When?

I'm going for a fortnight from 24th July to 5th Aug this year.

Who?

There is a team of 15 of us going from my church, Rugby Christian Fellowship.

We're going with an organisation called the Smiles Foundation, you can find out more about them from their website: www.thesmilesfoundation.org look especially at the "Mission Trips 2004" and "Projects - Romania" sections. The charity is also connected to the Samaritans Purse organisation which distributes the Shoe boxes. A couple of my friends have just been over before Christmas and distributed some shoeboxes (amongst other things), their photos are amazing. The kids loved the shoeboxes, the most important thing to put in a shoebox is a warm hat, it can mean life or death for a Romanian child to keep warm in the winter. They found one family where the father had died and the mother was struggling to cope. Her house had fallen down and the whole family were living in one room, they couldn't afford wood for the fire so they were cooking on an upturned iron and burning their clothes to keep warm. If Smiles had not found them and been able to offer boxes for the children, food and shelter then they probably wouldn't have survived the winter.

Where?

We are going to a city called Oradea in the north west of Romania, near the Hungarian border, we'll be staying at the Smiles mission centre, which they are currently in the process of building, hopefully it will be finished by July! It will have dorms of 8 and some rooms for 2 people, places to chill out at the end of the day and we will get all our food provided there.

Doing What?

The original aim of the mission was to purchase and renovate a house in Oradea for underprivileged families to live in. Now the focus of the mission has widened and we will also have the opportunity to:

 

-food distribution, Smiles gives a box of food to families each month, it costs £20 per month to provide a family with a food box.

 

-work with the medical team, Smiles has its own Doctor who will go out and treat the families.

 

-visit the Tilgead school, Smiles is working closely with a community of Roma gypsies who are seriously persecuted in Romania, they are not allowed to move around and live in wooden shacks with no running water/sanitation/food/job prospects. Smiles asked the community leader what they would most like Smiles to do for them and they replied that they wanted an education for their children. Smiles have built a school for 60 children which opened in September and is proving really successful, the children love going and they get a proper meal and a shower as well as an education. It has also provided employment for some of the Roma people as dinner ladies and a caretaker. Each of the children is sponsored by someone in the UK, I sponsor an 8 year old boy called Constantin, I got a Christmas Card from him which he had made and my friends brought back a photo and a picture he had coloured at school, hopefully I'll get to meet him when I go.

How much does the trip cost?

As a church we have been raising £12000 to purchase the house and all the materials through various events e.g. a promise auction, several sales and making endless Toasties after the evening services! I think we only have around £3000 more to raise and several events in the pipeline.

 

Personally each member of the team has had to raise £1000 to cover our flights, accommodation etc. I have been making and selling greeting cards (when I've had time to make them) and at the moment I still need to raise £500 before the end of May, any contributions would be extremely welcome, any money left over will go into the general fund, so will still be used for the mission.

 

 

 

Thank you so much for your support. I'm getting really excited about the mission, we got our flight times recently, suddenly it feels like its all really happening!!