You're the God of this city!

Our time in Europe so far has absolutely FLOWN by! We have been here over a week now, but it seems like we just arrived in Paris! So much has happened since then...God has blesssed us more than we could have ever imagined!
This morning we were driving to Casa Agar (Hagar House -- the central location of the Touched Romania ministry. 5 women and their children live there right now. The TR offices are also located nearby.) and the song God of this City by Chris Tomlin came on. It came on just as we were driving through the city of Bucharest, and that song has never been more powerful to me. I have listened to it hundreds of times before, but never really felt how true those words were. Here are the lyrics for the first few lines:

You're the God of this city
You're the King of these people
You're the Lord of this nation
You Are

You're the light in this darkness
You're the hope to the hopeless
You're the peace to the restless
You are


As we drive through this city in one of the poorest countries in Eastern Europe, it's easy to feel hopeless and pity for the people of this place. But our God is THE God of this city! He is hope to the hopeless! Peace to the restless! And we have this tremendous opportunity to shine His light into this dark place! That song has an entirely new meaning for me. Wow.

Please keep praying for us as we continue our time here! Please also pray for the ladies at Casa Agar, as well as the Berlin Team!!

Rachel P

Bonjour!

Bonjour from Brussels!

We finally arrived in Brussels late Tuesday night…with no luggage! It was quite a journey. We made it through the Atlanta airport with no trouble and arrived at our gate to take our flight to Boston. Shortly after our arrival at our gate, it was announced that our flight would be delayed by two hours. This was no good, because we needed to catch our flight from Boston to Paris! After spending over an hour at the International Rebooking counter with Miss Margaret, all 18 of us had standby tickets for the flight to Paris. We went over and waited to find out if we would make it on the flight. Everyone stayed in good spirits and just enjoyed our time together. We did end up making it on the flight to Paris. While our bags did not make it, we did! In addition, Air France gave us each a pretty nice toiletry kit and they will reimburse us for up to 100 Euros (~150 dollars) worth of “necessities” – clothes, toiletries, etc. So it wasn’t so bad. After rescheduling our train tickets to Brussels, we finally made it!

Yesterday we enjoyed a day in the city! Belgian waffles are DELISH! It was a lot of fun, and definitely an experience.

Today we visited a castle and a chocolate factory. The castle was amazing…words cannot even describe it. And of course you know I loved the chocolate! AND…our luggage finally arrived today (all except one bag)! It was so nice to put on clean clothes.

Our time on the trip so far has been awesome. We have really gotten a chance to get to know each other. God has definitely been teaching us to rely on Him as our Provider. Having to wear the same clothes for multiple days (or wash them in the sink) can be kind of humbling. And relying on your bags to get from Boston to Brussels definitely took an act of God!

We will spend one more day in Brussels and on Saturday we will leave for Romania and the Berlin team will leave for Germany. Please continue to pray for us on this incredible journey. We know that this is not going to be an easy task. We are going to see and experience a whole new world that we never could have imagined. Pray for our protection, both physically in our travels, and spiritually for the things we will see and experience.

Thank you all SO much for your support! We will continue to update you as we can!

Break my heart for what breaks YOURS

I heard this song today, and some of the lyrics really stuck out to me in reference to our trip!

I see a generation
Rising up to take their place
With selfless faith

Heal my heart and make it clean
Open up my eyes to the things unseen
Show me how to love like you have loved me

Break my heart from what breaks yours
Everything I am for your kingdoms cause
As I go from nothing to
Eternity

May 16th is HERE!! Congratulations Team!!

Less than a week?!

Last summer, Richard Burke (Director, XA GSU) sent a message to our leadership team telling us about mission trips for the year. I remember Romania being mentioned and I immediately replied asking if this would be working with children. He said yes, and from that moment on my heart was in Romania. There was some talk of not having the trip to Romania, and I was absolutely devastated. I knew this was where I was supposed to go, and I prayed and prayed that it would not be cancelled.

In November(ish) of 2010, I submitted my application to be a part of the ReachEurope team and was accepted. Then began the fundraising. For a college student, $3000 seemed like an outrageous amount of money. I had no idea where it would come from. But God continuously reminded me how faithful he was. (You can read about it here.)

