside of all this newness (which we are enjoying) we are learning a lot, not just about how to can foods or how to learn a language, but we are also learning much about the complexities of poverty, about Christ's call to the poor and to be poor, about ingrained, often subtle social injustices that continue poverty, about the sights, paintings and smells of the Orthodox Church, and even more than any of theses, more about ourselves. We are learning that we are weak, dependent on each other, on the community, and more than that, on Christ to come and redeem us. In this weakness, in recognizing our own inadequacies, sins, past brokenness that we have chosen not to deal with, we are finding hope and some days, peace.

The awareness of these weaknesses, brokenness, and sins have come out of living in community among our fellow workers, among the children who come to the center every day and when we meet with the guys who live on the streets in Micro 19. By living and working together, we are realizing that all of us reflect an image of ourselves on to each other, mirroring our prideful ambitions and impure motives rooted in insecurity and fear, our greediness that flees from one another, our fear of being seen as lonely or "not together," our inner anger that is rooted in impatience, in a lack of humility and submission. This is why a lot of communities, including churches, do not last, because living and working in community is hard, not only because we have to submit to one another's faults and woundedness, but because we also have to see and submit to our own which we almost always want to flee from. This often causes bitterness which leads to division.

As you might have received in the mail, Word Made Flesh puts out a quarterly journal called The Cry which is a collection of articles written by WMF staff around the world, focused on one of the nine lifestyle celebrations. They are as follows in order: intimacy, obedience, humility, community, service, simplicity, submission, brokenness, and suffering. As a community committed to working out our faith together, we are trying to enter these places of death in each other and in ourselves. And by doing this, by joining hands around a table of woundedness and committing ourselves to one another, we become a prophetic sign of redemption and reconciliation in which we lead each other, the children, and the guys in Micro 19 to healing in Jesus Christ. For by His wounds we are being healed.

So this is where we are at. I hope that by these prayer letters and these lessons that we are learning, you too will allow yourself to enter into these places with us, no matter how painful and no matter how joyful.

Overall, Robin and I are doing well. We have much to tell and still so much to learn. But here are some things that have been happening around the center with the children and with our other friends who are in community with us.

* The Servant Team (which consists of two guys and two guys) have been here for over a month now. They have adjusted really well and have added a lot to community already. They are willing to learn and have been integrating themselves into the community. A part of our role here is to facilitate book discussions with the Servant Team. We have already read In The Name Of Jesus by Henri Nouwen and Rich Christians In An Age Of Hunger by Ron Sider. Over the next three months we will be reading The Challenge of Jesus, The Open Secret: An Introduction to the Theology of Mission, and Pedagogy of the Oppressed.

* Recently Robin and I were able to attend our first Covenant Ceremony for Rachel Simons and Ana Maxim, two women who have been with the community for awhile now. These services are filled with symbols and songs and sharing, but their purpose was for Rachel and Ana to covenant themselves to us, speaking to us that they are here to stay for a certain length of time, in their case two years. And the rest of us came and showed that we want to covenant with them during this time. (You can learn about Rachel and Ana by going online to www.wordmadeflesh.com and by clicking on their names under the Romania field).

*School starts for the children on September 17th so we will have many changes at the center, including a few new children and programs. I will be helping with teaching English, one of the new programs.

*Robin has been teaching health classes to the children over the summer and will continue to do so every week. Recent lessons included germs, washing hands, AIDS, lice, and taking care of their teeth.

*A few of the staff, including Robin, are beginning to work with four young mothers and their babies. Some of these mothers have lived on the streets, and do not have people in their lives to model good motherhood. Robin and the other staff have begun making home visits, building relationships with these mothers and assessing the needs. Please pray for God's mercy and grace to be poured out over these women and their relationships. Pray that God would be seen in their love for each other.

We do hope this letter finds each of you doing well and walking in peace. But we also pray that this letter finds each of you entering in and facing those places of suffering and death around you and in you, knowing that Christ is with you, loving you and tenderly calling you to Himself. For He Himself has taken on that suffering and woundedness and death.

We love you and hope with you.

Joshua and Robin