St Cuthberts Saltcoats Parish

Visit to Patarat

We arrived home on Saturday 17th Sept. after an amazing and exhausting time away. We left Saltcoats at 3.30pm on Saturday 3rd and arrived in Cluj Napoca at 9.30am local time(7.30 BST). After a few hours sleep it was out to the gypsy camp at Pata Rat (Pata) to take part in their evening service ( the first of five sermons). On the Monday of the first week we met Lachie McLeod who had been instrumental in obtaining the container and arranging its transport to Romania.

The container was delivered to a nearby village, since the site originally planned for the container had been severely waterlogged. We began unloading the container and made several visits during the next few days to continue this. Some of the aid on the container was destined for the local hospital in Cluj and a hospice in a nearby city and one of the senior hospital nursing administrators Simona was out helping sort the aid. Tuesday to Friday afternoons we ran a children’s programme in the camp, led by Linda and ably assisted by singers and translators and Angela, Michelle, Hunter and Brian. The children were lovely to work with. They were very dirty, some of them had not eaten properly that day, some bore the physical scars of life in the camp and some were in need of medical treatment. But they were bright, cheery, very able and quick to establish a rapport with us. Indeed despite the harshness of their lives many of them seemed happier than some of our local children. We also had the opportunity to take part in their regular Sunday afternoon programme that weekend. Angela, Linda and Michelle were also involved at the ladies meeting at Pata on the Thursday morning.

Some of the gypsy families at Pata had lost their homes during the recent flooding and were actually living on the dump sleeping under the stars, guarding what they had been able to scavenge. The dump as you can imagine was hot and smelly, but easier to work in the summer than in the depths of winter. It is also the site of illegal dumping of hospital and industrial waste. Some of the pools of water at the base of the dump had a very ominous smell and appearance.

During the first week we also visited the Baby House which is very well furnished and maintained. It was lovely to meet the children there but again sadness was there to greet us. One little boy in particular was insecure. He had been adopted only to be returned three months later because his new parents decided that they didn’t want him.

During our second week we all helped in the construction of a house for Martin and Trish, the Scottish couple who were looking after us, laying floor boards and fitting windows. Their plight typically highlights the desperate state of the Romanian economy and the prevalent corruption. Those originally chosen to build the house had been given money in advance for materials and then they vanished. New builders had laid the foundations, and built the wooden shell. The quality of the building materials was dreadful, nothing fitted, nothing was square, all the sizes of the window frames were wrong, and so on.

Michelle, Hunter and Brian visited Gherla prison on the Thursday of our second week and were introduced to the General (prison governor) himself which is a great honour. Gherla is now one of the better prisons in Romania but during the communist years had been brutal. (It was in Gherla that Richard Wurmbrand was held and tortured for years, and whose story reached the west and led to the founding of Release International). After Gherla we were back at Pata and able to see and assist in the construction of one of the new houses for a gypsy family.

We took some of the money raised for Romania with us, and made contributions to several projects:

We provided for the cost of a new boiler for the baby house.

They have a fund which they use to help pay for prescriptions for the gypsies to which we contributed.

We provided money to pay for an operation to one wee girl’s eye. She had fallen from a cart and received stitches. Unfortunately the stitching had been badly done and she has been left unable to close her left eye at all. It is hoped that she can have this corrected before permanent damage is done to her eye.

During our stay there was very heavy rain one night and one of the men in the camp spent most of the night holding up the roof to prevent the weight of the rain water collapsing it upon his children. We have left money to enable the purchase of rolls of heavy duty polythene to cover the gypsy houses for the winter to help prevent water penetration. The situation is so desperate that some of the older gypsies are not expecting to survive the harsh winter.

Money has also been given to buy some gravel to help provide a basic surface in a site which quickly becomes a sea of mud.

We also gifted some money to Martin and Trish for they too rely on donations for their own support.

Our time in Romania was a great challenge and a great learning experience. We were exposed to a completely different style of worship, a great contrast in the way the family Aid Foundation and our own church operate, the opportunity to work with people of other nationalities and cultures and especially the opportunity to see the work being done to meet physical and spiritual needs at Pata and the prison. The spiritual needs are just as great amongst rich and poor alike and addressing these needs is always of utmost importance. The need for people to find Jesus Christ as their Saviour and Lord is always the greatest need of all. Through the practical care being extended bridges are built to the community at Pata and the respect and trust this creates opens the doors for further care and practical evangelism.

We thank God for our trip to Cluj and for all your prayers for us, and for the privilege of sharing in the work being done by theFoundation. We trust that our enriching experiences will remain with us and further equip us to serve Christ in our own church and parish.