Art, Alice, and some Awesome opportunities

It's been raining for pretty much the past week... the road is a river & I wanna go jump in puddles!

The trees blooming behind my apartment

         So I've had a pretty eventful weekend with the BCA gang!  In art class on Thursday we painted our paper mache, but since some of them didn't do enough layers, they kind of fell in.  Some of the kids were pretty disappointed but there was nothing we could do about it at that point.  We're going to have our art show in about 3 weeks, so I'm thinking that until then we won't start any major projects, but will have time to work on projects they didn't have time to finish throughout the semester, and to do any fun crafts they have in mind!  I'm really going to miss all my kids & it just melts my heart when they run up to me & give me a huge hug whenever they see me, and say things like "Art class is my favorite and you're one of my favorite teachers" and "Miss Kristina, I think you're beautiful."  Oh and also this week, Abby Quarrels brought me a little gift bag with seashells she got me while she was at the beach & some chocolate for my birthday!  So precious!  

Painting our paper mache

Then on Thursday night, I went to BCA's production of Alice in Wonderland!  They did an amazing job and it's so cool to watch all their hard work come together!  I was so proud of them, and especially the one's that I got to know even better last weekend at the retreat! 

BCA's Alice in Wonderland

The Queen of Hearts aka Tamera Siles

Alice (Daniela Popa) & a storyteller (Rebekah York)

The Mad Hatter (Joel Cox), the March Hare (Cameron Smith) & the Doormouse

      On Friday night, I helped out at the lock-in at BCA after Bible study.  Jess and I got there around 10, and didn't leave until about 7am the next morning.  It was fun getting to know more of the middle school kids, but it was pretty difficult for us to stay awake!  Most all-nighters I've been to we have plenty to keep us moving, but we were in the small elementary building & all we could really do was watch a movie & play games.  So thus sitting still too long, I dozed accidentally a couple times.  When I got home, I went straight to bed and didn't wake up until 2 that afternoon!  

Playing tons of games to keep us awake!

      

Plenty of junk food to make us sick at BCA's all-nighter

      When I woke up Saturday afternoon, I decided that since it was actually sunny for once and not raining, I should walk down to the little park near my apartment & study my Romanian.  I found a place in the grass near the lake but off the path to sit in the sunshine. When I 1st sat down, I was just enjoying the sunshine & just talking to God, and when I decided to pull out my notebook to start studying, this guy walking his dog said something to me in Romanian about tanning in the sun.  Well my habit when guys start trying to talk to me in Romanian is to put on the dumb face (which sometime it's a legit confused face because I have no idea what they're saying) and say something like "vorbesc engleza" or "nu stiu."  But unfortunately for me in these situations, everyone knows English here and most are pretty fluent.  So he switches over to perfect English and asks me where I'm from.  The next question I always get is "Why would you come here?!"  And the best response I've found is to tell them that I'm working with Baptist churches here, because they don't understand the concept of a missions trip, and I have to specify which churches because they assume orthodox churches.  The next question I get is "What's the Baptist church believe?  I've never hear of that religion."  Which leads perfectly into an opportunity to share my faith!!  He ended up sitting down and for an hour we discussed Christianity & religion. I kept stressing that it's not about the "religion" and the good stuff we do, but our personal relationship with God.  He knew all the right stuff, but at the same time was so lost.  He believes in all this new age-y stuff like the universe vibrating, you need to be enlightened to be fulfilled with your inner peace, and all sorts of random strange beliefs.  Throughout our conversation, I just kept praying, "God, you better speak through me, because I have no clue how to best present You to him."  And I have no idea if anything I said will make any difference, but I do know that the Word of God does not return void, and he's at least going to be thinking in the God direction more!  I invited him to check out my church, and encouraged him to check out for himself what's written in the Bible, and not to just take my word for it or anyone else's opinions.  I got his name (George, if you want to be praying for him!) and added him on facebook, so we'll see how God's going to work!  


      I don't remember if I blogged about the last time I got to share my faith with a person on the street, so I'll tell you about that time too.  I was just walking in Unirii to the tram after my language lesson, when a guy stopped me and asked if I spoke any English.  Amazed that someone was speaking English on the street, I stopped and talked to him.  He was a couple years older than me, is from London, and is in Romania with an organization called World CARP, which I learned is a "world peace" kind of organization that believes that all religions are equal and we should just all get along and make the world a better place.  He wanted to ask me a couple questions for a survey, but first he asked me the same 3 questions George did: where I was from, why I was here, and what the Baptist denomination was about.  So thus, before he even started asking me his questions like "How do you make your faith your own?"  "How do you build character?" "Do you believe in a spiritual realm?" and "Do you believe that purity before marriage is important?"  I had already straight up shared the Gospel with him and he knew all the answers to those questions.  He also had many good personal questions about the authority of the Bible, the Creation in 6 literal days, the end times, and what it meant to have a relationship with God.  So once again, I have no idea whether my explanations made any impact, but I do know that God orchestrated these situations and He's using little me to help make His name famous in Romania!