Finishing Strong!

Summer sports team member in front of the People's Palace 

We have less than a week left of our time here, but only four full-time working days. We plan to go into Araci each afternoon again. Our program there has really hit its stride in the last two weeks. We get there and sing songs for around 15 minutes in English and Romanian—these kids LOVE to sing! They shout the words and we make a LOT of joyful noise to Him! We have tried to be intentional with the songs we teach them, since they are essentially preaching the good news each time they sing in front of their friends and families. Thankfully, we have a great music team (Rockin' Romania Team: Christine, Savanna, Wade and Reagan).

This weekend we are planning a giant sleepover with our teenagers from Bod. We’re all going to sleep in another building at our home base and have fun talking and just spending time together. We’re also making a point to focus on them this week, since many of them spent last week at a camp an hour away from here. We missed them but we’re glad to have them all back with us for work this week!

I know I’ve said this before but the time has flown by! Pray that we will stay focused and give this last week our all in our work and to out teammates. 
Pray that we would be unified and that in a time where everyone starts to feel a little stressed, we would have grace for each other and bear with one another as we finish.

-Maria
Summer Sports Team
Romania

Luke 15:7

We have a huge praise to give thanks to the Father for this week! Each afternoon, instead of bringing the Araci kids here, we met at an empty plot of land on a street where lots of the kids live. Several moms have stayed for our entire afternoon program all summer, and Chele (ABC's & Jesus team) and Olivia (Summer Sports team) have been diligently talking with them and sharing the good news faithfully each day if possible. One of them prayed for salvation this Thursday. PTL! We are so excited and grateful that He gave us opportunities to share with not only kids, but also their parents.

Many of these moms are our age or barely older (early 20's) and some are younger. It’s normal in Araci to have a first child at age 15 or 16, so many of the women my age already have 2-3 kids under the age of 6 years old. The children's fathers are mostly away working in England or Germany, and that makes for difficult situations. One woman has told us that her husband does not send any money back home, but spends it on alcohol for himself. She is left with several kids in a one-room house with no running water or electricity for months while he works. Pray that the workers here would be able to pour into these women and that the one who has prayed for a relationship with Him would be discipled and that her faith would be genuinely strengthened.

-Maria
Summer Sports Team
Romania 

Visit with Team Romania

We are loving getting to spend time with and serve alongside the Nehemiah Teams Romania teams this week! They are doing an awesome job of ministry and God answered big prayers today by sending almost 300 kids to the village outreach this afternoon in a new, nearby village! Pray for NT Romania this summer as they serve here in Bod and the surrounding villages!

-Tyler & Wallis Faught w/ Team Romania

Team Leader Training... my perspective

I really have no words for how this last week of team leader (TL) training and orientation went. I came into the week not really expecting to bond with any other team leaders besides the ones going to Romania — but the Father had other plans. There were around 50 TLs that arrived Monday to the Alabama training site, representing many states and heading to 18 countries for the summer. You’d think that with so many differences in personality and backgrounds, it would be hard to find common ground between us all. But it’s not. We have Someone uniting us all in a desire to reach the nations for His glory. When you think about that, you can easily see why we get so close (metaphorically AND physically!) in such a short time. I think that’s an aspect of serving alongside others that doesn’t often get recognized — and I’ve always felt like serving with others is a pressure-cooker environment for relationships. This can be positive or negative, and I’m happy to let y’all know it was all positive for us last week. -Maria Team Romania