Take up your cross

This is Catea with her mentally disabled son Iurie and pastor Volodia of the Baptist church in Cantemir

Courtesy of the supporters of Eurovangelism we were able to bring an aid packet of 30Kg of flour, 5 Kg rice, 5Kg spaghetti 2 Kg of sugar etc to this needy family.

They were wonderfully grateful but we were more so as God priviledged us to see what it truly means to take up your cross and follow Me.

Catea is a believer in Volodia's church and Iurie is 25 and has been mentally disabled from birth - the fault of the doctors who delivered him roughly and broke his back. ( they neither took responsibility nor were held in any way accountable.)

He has very limited sight and hearing and can only be appeased from spending his day shouting and banging by pouring water from one container to another as he is doing here.

Thus he needs 24 hour attention - which Catea does almost exclusively with only a pension of about 30 pounds per month.

She gets no help from her husband who is an alcoholic and sometimes his frustation spills over to beating the boy and even her.

Just recently someone from the village who has a relative in Moscow who is dying of heart disease came to Catea and offered to buy Iurie's heart and lungs.

He seriously expected Catea to somehow humanely put Iurie to death - as he is just a vegeatable and then enable them to remove his heart in good condition for the translplant - "at least you'll get some good money for him"

I cannot imagine how she would have coped with the hurt of this.

Slightly out of picture above is Marcella - their 10 year old daughter

Catea found her lying on a nearby hill when she was 2 days old. She had been abondoned to die

She rescued her and adopted her into their family

As I say we were priviledged to meet this woman.

Pastor Mark