I mentioned in my Hope Church blog, which you can read here, that I spent a few hours doing ministry in a Roma village. I want to share a bit more about what that was like.

Hope Church received a lot of boxes of clothes and housewares from contacts that they have in Germany. We filled a van with those boxes and drove to a Roma village that was only about 15 minutes outside Craiova. When we got to the village we unloaded the van and took all the boxes to a Roma family’s house who are believers. They had a list of all their neighbors that were going to receive those boxes. So they led us to their neighbors’ houses and we brought four boxes of clothes and housewares for each family. 

Me, my squadmates Claran, Bailey, and Tiffany, our translator Veronica, and the Roma believers we worked with.

We dropped the boxes off outside their door and spent a few minutes talking to those families. None of the people, including the Roma believers we were helping out, spoke English, so we spoke to them through a person from Hope Church who came with us to translate. When we talked to them we just asked them a few things about themselves like their name and their children’s name things like that. Then we would preach a very short version of the Gospel to them. Telling them that the reason we came to this village and are helping provide them with this stuff is because of the love of Jesus Christ. Sharing how He died on the cross for our sins because He loves us. We said that it was because He loves us that we were loving them. Then we prayed for them and their families and that was about it. Then we would move on to the next house and do it again. Between me and my two other squadmates who were doing this with me we each prayed and shared the Gospel to about 2-3 families. 

There were also a decent number of families there who were believers. It was really nice to just spend a few minutes to hear from them and pray for them. To be able to just invest a little bit of love into them. It was nice to be able to also provide for our brothers and sisters in Christ. 

I think in all we gave about 16 families boxes of supplies. So we passed out about 64 boxes and talked to a lot of people. At the end of our time, there more boxes were dropped off but our ministry host didn’t want us to stay any longer for our safety, so we dropped the boxes off at the Roma believer’s house we were working with for them to pass out without us. 

I was so glad we could partner with what these Roma believers and Hope Church were doing in this Roma village. I’m glad that we could share the Gospel not just with our words but with our actions. 

What can you be doing to reach the community you have at school, work, even church to share the Gospel both in your actions and in your words?