Tauscher Newsletter (Fall 2025)

Hello Prayer Partners, 

Let me paint you a picture of what it’s like to be a leader on the 2025 Romania team. 

It’s 5:30 in the morning, and your alarm clock is buzzing, saying it’s time to get up. You feel tired as you’ve been getting up early most days. 

Rolling out of bed, you scramble in your duffel to find socks and clothes for the day. Interestingly enough, even though it’s summer, the mornings can feel chilly. You grab a jacket and walk outside to meet the Serve Team. Your seven teens are there waiting and ready for you to divvy up some hospitality jobs. Sweeping, mopping, bathroom cleaning, and hauling out the trash. 

The team enjoys the early morning hours before breakfast, as the Youth For Christ camp is quiet and cool. 

The Work Team has also met and is grabbing shovels and wheelbarrows to move dirt for the new camp driveway. 

Once the cleaning is done, the Serve Team grabs their Bibles and sits down for 30 minutes of quiet time. It’s one of the only times you aren’t busy helping someone or answering questions. You enjoy the peace and hearing what God’s Word says to you today. 

The early morning flies by, and before you know it, you sit down to eat a Romanian breakfast: tomatoes, eggs, bread, and lunch meat. 

After breakfast, the Work Team grabs their Bibles and heads out for quiet time, while the Serve Team prepares for their busiest, most hectic time: meal times. As quickly as you eat, the team clears the tables, washes the dishes, and sets up 90 dining places. 

Even with the large language barrier, you watch as the teens turn into waitresses and waiters. They bring the food out quickly, refill cups, and genuinely show the love of Christ through hospitality. 

In the dish pit, two team members are laughing together at some joke while spraying and scrubbing the avalanche of dishes being brought their way. 

In a flurry of forty minutes, the entire camp of a hundred eats and leaves to play games and do classes. It’s time to wipe tables, sweep floors, and scrub all the counters. 

Over the last few weeks, your team has been learning to clean to a high standard. Nobody finishes their cleaning job until Ms. Emma or Ms. Bekah passes it for inspection. 

The serve team is fighting a visible battle: flies. The cow barn, directly next to the camp, makes sanitation and good housekeeping essential to keeping the flies at a manageable level. 

Outside, the Work Team has grabbed their hard hats and gloves and started cleaning out the communist-era barn. They’re sorting through all sorts of items, some old, some new. As they work, they eagerly listen to Mr. Jencie as he shares about Romanian history. 

Once the Serve Team has finished up in the dining hall, you send them to the worksite to get a few hours of work in before their next meal. 

You walk over to the Orangie, the team's living space, to do some paperwork, clean up, and drink your cup of coffee. 

Lunch comes and goes in a flurry of eating, cleaning, and serving. 

A large truck brings loads of small gravel to fill the driveway. Your team begins working on leveling out the gravel and then placing pavers. 

The Serve Team wraps up its second pass of cleaning for the day, double-checking the heavily used bathrooms and trash cans. 

The team ends their workday around 3:00 PM. You send them to get clean and do laundry. If they get their laundry on the line fast enough, it could be dry by supper. 

Around 4:30, Mr. Joel walks into the Orangie, ready to teach a Bible study out of the book of Genesis. The team gathers together and talks through the creation story, discussing God’s truth. Once Bible study wraps up, the team enjoys some Romanian lessons with our host missionaries. 

The team works together to finish serving supper and cleaning quickly for their favorite time of the day: free time in the evenings. This is when the team and campers have free time at the same time, meaning your teens get to hang out and build relationships with the kids in the camp. 

It’s still light at 9:00 pm when the team gathers together to say goodnight in the Orangie. Ms. Emma leads the team in a worship song, and they discuss what they have been learning spiritually. 

You listen as team members and leaders open up to each other about what they’ve been learning, with and praying for each other. 

By 9:45, the team walks to the tent site, and the sun is just starting to set. You crawl into your bed, grateful for another day to serve this team, and also grateful to mark one more day done on your team calendar.  

We want to say thank you for praying for us and making it possible for us to serve this generation! We had an awesome summer of ministry—God did amazing things! Thank you for being a part of it! 

In Christ,

Joel and Emma