Picnic by the stream

This afternoon, a number of us took some people from the centre's disabled people's support group out in the minibus, to the countryside, to a park area where there is woodland, plenty grass to rund around on and a beautiful refreshing stream that you need to walk across to get there.  One of the things I've loved most over the last few weeks is to be able to engage far more with the natural elements such as swimming in lake and taking in the scenery.  So now I've been able to do this in Romania too.  It was very hot today, so getting my feet wet was a welcome relief.

No sooner were we across the stream and laid out the blankets, most of us were back in the slightly deeper part of it to paddle around and... well it wasn't my intention when I got in...but to soak eachother as well so that nobody got out untill we had no dry patch left on our clothes.  As you'll see from the pics below, we had a lot of fun playing with the ball, soaking everyone and just generally keeping cool.  After that we settled on the grass for a picnic lunch and then some songs with Jonny and Danny playing guitar, and the drum was in attendance too.  We also found time to play some games with the parachute, which was interesting trying to follow the Romanian instructions, but I think I coped not too badly.  I also had a chance to share my experience of disability with one of the ladies in the group.

It was a very special time once again, largely because it was such a simple thing to do, but yet means so much to the people in the group.  Like the girls I blogged about yesterday, none of these families have cars and they very rarely get out, and when they do they have to face bad attitudes in the streets.  Out there by the stream, they could be away from all that, and just relax and enjoy interacting with others.  It's staggering how affordable such an outing is to us in UK terms.  I'm told that the whole of the centre's transport costs (of which this trip is a tiny part) can be paid for by £10.  Our money could provide infinite numbers of these trips for so many more disadvantaged disabled ople.  There's no big plan to put together or programme or regulations and training requirements, it's simply giving people them the most precious gift you could give, TIME!!  It's a gift that is returned 10 fold by seeing and knowing how much they have enjoyed and appreciated it.

A special treat

I spent Wednesday afternoon with Carolyn (bottom right of pic) who is the B.C.C centre's worker for people with disabilities.  Originally from Vancoover Canada, she has worked here for three years, building relationships with children, adults and families suffering with physical and mental disability.  In Romania, whilst there is a form of small disability pension, there isn't any state support for disabled people and its down to local and international charities to bridge that gap.  

We went to the neighbouring city of Deva to visit two girls with Down's Syndrome, Lezouke who's 20 (top middle of pic) and Doreena 46 (bottom left of pic).  Also in this picture with me is Elaina who is Lezouke's mum and Heidi from England who is working with the centre for a year.  After visiting Lezouke for a while she got over her shyness of me and because of my name started calling me Michael Jackson because she's a big fan (of him, not me).  So I thought it a suitable ice breaker to try and bust some moon walk moves, which she found very funny, but probably not in a good way though.  She soon welcomed me as a friend and was giving me high fives and other friendship signs she uses, so I was very touched.  We took her to meet up with Doreena who lives with her 70 year old mother who is now housebound, to take them for a cake in a Patisserie and a walk round the indoor market.  This is a special treat for them both, who otherwise, hardly ever get out.  There is a group that Doreena attends for people with learing difficulties, but they don't do any activities together, just meet up.  Knowing the support available in the UK for people with disabilities, their families and carers, I find it very hard to comprehend the situation for them here with so much needing to be done to improve their qualty of life.

There's so many challenges here with regard to disability, with the biggest being attitude and stigma.  The majority of the public are still effected by old ideas, sometimes even within the church, that disabled people aren't of equal value, and it's not uncommon for them to be rejected, excluded and even physically beaten up.  Even on our short outing I could sense unease in some people on the streets, who stared at us and sometimes gave us a wide berth.  This is hurtfull enough to someone who is physically disabled as they understand what people think, but for people like Lezouke and Doreena, they have no understanding of why people treat them this way, they don't see themselves as any different than anyone else, and in my view they're right because they're not different.  They are human beings, and absolutely none of us are perfect.

