Diary 4 Friday December 10th 2010
It froze hard over night and the footpaths between Casa
Mabel (the pensioners’ home), Casa Aura (where we stay) and the small house
where Beni (site superviser)
and Dana live – these paths were all icy and slippery at 10 am this morning,
but amazingly by 12.30 it had all thawed and even dried out.
In the villages we saw the start of flooding as water
spread over the earth roads and ducks swam in it. It was not too deep to cause
problems for the van but you would have needed boots to your knees as I reckon
ankle boots would have been too short.
It has been another good day. The morning was spent
with schools’ distributions in our own Mustard Seed Romania kindergarten, the Ateas kindergarten, Berechiu
kindergarten and Sainnicolae kindergarten – so all
very much in the same area. [I cannot guarantee the
spelling especially of Sainnicolae!] It was lovely at
Ateas as they said how much they appreciated what was
given to them in October.
Before lunch we made up the bags of food for the
pensioners – we set up a conveyor belt; all the bags contained flour, three
different types of pasta, corn flour (used for traditional dish), rice, sugar,
cooking oil, margarine, a small tin of pate, a bag of
seasoning. The bags were surprisingly heavy. We made up 60.
In the afternoon we went to the church to distribute
the shoeboxes for the pensioners and the also their food parcels. I tried to
photograph every single pensioner (for the sponsors) with their bag and box. It
was surprisingly difficult as a number turned to walk off by another route and
they all wanted to stop and embrace me to thank me while I wanted to take the
next photo!! Add to that that it was bitterly cold and we were outside and I
was frozen!
Then I went with Mariana and Vali
to deliver some boxes and parcels to the bed-ridden that was rewarding – again
deep gratitude. Two of the pensioners live in TINY single rooms adjoining the
home of their carer relative.
In the evening we had a special dinner at Casa Mabel
where we gave out shoeboxes to all the helpers which was really nice and Alex
spoke of how amazing it was to think that just 4 years ago where the houses are
now was just a field but God had plans for the field and now we have a good
community and more plans to develop further.