rothwellsmission: WEEK 5 - DO NOT JUDGE YOUR BROTHER

You, then, why do you judge your brother? Or why do you look down on your brother? For we will all stand before God's judgement seat.
Romans 14 : 10

Hi all

It's been an interesting and very busy week. The conference delegates arrived on Wednesday evening and the conference ran through Thursday, Friday and Saturday morning, with meals together at lunchtime and in the evenings, so pretty intense and very long days. Saturday night's meal coincided with Daniel's birthday so he had a cake and a large bouquet of roses from the ERSTE foundation which he duly handed to all of the ladies - as you will see from the photos.
The delegates came from Romania, Hungary, Slovakia and Germany, and whilst the conference was in English there were translators working in little soundproof booths at the back of the room translating into Romanian, Hungarian and Slovak. So talented and interesting to watch, particularly as we spent most of the days standing at the back next to them. (Had to be poised to dash out to man the coffee machine!).
On that subject, will never complain about doing coffee for church again - we had to ensure coffee and snacks were pretty much continuous every day from 8am to about 10pm, such pressure!
We learnt such a lot from the conference, and from talking to the delegates during the evenings, about the plight of the Roma around Europe. Their treatment is pretty much the same as here in Romanian but it was encouraging to hear about not only the support they are receiving from non-Roma but also what they are doing themselves. There were a number of Roma speakers at the conference who have launched businesses in Roma artefacts, fashion design and jewellery which have become successful despite opposition.
FAST did themselves proud in the organization and planning of this conference, led by Daniel and Ruxy, with the result that this Friday we are being visited by the Romanian Minister for the Interior with the German Consular General , to look at the work FAST are doing - all positive stuff so change is happening, slowly, but change nevertheless.

Oh, and we were asked (with very little notice) to give a short presentation about volunteering, and talk about the English course. As our slot was the last of the morning and the coffee break was already 20 minutes late we could tell from the yawns how much the delegates welcomed this, so after a very brief (2 minutes) on volunteering we woke them up a bit by asking them to take part in one of the exercises we use with the children to help them remember the months of the year - it's called 'annual aerobics' and involves a lot of jumping about! They all took part and a number of them said afterwards it was the best presentation of the day, (we suspect because it was the shortest!).

It was good to have some time off on Saturday afternoon so Liz took us to Poisana Brasov, the ski resort above Brasov. No snow there yet but a beautiful place even without it. It was good to just chill out and eat lunch together.

Good to get back to normal at the mission house on Monday. This is the last week of our English classes (next week will be prize giving and certificates), the last session with the teenagers and the launch of Tarlungeni's Got Talent! Many of the children are now busily rehearsing songs, dances and poems in both Romanian and English and will be performing next week to a panel of judges consisting of the two of us plus Rachel - more pressure!
In this afternoon's feeding session we were pleased to welcome back Codrutz, who has been absent following a dog attack. There are lots of packs of dogs around the mission house and we urge the children to stay in groups as they will surround and attack a person on their own. Poor Codrutz has had stitches almost completely around his leg, and he proudly unwrapped the bandage (a bit of rag) to show us, urging Stan to take a photo of it, which he duly did. Thank the Lord that his leg seems to be healing well.

Prayers this week please -

That Codrutz' leg continues to heal
That our last session with the teenagers is the first step in them making changes in their lives
That all of our English students enjoy the prize giving and are encouraged to continue
That Tarlungeni's Got Talent is a great success
That Rachel may continue with the English lessons after we leave - we are working on her
For positive results from the ministers visit on Friday
For healing for Alina and Avram's son Raoul - suffering from toothache

Photos below.

Sue and Stan