A Glimpse into the Quarateam!

Coming into Romania I had expected to mainly be living life with the 4 other people who are a part of my team called See3! I’ll introduce you to them in a later blog 🙂 In reality, due to our quarantining situation that happened while being in Romania our teams have consisted of the people who have tested positive at the same time or groups of people who have remained healthy. I have been part of a group of 9 people from my squad who were the original Quarateam also known as Baby Stuffies…because we stick together. 

For the last week and a half, I have been able to leave the Mission House (where we are staying) and get out into the community, since I am no longer contagious and am fully recovered. Now that we are out and about, our schedule has gotten much busier! Here is a glimpse into what our day-to-day has looked like for the time we have been out. 

Wake up: Sometime between 6-6:30 am – I am also a morning person 🙂 

I start my day waking up and spending some time with the Lord in the Word, praying over the prayer points that I have been given by our ministry host before I send them to the rest of my team along with some areas to be in prayer for. A big part of our ministry here this month has been focused on prayer for the city of Craiova, the ministry here, and for the different missionaries that are a part of Together in Mission/ Hope Church Romania. 

Breakfast Prep 7:00 Breakfast 8:00am 

Depending on the day, my group has been alternating between different ministry times and preparing meals for those of us on our squad who are living at the Mission House. Each room is either responsible for Breakfast & Lunch or Dinner and then has other ministry when not scheduled for meals. Cooking for almost 30 people has expanded our cooking skills in order to provide meals for a large portion of our squad. Now, we know how to make large quantities of rice (and creative ways to eat rice multiple times a day), spaghetti, eggs, and oatmeal. We even managed to make a batch of edible cookie dough without any measuring cups! On the race we have definitely learned to think resourcefully and out of the box. 

 

9:00-10:00 am- Intercession time. We have been praying in our teams everyday and now that we are allowed out of the house, we go to the church every other day to participate in corporate intercession with our hosts and other squadmates. Here are some Prayer Points that we have been joining Hope Church in interceding for the city of Craiova this past week. 

Prayer Points over Craiova—

• -Filling of the Holy Spirit

• -Spiritual breakthrough 

• -Demonic deliverance 

• -Healing

• -Reuniting families

• -Prayer for the activation of spiritual gifts

• -Destruction of the demonic

• -Sanctification of the ground

10:00am -11:00 Teaching with Raul- (Either in person or on Zoom, depending on the day) We have had the privilege of receiving some teachings from our ministry host. He is an amazing teacher who has a lot of experience and deeply knows the Word of God. We have discussed leadership by looking at the example of Nehemiah. 

 

11:00-12:00 is either Lunch Prep for the House or an Hour of Ministry – We have used this time to prepare resources for outreach such as prep posters with stickers that give information of Hope Church and their social media. We have also handed out posters to people in the market and around the city. The posters include beautiful illustrations paired with verses and scripture references. 

1:00 pm- Lunch with Quaranteam

2:00 pm- Team Time! (Our team time has changed a bit since we have gotten out into the community, but we still try to incorporate various aspects of worship, devos, check-ins, and feedback (calling out the ways our team has looked like Jesus and ways we can be more like Him). 

3:30pm- Leave for Ministry

4:00pm- 8:00pm Evening Ministry – Our evening ministry has involved passing out New Testaments to houses to saturate the Gospel to neighborhoods, evangelism, prayer walking, and giving out tracts or pamphlets. Here in Romania, the dominant religion is Eastern Orthodox which is mainly based on tradition rather than a personal faith and is prominent in the older generations. The younger generations tend to have a more atheistic worldview and there are some folk religious and occult practices mixed in as well. 

Between 8:00pm-9:00 (ish)- Dinner/ Head back to Mission House – recap the day with team and get organized. 

10:00pm-11:00pm – Bedtime for me 🙂 

 

Other Activities not listed:

• hand washing laundry parties using plastic water jugs that we buy our water in (resourceful right?) 

• cleaning

• washing dishes… lots of dishes 🙂

• going to a coffee shop to grab coffee

• Stopping by Maestro and getting some delicious food (Bulgaresca is my favorite. It is a pita with hardboiled egg, ham, cucumbers, onions, feta, sauce, and olives) or grabbing pretzels (Warm chocolate and banana pretzels are excellent!)

• Lots of questions and conversations! 

PHOTOS:

 

(Craiova – Downtown Area)

(With my squadmate Renee on our 1st day out of quarantine!)

(Quaranteam Pals)

In other news, M squad only has 1 more week here in Romania and praise Jesus, everyone is out of quarantine as of yesterday! This means that our whole squad is able to participate in evangelism and be reunited at the Mission House. This also means room changes again, so as of today we are back in our original teams. On Wednesday, September 15th we will be traveling to our 2nd country!!

 

 (Drum Roll Please….) 

We are heading to Albania next! Please pray for the final details to come through for this travel day. Will you pray for all of our squad to have Negative Covid tests for us to travel smoothly? Will you pray for our last week that we would continue to press into more of the Lord’s heart for this city and the people here? Thank you all for your prayers!

 

Much love, 

-Elizabeth