Trip to Moldova

This is a family in our branch that lives in Secele.  We went to visit them to see about helping them with a project. The youngest boy is turning 8 and will be baptized soon.

This is their backyard where we hope to do the project. They don't have running water and this is their outhouse. They are a wonderful family. The father is serving as our branch Sunday School president.

The entire neighborhood has to carry their drinking water from a well back to their homes.

We took a trip to Moldova for a training meeting. This is the church in Orhei. It is about an hour and a half north of Chisinau. The branch is small but it is growing.

So many of the people pull little wagons or carts like this to carry their groceries, etc back to their homes.

This is the church in Balti which is about an hour north of Orhei. After our training meeting, they had a baptism scheduled.

This is the portable font that the church uses in their rented buildings.

This young man was baptized and his grandmother, who is a member, was there with him.

His mother is in Italy and so they connected her with Skype so she could watch the baptism.

This is the group picture of those who attended the baptism. We enjoyed attending this baptism but felt bad that we missed the 4 baptism in Brasov. It is great to see the church growing.

For the past year, we have seen these balls of growth in the trees and we thought they were bird nests.  We found out that they are actually mistletoe. Mistletoe is a parasitic plant that attaches itself to other plants.

It can actually harm or kill a tree if too many take over.

On our return trip to Romania, we had more trouble with the language at the border. We showed our documents to the guard and then he said something to us and motioned us forward.  We thought we were done and so we drove on through the gate. He was actually telling to pull over for an inspection. They got very excited and thought we were trying to escape. We had to go back through again after they put us "in time out" for awhile. After a thorough search, we were finally on our way. It took a lot longer this time.

It's spring and everyone is out working in their fields preparing and planting. So much of it is done by hand. They work so hard.

They are doing lots of pruning and tying up the vines. The weather has been very mild and everything is starting to grow. We would love to take this climate home with us.