Lezouke's mum Elaina is passionate about improving life for disabled people and is concerned about who will look after Lezouke when one day she is no longer able to.  The only option at the moment is a state mental hospital, which despite the non-existence of community services, is a far worse prospect.  She's desparate to establish a home for people with mental disabilities in the form of supported and independent living in a semi sheltered environment.  She's even been to the UK to see what kind of facilities and services we offer.  Of course, as with most of the visions of passionate caring people here, what they lack is the resources to fullfil the vision.  Elaina also faces the challenge of inspiring others who, because of the current situation, don't beleive its worth the fight as they think nothing will change.  I find this so frustrating as I know that if enough people fight for change, it can happen.  Romanian's only need to look back at their own 1989 revolution to realise that.  I find myself wishing I was one of the secret millionaires from the TV programme, because there are som many worthwhile projects here just waiting to take off if only they had the resources.  There's so many people ready and willing to work really hard to make change happen, they just need a break.

 

I'll be meeting some of Carolyn's support group members today when we take them for a picnic, but there are so many that I won't meet.  As an example of how desparate some situations are, she told me about a family she works with just along the street who total thirteen, including eleven children, eight of whom have Down's Syndrome, and they all live in a three room high rise appartment (that's three rooms in total, not three bedrooms).  It's incomprehensible to me how these people manage to cope with the little or no support they have, but yet having seen one or two of these children playing on the street, they seem happy and contented.  They're truly amazing!! 

Hunedoara's Story

The city of Hunedoara with a population of 78,000 is predominantly poor with small pockets of slightly better off areas.  At the time of the Romanian revolution in 1989, it was no doubt hoped that overthrowing Communism would lead to greater prosperity for all in Romania.  Ironically, this didn't prove to be the case for Hunedoara, which until that point was a vibrant and prosperous industrial town, supported by the Steel industry.

At that time, there were 30,000 employed in the industry in the town and the heat from the Steel Works furnaces was inovatively harnessed and used to heat water supplies for the whole town.  Many of the city's districts, including Micro 7 where I have been based this week, were built specifically for the families of Steer workers.  So how did the collapse of Communism result in the city becoming so poor you might wonder.

It's simply because the Steel Works were being heavily, if not completely subsidised by the government.  It was a Communist principal that every adult should have a job, and if they didn't work they would be sent to jail.  So jobs were provided by the state, it seems, no matter what the cost or viability.  These were times when Romanian's had everything rationed for buying, including fuel, food, clothing, electricity which was only allowed for three hours a day, the same with the only choice of state propaganda tv and so on.  When Communism was overthrown, Romania was one of the only countries in the world no  t to posses a national debt, but the cost of that was extremely high for it's citizens, with very poor living conditions and facilities all over the country.  Buy contrast, the Communist Dictator Nicolae Ceauşescu built for himself one of the largest palaces in the world.  After the revolution, the large subsidies and poor management of the Hunedoara Steel industry stopped, and throughout the nineties, production reduced dramatically by a total of 90% by today.  The two most devastating results were that there becam mass unemployment in the city with many people being plunged into further poverty, and the loss of the water heating system because of the downturn in Steel production.

Even today, that's why many homes in this area still can't afford to heat the water in their homes and live well below the pverty line.  In total there has been the loss of 28,000 Steel jobs alone in Hunedoara.

The man with a vision

Tuesday ended up being quite a busy and eventfull day, so my apologies if this is another long post.  Corneliu is the founder of all of the ministries that spring from the centre and its partners.  He's a Baptist pastor in the church in the city that we went to on Sunday.  His missional life began in 1994 when he felt the need to begin a Bible Class for children.  He tells me that at that time, it was difficult to get off the ground because the church in general in Romania didn't see the value of evangelism with children.  The culture mindset was and sometimes still can be that only adults were capable of receiving the gospel and accepting Christ.  Perhaps this challenge was a blessing for Corneliu and his supporters because it drove the church to ask him to rent a room outwith the church if he wanted to pursue this and they would help support the rent financially.  Over time the Bible Classes grew and so did other associated social ministries until the point where there is now the three floor Bethlehem Christian Centre in a district of Huendoara, Casa Harului Camp in the countryside and now being built, the new Bethel Facility in a neighbouring Hunedoara district.  The new centre (below) will start to develop social enterprise businesses in October to train young people and give them employment, which in turn will help to sustain some of the many projects of humanitarian support.  Corneliu was and still is supported in all these ventures by his brother Ben (benny, who we'll meet at camp), who have for nearly twenty years diligently listened to God's call and been prepared to follow it through all the many challenges along the way. 

