We have now been back home about a week following our trip to Romania. We are left with many impressions from our weeks there.
We could not have imagined the circumstances that some people there live in. It is not even 1300 km from Sweden and Romania is an EU state!
To work as a volunteer in a country allows you to see the country in a way that you would never do as a tourist. To hear and to see what it is like to live in a poor country makes you grateful to live in a country such as Sweden.
It was really nice and interesting for us, who up until a few months ago knew hardly anything about the work in Marghita, to meet other volunteers who have been there up to 25 times, others who had been there a few times and others like us, for the first time. We felt close ties and comradeship with everyone and had many good laughs. We can really recommend others to go and help out with their skills.
We also did some sightseeing at the weekends where we saw the surrounding areas. We have never seen so many derelict houses and we wondered if people could really live in these houses. We also made a visit to the camp building where we enjoyed a cup of coffee in the sun! One Sunday we attended the church where a number of the children and young people go.
It was particularly good to meet the family who will live in the new family home. It is a wonderful family and it was a pure delight to be able to help build their new home. We are very much looking forward to visiting once they have moved in. We will return when the opportunity is given.
To be so completely alone like so many of the children and young people were, became a wake-up call for us, who are surrounded by families, friends, church family and a network of people. It makes us appreciate it even more.
We met a 20 year old young man who lives at Brandusa who told us that it is not the hair colour or your outside that counts but the heart and what is on the inside.
Greetings from
Marianne och Lars-Göran
(Who wish that God’s blessing shall rest over all the workers, the work and all the children and young people in Marghita.)