Still, May 16 seemed so far away. I had a crazy semester ahead of me and I thought we'd never make it. Sure, we talked about going. But it seemed like some far off idea, a date that would never arrive. 

Today is May 10. Which means that in SIX days we leave for Romania. 

The girls from the mission team in the
Bahamas (I'm the tall one in the
middle.).

The last time I went out of the country was in the 9th grade. It was also the last time I went on a mission trip. It was to the Bahamas. I'm not even sure that counts as leaving the country! 

I've never been on a plane for more than two hours, let alone across the open ocean. So yes, I'm a little nervous. But there is zero doubt in my mind that God has called me to Romania for these two weeks, and I'm beyond thrilled to see what He has planned for us!! 

Our flight leaves Atlanta at 7:15pm next Monday night (the 16th). Please be in prayer for us as we begin this awesome journey!! 

13 DAYS!!

We leave for Europe in THIRTEEN days! So soon!
Please continue to pray for us as we prepare our hearts
as well as our bags for this trip!

Praying! (Week 2)

Thank you ALL, again, for your continued support! As we enter the second week leading up to our trip, we are focusing our prayers on the individuals in our country (Acts16:6-10, Colossians1:9-11). 


There are three main points we are focusing on:
o For God to continue prepare our hearts for this Mission Trip, to open up His Word to us, what He wants to teach us on this trip, over flowing Love for Romania (Continuing last weeks prayers!)
o To give us specific vision of what we will be doing

o Colossians1:9-11 for the missionaries we will be working with and for ourselves


If you are reading this, please just take a few minutes to join with us in prayer for these things. The Georgia Southern ReachEurope team will be meeting Thursday at 7pm to pray -- we would love for you to join us in prayer wherever you are during that time!! 


Thank you all again for your support!

Join us in PRAYER! (Week 1)

To our many wonderful supporters:

Thank you all for your support thus far! We would love for you to continue to support us with your prayers! In these four weeks leading up to our trip, we are praying for specific things. We would love for you to join us in praying for these things! 

During week 1 (which technically ends today, but nonetheless), we have been praying for our specific countries (Romania in our case). 

We have been praying for these specific things and focusing on 1 Thessalonians 3:9-13:

o For God to Prepare our hearts for this Mission Trip

o To Open Up His Word to us

o To give us specific vision of what we will be doing

o To begin to reveal to us what He wants to teach us on this trip

o Our love for Romania would OVERFLOW like Paul’s for Thessalonica (vs.12)

If you're reading this, would you take just a few minutes to pray for each of those things? Thank you! We cannot do this without your prayers!!

Rachel P and the rest of the ReachEurope Team!!

Introduction -- Rachel P

Hello! Thanks for checking out our blog :)


I've been asked to introduce myself, so here goes! My name is Rachel. I am a student at Georgia Southern University, studying Special Education. I want to one day teach students with severe and profound intellectual disabilities. I have been involved with Chi Alpha at GSU since the very first Plug service my freshman year. I came on leadership my sophomore now, and at the beginning of this year I began to serve as the President of XAGSU. 


I'm very excited and very nervous about this trip! I know that is going to be life-changing, and I cannot wait to see what God has in store for us!

Rachel P

“God never intended for us to simply be the objects of His love, but also to be the instruments of that love in the lives of others.” ~Paul David Tripp

Thank You!

In November of 2010, I made the decision to go to Romania. 5 months and over $3000 dollars later, this is really happening! I absolutely could not have done it without my supporters (and God of course). Thank you SO much to those of you who have supported me along the way, whether it was through prayers, finances, volunteering at one of Chi Alpha GSU's many fundraisers, or just encouraging me not to give up, THANK YOU!!!!! The lives of the people I will encounter in Romania, as well as my own, are forever changed because of you. THANK YOU!

Please continue to keep us in your thoughts and prayers as we prepare to leave in one month!!

Rachel P. 

P.S. The pictures at the beginning of this post are my hands signing "Thank You" in ASL. 