As well as hearing the history of Corneliu and his team's work, I was accompanying him on a typical day of his work, and don't forget that he is a pastor of a large church in addition to all of the charity's activities.  Oned of the projects here is called Family Fellowship, which gives people from the UK the opportunity to support a family in need on a regular monthly basis (much like Compassion Child Sponsoring).  One of the recipients of this support was an old lady who's family had abandoned her and she lived in a shell of a tiny appartment with next to nothing.  Having been so grateful of the support she received, when she died very recently, she left her tiny flat to the charity to use.  We visited a man who is now living there as emergency accommodation since his wife through him out on the street after years of abusing and tormenting him.  He's now left in a fragile mental state, but remains cheery and welcoming when we visited.  Though he's living in the flat as is, Corneliu told me they plan to renovate it and use it for others in similar situations. 

We tried to visit a state orphanage after that, but even after ten minutes of polite negotiating with the director, we were told that foreigners needed to get special permission from the government to be allowed in.  Corneliu is keen to show me the orphanage and is trying to sort the paperwork out before I leave for camp on Friday night.  We then went to visit a state Residential Home for the elderly which had formerly been riddled with corruption, abuse and stealing from the residents.  However, things have changed a lot now with a new Christian director in place who has literally cleaned all that up.  The facilities still didn't match the homes we me have in the UK, but things are much improved and the residents I spoke to were very happy and enjoying spending the sunny day strolling or sitting in the orchard just beside the home.  Corneliu was traveling down memory lane on this visit as it used to be his Kinder Garten when he was a boy.  By the way, that's him in the picture below with the director.

As well as the many projects of Corneliu's charity, his church has grown significantly over the years and now have a purpose built building.  We visisted the former building to see how it's conversion into a sheltered housing complex was coming along.  The church didn't sell the building for development, but actually gave it to the Corneliu's charity who are intending to run the home themselves and are working hard to secure funding to make this happen and allow people to move in before the end of this year.  All this took us up till lunchtime back at B.C.C and a some rest time following, during which I fell asleep and missed Corneliu leaving for his next appointment.  This wasn't a problem though as the main and most amazing experience of the day was yet to happen.

We headed down on foot (only about ten mins walk) with the centre staff and Swiss team to the next district Micro 6 to the location of the new Bethel facility (see first pic), which is now the poorest in the city.  Interestingly, the B.C.Cs location Micro 7 used to be the poorest before the centre was existed.  Within a minue of our group arriving, over 100 children and some adults flocked around us to see what we were going to do.  I'm told that if we were to come back the next day there would be double the amount because word would spread about us.  This is all work to prepare the district for the kind of work the new centre will do and begin to reach out to them now.  First off, the staff marked of sections of the road to play games on the street.  They did sack races for the older kids, and alsorts of relay races and activities for the younger kids (sorry no pics of these, I didn't take my camera down and only got the pics that others took).  If cars wanted past, we stopped the games and moved aside, the atmosphere was fantastic.  After the games, we gathered the kids on the large set of steps and the Swiss team did some songs with them, with guitar and drums too.  Then there was a short Bible lesson and prayer for them before we headed back to the centre.  I was blown away with the sheer number of people who came and all had fun and participated in the games, songs, teaching and prayer.  This is a sign of how the new centre will be used and received and is very encouraging.  I can't imagine having ever experienced such spontaneous engagement of church and communtiy literally on the street.  There was no free gift or hand out, just the spending of time with people and showing love to them, amazing!!!  You might just spot me in one of the pics standing close to one of the guitarists enjoying the Romanian Praise Songs. 

