I'm going to Moldova. From 11th March to 28th May.
Moldova is a small country considered the poorest in Europe. They speak Moldovan, which is essentially Romanian (a bit like the difference between British English & US English).
The program that I'm going on is actually a kind of training program for people who have never worked as missionaries before. This isn't strictly true for me, but because I was just a kid last time & never did any actual mission work, I think this is probably more my level. Apparently over the last few years over 100 people have done this, so I know that it's been tried and tested, which is good because I like it when at least two or three people have got some vague idea of what is going on haha.
I think I'm going to be staying in peoples houses, which makes me a little bit uncertain, because I'm not amazing with food, but hopefully I'll be okay. Also apparently most of the people who go on this thing are actually Moldovan themselves, so let's hope there's a couple of English speakers! I've got until March to learn as much Romanian as possible, but something tells me I probably won't manage much lol.
The main religion there is the Eastern Orthodox Church. For those that don't know, there are three main types of Christianity. There's the Orthodox Church, there's the Roman Catholics and then there's the Protestants (meee!)
About 30% of the population are below the poverty line, but literacy and education is pretty good from what I can tell.
I'm really looking forward to it. I don't know what internet access is going to be like, but while I'm there I'll try to write home about it as much as possible.
