Hello! I am Courtney Stookey, a freshman at Union University,
future teacher, and lover of cats, coffee, traveling, and most importantly,
Jesus. Praise God that by His grace he saved me and gave my life a purpose- to
live by His will and go wherever He may lead me for His glory. Oh, what an
adventure it has been!
{a bit of background}
Almost five years ago, I got to listen to the Bruski family
share about Belief in Motion in Romania and felt… something. I didn’t know what
it was, only that suddenly I loved and felt burdened for these people halfway
across the world in a place I had never been to and frankly never cared about.
For the first time, the Great Commission became very real to me and I knew I
was supposed to go.
So, I obeyed. I ventured to Romania for just one week in
2011 and immediately fell in love with everything about Romania- the people I
met, the voices I heard, the villages, the city- all of it. Little did I know
what this journey would turn out to be or how much the Lord would teach me through
it.
So I went back the next summer for three weeks. Again, loved
it. I was totally convinced that I would be returning every summer and moving
there for good ASAP. However, as always, I planned my way but the Lord
ultimately determined my steps (Proverbs 16:9) which were way different. I
spent the next year learning about God and serving Him in different but awesome
ways. I learned that where I am does not make or break my disciple-making. He
has called us to go into ALL the world and make the disciples. If the Lord
sends me somewhere other than Romania, I can still do work for the Kingdom! It
may seem like an obvious or simple lesson, but it took me a long time to learn.
And it totally re-shaped my worldview and changed how I would view missions from
then on.
{summer2014}
About 40 hours after I walked across the stage to receive my
high school diploma, I was boarding the first plane of three that would take me
to Romania for six and a half weeks. I was filled with emotions, ranging from
excited to nervous. I knew that this trip would be different. But such a
wonderful different it was!
Throughout the
summer, Belief in Motion has groups from churches across America come on
week-long mission trips. As an intern, my job was to help the Belief in Motion
prepare for each group and then help the group in any ways they need while
serving in Romania. The first week I was there was pre-mission trip. Operation
Education was drawing to a close for the school year, so we had to turn the
Discipleship Center (DC: three-story building where the afterschool program,
Sunday morning church, Wednesday night kids program, and Thursday night youth
group meets during the school year) into living quarters for the mission
trippers. It was a lot of work, but so much fun when everyone started arriving
to serve!
During mission trip weeks, interns go with the groups to
various places each day. In one week, we would serve in seven different
villages, a refuge center for children, and an abandoned baby hospital, all
while living in one of the villages (Sintelec) and visiting our neighbors
daily.
One
of my favorite things about being in Romania for six weeks was that instead of
only going to each place once, I got to go multiple times. Relationships can be
started in one meeting, but they are really built up when you get to continue
to see, talk to, and show the love of Christ to these people week after week.
You remember more of their names, and the people remember yours.
I loved walking up the hill in Sintelec to the Roma part of
our village to collect jewelry the women were making to sell. I loved being
literally tackled to the ground by kids who became accustomed to seeing me
every day yelling every possible pronunciation of “Courtney.” I loved accepting
gifts of apples or cherries and having cherry-seed spitting contests (I lost.
Every. Single. Time.)
I loved seeing the
kids come running up with huge smiles when they saw the big vans of Americans
pull up. I loved singing praise songs in fields with kids and in a tiny village
church with five Roma Brothers and Sisters in Christ.
It was also hard. There were times when I felt so hopeless,
I just wanted to sit down and cry.
It’s
hard to hold in your arms a 6 week old premature baby abandoned by his 15 year
old mother and hold it together.
It’s hard to reach through the bars separating you in the
Adapost from the orphanage and hold the hand of a two year old girl you know is
being abused in ways you can’t imagine. It’s hard to venture over to the other
side of that fence and put a smile on your face and love on kids.
Every Friday in the village of Bogei, the smile of beautiful
Macela as I picked her up and spun her in circles broke my heart as I wondered “How often did her father beat her
mother/siblings/her this week?”
“How is just loving these kids going to get
them out of their situations?” And then I would look around at all of these
kids’
faces and see their smiles and know that although my heart was broken for
them I must love them, I must show them how Christ loves me.
Never on my own strength could I have continued to go back
and hold abandoned babies in the hospital or reach through bars to hold the
hand of a child in the orphanage. But the Lord gave me the love and strength to
go on loving them.
That’s the amazing
thing about God. He sends people out on His mission, and it gets hard. But He
doesn’t leave His people there to fend for themselves. He is there every step
of the way. When everything seems to be going wrong in the world and we don’t
know what to do anymore, God has a sovereign plan that we must learn to trust.
And as we trust in His sovereign plan, we pray. We pray
fervently, as James tells us to do. Nothing we can do can change the hearts of
the evil people in this world. Only Jesus can change hearts. So we pray that He
will. We pray that families, villages, and countries come to know the Lord. We
know that it won’t be in our timing or according to our plan. So we pray that
He will line our plans up with His. We pray that He will use us to show His
love, spread His name, and give Him glory.
{reflection}
After my shorter
stays, it was much easier to forget what these people I loved were living in
after I returned to America and got adjusted back to “normal” life. I still saw
the faces, but found it easier to block out the pain I had felt for them. After
all, I couldn’t even remember most of their names. My heart had broken for the
people of Romania while I was with them, but when it “healed,” I had become, in
a way, desensitized. But when you see and hear about the trials of the people
we ministered to every day for six weeks… your heart doesn’t heal in the same
way. It breaks and heals so that you can remember their pain, it heals in a way
that doesn’t allow you to forget. You remember their faces, their voices, their
names, their needs.
We cannot live only
in our own little bubbles and allow ourselves to become desensitized to the
world around us. For those who have gone anywhere and witnessed life outside of
ours- we must not forget what we see. We must remember and pray for these
people. For those who have not yet gone- I would encourage you to take a leap
of faith and go! Go spend some time serving in a sphere different than your
own. The Lord will use you, wherever you go!