No sooner had I arrived back at the centre, than I was invited to go with a group of staff and volunteers to visit a young boy nearby who has been ill with cancer for some time.  He used to be very popular and a regular character on the streets and in the centre's activities, but after apparent complications in a second operation, he is no longer fully aware of where he is and is very subdued and sleepy.  He struggles to walk and living on the second floor of a high rise means he won't go out at all anymore.  With no medical aftercare here, he doesn't get follow-up, counseling or physio-therapy, so it looks as if his condition will just get worse and worse.  Boredom and depression is a big part of his condition and the purpose of our visit was to cheer him up with some Romanian Worship.  So 8 of us, 2 guitars and a pile of songbooks squeezed ourselves into his bedroom and sang for over half an hour, as well as prayed with him.  As most Romanian's do, even when poor, his mother brought us some food in the form of fruit bread and some water while we sang.  By the time we left, the young man was obviously a bit cheerier, more alert and even sitting up to chat a little with us.

In the evening the same group took me into town to look for ice cream, which was very nice and we also had a walk around for a while and sat in the park on swinging benches before heading home after 11pm, and even at that time, poverty stricken though this city is, there was still a completely peaceful and lively atmospher.  As we stood in a circle at the end of a street to eat our ice cream, we were even joined by an group of street dogs who sat at our feet for a while.  Their quite friendly as long as they don't feel your a threat to them, and almost in equal number to the population. 

So there you have my Tuesday, I said it would be a long post and I wasn't exagerating, if you stuck it out till this point, then thank you very much I hope you found it worthwhile.  Until tomorrow, Nachti Buna, Good Night!!!

BCC Day One

It's probably not right to call this day one as I've now been here for three, but today was my first day in a week of shadowing the centre staff.   Today I was with Jan, who with his wife and two children live in the centre.  Jan (pronounced Yan) has recently become the pastor of the small church which has been planted within Bethlehem Christian Centre.  He is originally from Russia, but trained in Theology in Romania and married here.  Following a short time back in Siberia, he felt called to return here and lead the centre's church.  Centre Director Cornelui who I'll be working with tomorrow will no doubt be relieved at this appointment as in addition to running the centre is co-pastor of the 400 strong Baptist church in the city.  The centre church is currently around 30-40 people each Sunday afternoon, which I think is a great start, but they consider this very small.  I know of churches in the UK with around that number of a congregation period. 

Jans's role is to grow the church, take care of it's members and facilitate outreach into the local community around the centre.  We began the day with prayer, followed by a discussion about some of the differences and similarities between Romanian and British culture (if there is such a thing as British culture, perhaps it's more just western culture).  We talked about things like social conditions, expectations, what gainss or loses respect, and of course politics.  We also touched on how Communism's legacy still affects the attitudes of people today and I hope to take this up again with Cornelui tomorrow.  The conversation was actually sparked by my observation that there is a lot of street activity, loads of kids playing, adults milling around and chatting, people sitting enjoying the sun etc.  I shared how this was so different to my experience of community where you rarely see people out engaging with eachother these days, and kids are most likely insidie playing the computer or watching tv, and that might well be the difference, but community spirit seems to be much more alive in this area.  I also explained that people haning around the streets may well be interpreted as a dangerous situation to go into in the UK, but here there seems to be a sense of safety and friendliness. 

As I spent the day with Jan, I was able to go with him on a couple of visits.  The first was to a family who live on the outskirts of the district where there are only a few smaller houses compared to the tower blocks near the centre.  The man cannot work because he hasn't had enough schooling, and at times when he has worked it has been temporary and off the record because of this.  As a result he won't have any kind of pension and for the most part no income.  His wife has a college diploma and works twelve hours a day for around the equivelent of £200 per month.  The man stays at home and looks after the children and is trying to cook for the family too.  He's currently trying to extend their tiny one room house, building it by himself.  The purpose of our visit was to deliver some clothes for the children.

