3 Wed Jan 15
Good morning One of the
memories that I brought back with me from my recent trip to Romania with
Mustard Seed Jersey is of a visit to one family’s very poor home
This family have been on
our sponsorship program for about a year. The family consists of a father a
mother and an adult daughter. The mother and teenage daughter both have serious
health problems so receive disability pensions and aren’t able to work meaning
the father is the only breadwinner. Although it was very hard
they were managing quite well to pay their rent and purchase food and the
utilities on what the father earned from his cleaning jobs. But then suddenly
the rent increased dramatically and they could not pay so they were evicted and
faced life on the street.
I guess you could say they
were fortunate in that the father found a dark dingy basement where they were
able to live.
When
we visited it was evident that they had done their best to make it as pleasant
as possible. But it was terrible and quite distressing for me to think that
they had to live there and had been living there for the last three months.
We
gave them a food parcel for which they were very grateful. When we asked how
they were coping with living in the single room the response we got was
amazing! They were full of thankfulness to God that they had found somewhere to
live and they weren’t on the streets. The father was especially thankful that he was
able to continue with his cleaning jobs because he could still walk to where he
worked and that meant he could continue to earn money to feed his precious
family.
I
could not help but ask myself if I was living in a dingy basement full of stale
air, would I manage to have such a positive attitude and be grateful to God.