Ramblings on Healing, Romania, and How Awesome My God Is

**I wrote this back in January on my blog. Now that we started this blog for the trip, I thought I'd share it here. Since this blog was written, I (along with the other members of the Romania team) have raised all of my money for the trip! Enjoy!**

I don't know about you, but I believe in a God who heals. Heals our bodies, heals our hearts, heals our minds, but most especially heals our souls. Lately I've heard of a lot of sickness and disease. And my heart is burdened with grief for those people, those families. But then I remember how in Luke 1:37, it says that with God nothing is impossible. And I believe that. My God is a Healer. He reminds us of this in Exodus 15:26 when he says "I AM THE LORD YOUR HEALER."

So believe with me now that He can heal us. From whatever is afflicting us.

Sometimes it's comforting to just rest in knowing that God is who He says He is. Always. Forever.

My God is who He says He is.

And He likes to continuously prove this to me.

A few months ago I made the decision that I was going on a trip. A mission trip to be exact. To Romania. To play with babies all day long. I signed up knowing that my heart will be broken at the end of this trip. I was excited to do what God had called me to do.

And then I needed to come up with 100 addresses to send support letters to. (Thanks to all of you who have donated as a result of these!! And if you didn't get a letter and want one, let me know!)

100 letters! Can you think of 100 people you want to send a letter to, much less asking them for money??

But once again, my God, my Provider, came through. In the months of November and December I raised over $1000!

At the beginning of December, we had a Chicken Dinner Fundraiser (Again – thanks to those of you who supported this in various ways!). Some awesome people from my church donated everything. So all sales were going towards the trips!! This also meant I was in charge of this event. And every time I would begin to get stressed out, my God of Comfort would remind me that this was for His Glory, and that I just needed to calm the heck down (yeah, I think God says things like heck…don't you?). The night of the chicken dinners was a complete whirlwind for me. But in the end, I had over $400 for my mission trip! Overall, we raised over $800! And we even had some chicken dinners leftover to donate to a local ministry that did a food bank. He is who He says He is.

Now we are getting ready to run a 5K in February. Now, if you know me, the idea of me running a 5K is pretty outrageous. I'm not much of a runner (although I did complete Day 1 of my "4 Weeks to a 5K" training!). And needless to say, I was less than thrilled at the idea of this fundraiser. But I decided to give it a shot. I signed up for the 5K, and was skeptical I was going to raise the "required" $150 for this event. And in a matter of a day, I've had people commit $165 to sponsor me in this race, with several more saying they would. I sat tonight having my quiet time in absolute awe of my God. How could I ever doubt Him? By my human nature, I do. But He ALWAYS comes through! It's amazing how that works. It was as if He said, "Oh, you have doubts? Well watch this."

So maybe this was yet another rambly blog from me. But it's my blog J I can do what I want.

If you really read this whole thing, thanks. It means a lot. And I hope it meant something to you as well.

And if you want to sponsor me for the race, just support my trip in general, or know more about my trip, feel free to ask!!

‎"Let's believe that if we all stand together we're a force that can shake the whole world." - A Day to Remember

About Romania

Romania is a country located in Eastern Europe. It has a population of over 21 million, almost 90% of which are Romanian. They speak Romanian and the adult literacy rate is 97%.

Romania has the highest number of orphaned children in Europe. In the year 2010, there were 62,000 children in the care of the state. 19,000 were in orphanages.

In the year 2008, 2 children were adopted from Romania.

In the year 2010, 0 children were adopted from Romania. ZERO.

19,000 orphans and not ONE was adopted. Not because no one wanted them. But because the Romanian government has closed off international adoptions.

19,000 sweet children of God, trapped in these horrible institutions. Orphanages in Eastern Europe look nothing like orphanages in the US. (This is not to say any orphanage is a great place to be.) There are so many children, that by the time each child is fed and changed, there is little to no time to hold them, stimulate them, love on them. This is why I’m going. To share love with these babies. To hold them. To make them feel like they are important.

So I guess what I’m asking is for you to pray and to believe with me. I believe in a God who loves and saves His children. I’m asking you to pray and believe with me that the Romanian government will open up their doors to international adoption, that those children might find a home.

First Prayer Meeting Last Night!

Last night at 7pm the Reach Europe Team from Georgia Southern (both Berlin and Romania) got together for our first prayer meeting!  We are so excited about the trip (especially since we are done support raising!)  Please partner with us every Thursday at 7pm to pray for this trip!