Romania Stories

The Fruit of our Labor, by David Chronic

Originally appeared in The Cry: An Advocacy Journal of WMF, vol. 11, no. 1 (Spring 2005)

A day before our community departed for the children’s summer camp, a close friend startled me by saying that she doesn’t see any fruit in our work. The bite of her honesty sent me spinning into a downward spiral in which I couldn’t find a foothold. I started to reevaluate myself, asking, “What am I doing here? What have I done here? What do I hope to do here?”

For the first few days into camp, I lost some sleep as my thoughts and emotions wrestled in the darkness. I tried to encourage myself by thinking of the few boys who are off the streets and of those who have become Christians. But that balloon was easily popped by thoughts of those who, after years of relationship, are still on the streets and still on drugs and still lost, or worse, of those “success stories” who are now back where they started.

I then tried to encourage myself by looking at our community, which has grown over the years both in maturity and size. Truly, there are a number of shining spots that have been forged in the fire of community and ministry among the poor. But those, too, bear the shadows of wanting spirituality and of ongoing conflicts – ruts that seem to be impassable. So, what am I doing here? Am I in the wrong place? Should I leave and start working in “soil” that might bear more visible “fruit”?

I am grateful that God allowed me to slide into this crisis before camp. I had thought that I was going to camp in order to invest my diminishing energies into the lives of needy children, but I discovered that God had chosen these children to minister to me.

About 30 children participated in that week of camp, six of whom I have known since 1997. For about two years, I visited them every week in the hospital where they had been abandoned. One of these children was Costel, who is now 15 years old. He happened to be assigned both to my dormitory and to my small group at camp. Because Costel is a little bit of a slow learner, talks a little too loud and twitches a little when he is in new environments, many of the kids in our small group laughed at him or tried to take advantage of him. This meant that I had to be constantly on guard to stick up for him.

The theme of our camp was, “Who am I?” On the first day, I asked the kids in my group to make a list of “who they are.” (One girl, who couldn’t write a single letter six months ago, wrote her entire list by herself!) Usually the children wrote their names, their ages, and that they were persons. I also asked them to write down what others say about them that make them feel bad about who they are. One said, “I don’t like it when my mom beats me and calls me a bastard.” Another said, “I don’t like it when my parents argue and when my dad beats my mom. I feel like it is my fault.” One boy said, “I don’t like it when my mom or step-dad calls me ‘orphan.’”

Each day we talked about who God says we are. We discussed how we are created in the image of God, how God chooses the small and insignificant, how God knew us while we were being formed in our mother’s womb, how we are fearfully and wonderfully created, how we are beloved by God and how we are called to become new creations. Each day I would ask my group what things they would add to their list about “who I am.” Each day Costel would simply respond, “I am Costel.” On the fourth day, he surprised me with, “I am God’s creation.”

Though this boy had been abandoned in the hospital when his parents found he had acquired HIV, Costel’s smile-filled face constantly radiates true joy. Even when he is punished, Costel still smiles. Wherever he was at camp, Costel brought people together to laugh and play. It wasn’t just swimming in the river or running all over the field after a football that made Costel wish dinner time would never come; it was swimming and playing football together. (I did count it a personal success, since I’ve never gotten another Romanian so excited about American football.) When people were together, Costel was happy.

Others thought I was bothered by Costel’s constant, loud presence. In fact, there were a few times when he did irritate me – like when I was cleaning the septic tank, and Costel ran up and splashed me with contaminated water. But one girl in our small group meeting looked at Costel’s constant interaction with me and said it as plainly as it could be said: “Costel loves you.”
A few nights before camp ended, I sat with a sheet over my head and wept uncontrollably for how God had chosen this little boy to be His instrument to show me who I am: the beloved of God. On the morning before we departed from camp, Costel jumped off his bunk, came over to my bed, started pulling on my cheeks as if they were Play-Doh and then kissed my cheek. Beloved.

I thought about meeting Costel in the hospital when he was so small, needy and neglected. I thought about his foster mother who doesn’t mind talking negatively about him even when he is present. I thought about how this boy wouldn’t be alive if he didn’t get his medication, which is both expensive and difficult to find – medicine which
we smuggled in from India a few years ago. He

wouldn’t be here – and the rest of the world and I would be missing out on the life of this beautiful boy.

I also thought about the “fruit” of our camp. Should I tally it, evaluate it and look for ways to increase our impact and efficiency? Certainly, that has a place, but that is not how we treat our families, and it’s not how we talk about family. And after seven intense years of relationships with these kids, that is what they are: family. And naming it “family” helps us to make a lasting commitment to one another because you can never leave your family. The fruits of this camp were not just when children said they wanted to give their lives to Jesus, but also when they were used by Jesus. The fruits of this camp were when kids approached other kids, telling them that they are beautiful, beloved creations of God, and watching their eyes sparkle as they heard it.

Another fruit was that Christians from the Pentecostal, Baptist, Orthodox and Catholic churches participated in this camp with the sole desire that these kids come to know Jesus and grow in Him. Two volunteers from another organization said it was the best camp they had ever attended. They also commented on the amazingly obedient behavior or our children – children who are normally known for their misbehavior. These things are the simple, deep, ongoing works of the Spirit whose fruit we long to bear.

David is the Romania Field Director and Europe/Africa Regional Coordinator. He and his wife, Lenuţa (Lenutsa), recently moved to a new apartment that is near the area where the street children hang out.