Journal Day 2 - Consignment from Wales arrived and all sorted!

Thursday, 4th December:

Up like a lark, delicious breakfast with Mama Maria and Adina.  Ioan kindly drove me the 5 miles to Pastor Jackie's village home to meet the truck arriving from Wales with our consignment of shoe boxes and much more. They arrived early and almost everything had been unloaded by the time I got there.   Lovely to meet up with our good friend Ray from Brecon and Dave from Barry, the Support for Romania drivers.  We are grateful for our relationship with Alan Penrose of Cardiff who is always so helpful with transport arrangements.

Thank you also  to our wonderful team, Vio, Ianci, Spencer, Lynsey for all their help.  Spencer and Lynsey live next door to Pastor Jackie in the village of Sofronea and they kindly allowed us to store everything in a spare room at their house.   By the end of the day every box had been emptied, sorted into ages and genders with every other content (medication, woollens, baby milk etc) also made ready for distribution.    Lynsey had kindly prepared name labels for some of the larger ministries at Vinga and San Nicolau Mic which is a great help to me/  This is a large operation both in Wales and Romania.  In Wales I work off a spread sheet which I compile of the requirements in Romania.   I work on shoe boxes throughout the year with a huge amount of bargain shopping in between.  Our good friend, Elizabeth also helps out with searching for bargains and makes up all the baby boxes.

I collect all the shoe boxes from Clarkes in Brecon and we are grateful to our good friend, Sheila who covers them all throughout the year.  As well as purchasing a lot of fillers ourselves, a huge amount are donated by generous individuals, organizations and schools.  We are also blessed to have knitting groups in the area who make all sorts of items to order from blankets, baby items, cardigans, jumpers, pencil cases, hair bands, bracelets, purses, fingerless mitts, hats, scarves and granny slippers.  This year I filled around 250 boxes  with another 250 being donated.

All we seek to do is to bring love and a little joy into the lives of people in need as we celebrate the birth of our  Lord and Saviour.  We give Him all the glory.

During the evening I met up with dear Iasmina and her mum in the city centre.  Iasmina suffers from spina bifida and many other health problems.  They spend much of their time in and out of hospitals and Iasmina who is aged 7 now has to use a wheel chair when she goes out. I will visit them later on in the trip.