We later visited an elderly lady living in a highrise flat.  She became a Christian only earlier this year and has suffered terribly since then.  She has broken her leg, but far worse, her daughter died of cancer and she now has to raise her two grandchildren with no husband and very little pension income.  Her faith and spirit of endurance through suffering really encouraged me.  She continues to pray and praise God for what little she has.  It was during this visit that I realised something significant about our previous visit.  The lady laughing because her grandaughter needed instructions on how to cook the food she was preparing, told me that it is considered shameful in Romanian culture if a woman cannot cook and look after her home, the same is true of a man who DOES cook (pay attention Laura!!).  Whilst I'm happy that isn't my culture because I enjoy cooking sometimes, it struck me that this must only intensify the humiliation of the man we met earlier, in his situation.

We ended the afternoon with a trip to the supermarket with one of the centre cooks to stock up on groceries for the people living and working in the centre this week.

Welcome to Romania

The team and I have now arrived safely in Hunedoara, Romania and I'm beginning to settle in here in my accommodation for week one at the Bethlehem Christian Centre.  The pics are of the centre itself and the view of the Carpathian Mountains (well some of them) from the back.   

For this first week I'm going to be shadowing five of the centre's staff for a day each, beginning with the centre's own church pastor tomorrrow and then the supporting church's pastor on Tuesday, but I will also spend time with other workers later in the week, including the Social Worker and Disability Outreach Worker too.  The rest of the team left this evening for the camp in Vermana (not sure of the spelling).  I'll be joining them next Saturday for the disabled camp.  I'm not alone here though as there is a team of around 16 staying from Switzerland to help run some ot the centre's summer programme and of course there is the staff too.  Thee BCC is involved in many outreach projects in this poor community which it sits in the heart of, and I'm looking forward to seeing some of them over the next few days.

Theoretically, I should have more downtime here as I'm on my own and only expecting to work during the day, so that being the case I intend to finish posting about our Canada trip, but we'll see how it goes.  I have internet access in the centre all this week so I'm hopeful I can spend time to do that.

Heat, Wave Goodbye

So that's it, this post comes to you from my hotel room at Edinburgh Airport where this morning I was able to finally lay my head down for a rest at 10am after having flown through the night to Glasgow from Toronto and made my way east to the capital.  As well as time for some much needed sleep, I also feel refreshed (a bit) after a shower before getting ready to meet up with the Carpathian Aid Team to fly to London tonight and on to Timisoara tomorrow morning.

The journey was on the whole, not too bad except for the poor baggage service in Glasgow.  Heading to Toronto you can take your buggy right to the plane door and leave it, and it's brought to the door when you arrive.  The same happens at Glagow except that on the way back nobody can be bothered to bring it the short distance from the hold to the plane, and rather you have to walk for 10 minutes at 5am with both kids and all four of our hand luggage.  Not the welcome home we may have liked, but there you have it!!

If this it the voice of Mr Negativity then forgive me as it's probably due to sleep deprived crabbititis, but as for our Captain's cheery message on our decent that the temperature in Glasgow was a reasonable 14C, Whaaattttt?  We left Canada basking in a blazing 44C, I'd call a drop of 30C anything but reasonable.  However, the prolonged heat isn't necessarily welcomed in Canada as they have interfered with aging power station equipment and caused some power cuts around the city.  Traffic lights went off when we approached them the other day, which makes for a hair raising experience at the intersection.

We can't believe our trip there passed so quickly, we really didn't feel ready to come home just yet.  We had a fantastic last night with Chris & Sarah, where we walked some ot he streets in Toronto's Downtown Core, went up the CN Tower and shared an amazing meal at the Beer Bistro (a favorite for Chris, and now for me too).  The food was excellent and so was the massive selection of beers, all matched and recommended to go with each food choice.

There's so much more to talk about, but I must go now and get ready to get over to the airport for the beginning of the next stage of my summer adventures.