Comings and Goings

On Friday I went with some team members and with my friend Carolyn, who is visiting from Canada, to visit one of our outreach teams in a nearby town. The outreach team consists of several girls from England, a guy from Germany and a couple of our Moldovan team members. For one week they will work in this town, doing a children's program in the morning, teaching English in the afternoon, and playing soccer with young people in the early evening. Through building relationships and helping in any way they can, they hope to share the love and hope of Christ in this community. We enjoyed watching the children play games, work at a craft project and learn a Bible verse. They all seemed to be enjoying themselves.
The day ended up requiring more driving than I originally expected as one of the girls had lost her luggage. Finally, on this Friday, the airport called that it had arrived but she had to pick it up personally. Since I was there, and it wasn't that far (an hour's drive) I took her to the airport to get her long-awaited baggage. She was very happy to get it after 5 days of borrowing and buying clothes.
As I mentioned, a friend is visiting this week - Carolyn - and she so kindly brought me a care package from Canada, including some skirts that my favourite sister made for me. Thanks, Bev! There were a few other specially requested items and I am really thankful that God has sent her for this visit. Today we had a free day and it was nice to have company on my relaxing day so we did a bit of an in-city explore. Downtown to 'Artists' Square' to buy some souvenirs and then to the park so she could see the fountain and have her photo taken in front of Stephen the Great. It was a beautiful sunny day and so nice to just sit on a bench in the shade of the park, relaxing and chatting. I thought we would see a wedding there, but we didn't. Maybe it was too early in the day. So then we went to see another park which I have just never bothered going to before.

This one is a memorial park of the World War 2 and has an 'eternal flame' which appears to be guarded by soldiers - not sure if that's 24 hours a day or not. Anyway, I am trying to upload the video from the park from where the soldiers were changing the guard. I think you will enjoy seeing them march! Adjacent to the park was a military graveyard and then in behind that was another large cemetery that I was not aware existed. Moldovan graveyards are very interesting and both Carolyn and I enjoyed wandering through and taking pictures and discussing the presence of benches and tables in the individual grave plots. Do you know what they are for?