During my time in Romania, YWAM ESL Cluj and I held weekly painting lessons for the kids in the neighborhood I lived in. This project was done in partnership with my students as a big final project. Every single student had a part in creating this painting that I designed (see sketch on the left). During our last workshop together, I handed each of them one square canvas with some lines drawn on it, and some dots of color in the shapes the lines made; essentially, I created a paint by number for them, and they each filled in the shapes in their own styles to make this sort of quilt/puzzle. I designed the image with Cluj and the neighborhood I lived in in Baciu in mind; I wanted it to serve as a prayer for hope, peace, and unity to cover all the communities that the city contains. My goal was to teach the kids that unity is not uniformity and that, even when you don’t know the end goal of what you’re working towards, your unique voice—together with others’—works toward making something beautiful and larger than yourself!