After blessing kids at the orphanage in Beclean in various ways for 7 years, my roommate Dolcemina was fed-up with these blessings being “pilfered” or locked away somewhere for safe keeping.   She sought a way to bless the children that couldn’t be stolen nor broken…. A way that would benefit them directly, be accessible to them and something they could enjoy over a long period. God inspired Dolce to build a playground and picnic shelter.

Dreaming was the easy part.  Dolce and I began to work on this together in May, putting the vision on paper.  Then we started sharing that vision. 

            The first to catch the vision was a women’s prayer group in Canada.  They began to pray for us and for God’s provision.  In just a short time, God led that group to come and join us to build the playground.  We were three women in Cluj and they were 5 women!  Funny!  Eight women working in construction!  What a sense of humor God has!  But not daunted by that, those women raised money for the playground and for their trip to Romania.

            We continued trusting God for His provision and we continued to share the vision.  How many times did people laugh at us because we were a team of women?!  So many times I can’t count!  But God used this strange strategy to stir up a community.  In my 20 years of missions, I have never seen anything like this before!

            Dolcemina and I spent a month arranging everything to be ready by the time the team came in mid-August.  A Pentecostal pastor in Beclean (from a very traditional church) rose up to help us.  Somehow he thought it was funny that eight women were trying to build a playground.  After all, in his “doctrine” women should be in the kitchen making “marmeliga” (something like grits), not at a construction site.  But God did something… as this pastor told and retold (the, in his opinion, very funny story) about the eight women coming to build… a lumber man was moved to DONATE $1000 worth of wood!  A cement man…donated materials for HALF PRICE! … A man with a truck went and picked up our wood, FREE… a friend volunteered to make the backboards for the basketball court, FREE and even the mayor of the town was mobilized to take on all the metal-work parts of our project, FREE!  We calculated $2420 worth DONATED!!!!!!!  This was an absolutely unique response in all my years in missions! 

Help came from the most unexpected places.  We saw God move hearts because some women dared say that it could be done.  We joked with the pastor about us having an anointing “to push the men from behind”.  We witnessed God’s hand moving on the behalf of those orphan children.  We saw firsthand that God has a special place in His heart for orphans. God moved in such an extraordinary way, that we were all amazed!! 

            Finally everything and everybody was assembled in Beclean for one week.  In the end, we managed to find ONE MALE, a skilled jack-of-all-trades to be a part of our team and to help us…actually more accurately, we helped him.  ….WHEW!!!  Very long days, lots of hard work, sore muscles where we didn’t know we had muscles and buckets of sweat. But we did it!  The picnic shelter was raised!  The picnic tables are being made, the metal pieces of playground equipment are in place, the basketball court is set up.  The project is about 95% finished…just a few more finishing touches…

            There is something very precious about seeing the kids sitting under the shade of the newly raised picnic shelter.  It’s very satisfying to see them enjoying the swings.  And shooting hoops with them… is precious.