27/12/2018
THE WEALTHIEST FAMILY IN THE CHURCH
I will never forget the Christmas of the year 1980. I was fourteen, Maria, my sister was 16 and Jenna, the other sister, she was almost 18. It was us three and mother. Our father died five years ago in an accident in the coal mine.
One month before Christmas, our Pastor announced that they will make a special offering for the poorest family in the Church. He asked us all to save up money during the entire month until Christmas so they can give the money to the family which the leaders of the church will vote as the poorest family of the church.
We thought about what could we do, us four. Mother’s plan was to eat for an entire month only potatoes. In this way we could save up 300 lei (romanian currency). Also, if we will not lit the light after darkness for a month we could save another 100 lei. Me and Maria cleaned the houses of some rich people and Jenna sold some christmas cards she made herself.
In the evening, in the dark, we were speaking about how that poor family will be joyful to receive the offering. We were in the church us and other 80 people, mother calculated that there will surely be twenty times more than we are saving, especially since the pastor was reminding every Sunday about the saving for the offering.
One day before Christmas we went with Maria to a shop to change the money into brand new banknotes – this is how we learned that we need to give to offerings to God.
We came home with 800 lei. One banknote of 500 and three of 100 each. Never ever before did we have so much money! We did not care that we do not have beautiful christmas dresses. We were so happy. We could not sleep all night because of the excitement.
The next day, the Christmas day, it was raining, pouring hard. We had no umbrellas. The church was 2 kilometers from home, but we did not care how wet we will get. Jenna had holes in her shoes, she stuffed them with paper. On the way the paper got soaked and her feet got soaked. We were sitting happily in Church, althoug we heard some girls from the Choir laughing at us that we had old dresses on. We heard that before, so we did not care. With that money in the hand,we were rich. When the offering for the poorest family was made, mother gave the 500 lei and we each gave 100 lei.
On the way home we sang for joy. For lunch mother made us a surprise. She bought 10 eggs, she cooked them and we ate cooked eggs and fried potatoes. It was Christmas day and we felt so happy.
But around 3 pm the pastor came to our house. He called mother to the door. When mother came back in she was white as the wall and she was holding an envelope in her hands. We asked her what was in the envelope and only after a half an hour my mother opened the envelope.
In the envelope it was a banknote of 500 lei, three banknotes of 100 lei and 40 banknotes of 10 lei. Total of 1200 lei.
Nobody said a thing, we were all looking to the floor. Just a few minutes ago we felt like millionnaires. Now, with that envelope in our hands, we were feeling like awfully poor children. We were glad we were rich compared to others – we had potatoes. Then we knew we were rich because we had an excellent mother and many children had no mother at all. We were glad we were three sisters in the house, so many families had no children at all.
We knew we did not have many things that others had, but never occured to us that we were poor. On that day of Christmas we found out that we were.
It was never the same as before. In the week that followed nobody spoke in our house. We were so ashamed, we did not even want to go to Church any more. Mother did not allow that.
Mother asked us, what should we do with the 1200 lei, but we did not know what poor people do with money.
80 people collected 1200 lei, and 800 of those were given by the poorest family of the Church.
Vladimir Pustan (rewritten after an old newspaper article)
Translated by Aurora Guzbeth
