We left Constanca and went back to Transylvania to the last three weeks working together the Restore Association.
The focus of Restore Association are the follows:
1.) Help families, single mothers and children in need to integrate into society.
2.) Support the personal development and education of children and young adults coming from dysfunktional family backgrounds, offering them a setting to develop their full potential.
3.) Combat Roma discrimination and help Roma communities to find relief from poverty.
4.) Network and build partnerships, nationally and internationally, in order to prpmpte Restore's goals.
5.) Promote the Christian values and worldview through all the activities of the associacion.
Activities:
1.) Mentor and train excluded families and individuals, empowering them to implement sustainable projects and lead a healthy life-style.
2.) Organize camps for children, youth and families coming from disadvantaged backgrounds and from the general public, weekly educational-spiritual meetings for children from rural areas, as well as diverse training events.
3.) Offer holistic, individual care and counseling to individuals in need.
4.) Advocacy for people in need, who can't represent themselves.
5.) Organize housing projects for families in need.
We could start the work immediately because in one of the roma villages, Copsa Mare fell down a house. The association has looked for supporters, bought building materials and started to construct the house. When we arrived we helped to carry the bricks and the walls stood already in the evening.
The next days we went to the other roma village, Seleus helping the kids in their homework. This was a big challenge for me because I can't speak Rumanian. Fortunately we just had to practice writing the numbers 1 and 2.
Day by day we knew better the life of this villages. In the houses there is not water, the toilet is in the yard. Making food begins to bring water from the well, cut the wood, make fire in the cooking-range. After eating have to heat water on the cooking-over to the wash up the dishes. The water is valuable, we have to spare!
The women wash the clothes outsight in the tub. In some houses there is not electricity.
Only 2 km from the famous village of Biertan, almost as beautiful
and well preserved, but less touristy, Copsa Mare is a quiet place in
the heart of the Wine Country. The fortified church is probably there
for almost 7 centuries.
Because of this, the people of Grosskopisch (as its German name was called) wanted to have a church as beautiful as the one in the neighbouring town of Biertan, which enjoyed similar economic privileges. Certain details and construction techniques seem to indicate that some of the men who worked on the Biertan building site, also worked at Copşa Mare. Further support for this hypothesis, is that the year indicated for the completion of the works on the choir is 1519, only four years after the works at Biertan had finished.
The fortification
The defensive mantle wall was erected at the beginning of the 16th century. On its north corner, there is an almost square-planned tower, equipped with machicolations similar to the ones at Biertan. An almost identical tower stands on the south-western corner of the precinct. The storage rooms built along the wall were later dismantled.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mn539L5eZKs
On Sunday was thanksgiving celebration in the church. The people praised God for the harvest, the kids performed a short drama about vegetables, the youth sang lot of worshipsongs. We organized the hospitality, cafe, tea, made pumpkin pies. The Sunday service visited also the non-Christian family whose house is built by the Christians.
This was an amazing day! Everybody and everything was glorifying God!
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