On Sunday, May 5, we celebrated Easter in Romania. Romania follows the Eastern Orthodox calendar, so some of the holidays come at different times than in the States.
In celebration of Easter, our family of four, along with Jackie Ramsey, another missionary Scott Pouncey, and two of the girls from his ministry traveled to the mental health facility at Mocrea to color eggs. Jackie had found a different way to color eggs using food coloring and shaving cream on Pinterest. It is a lot less messy and had great results. After the eggs were colored, the residents put stickers on the eggs. Then came the best part… eating the eggs.
As a child, I loved dying eggs, but I did not love eating the eggs. In my mind, it was the downside of decorating eggs, because I have never loved eating eggs. This was not the case at Mocrea. A few of the residents ate the eggs without decorating them because they could not wait. Of those that did wait, many asked repeatedly, "Now we eat?" When it was finally time, the look of joy on their faces was amazing.
After the craft time is done, there is always a time of prayer. Many of the residents pray and then they sing. Some of the songs were taught to them by Jackie and the volunteers, while other songs are traditional Romanian songs with many verses. I am constantly amazing to hear the residents, many of whom lack short-term memory, recall from their long-term memory a very, very long song. Not all the residents are Christian, but those that are most certainly have faith like a child.
May we all have faith like children and hearts full of thankfulness for both the big and small gifts in life.
