When we left Romania to travel to Serbia, we embarked on one of the longest journeys possible to travel such a short distance. I think that the distance we traveled would have taken 5 hours to drive by car, but of course we traveled World Race style and it took close to 24 hours to get to our location in Serbia. When we left Romania I was prepared to sleep and mentally check out for the day that we had to travel. Little did I know that during this travel day God would come through for me in a huge way.
We had a fun day on Tuesday, March 6, getting ready to leave the Seventh Spring Camp in Sistarovat, Romania where we were doing ministry for the month of February. We usually start most of our travel days early in the morning so we stay up late packing our bags and cleaning everything, but this day was different. We were leaving Sistarovat at 6pm so we had all day to get our packs ready and clean our house.
The travel plan was as follows:
· 6pm take taxi from Sistarovat into Lipova
· 6:45pm take train from Lipova to Arad, arrive in Arad at 7:45pm
· Wait in Arad train station until 11:45pm (we ended up going to the mall and watching “The Vow” during our layover, the guys babysat our bags in the food court)
· Take 11:45pm train from Arad to Timisoara, arrive in Timisoara at 12:30am
· Wait in Timisoara train station until 5:50am (we ended up finding a nearby gas station that had a small café inside and they let us setup camp in the café where we could sleep on the floor)
· Take 5:50am train from Timisoara, Romania to Belgrade, Serbia, arrive in Serbia at 8:30am
· Do necessary team things in Belgrade (get cellphone cards, get cash out of ATM, etc.) and find bus station
· Take a bus from Belgrade to Vrnjacka Banja
It was on the train from Arad to Timisoara that I decided I would probably be able to get the best sleep so I tucked my purse behind me on the train and I went to sleep as the train rocked back and forth on the tracks. I woke up suddenly as the train began to stop at Timisoara and knew that this was our stop and I should start getting my things together. I put my big pack on my back and put my daypack on my front and waited in the aisle of the train car so that I would be out of the way for the other people in our room to get their bags together too. The train came to a stop and we all jumped off at the Timisoara station. We gathered together for a few minutes and got our bearings. We were looking for a place to setup camp for the night and sent scouts out to find someplace better than the train station waiting room (it seemed like it was the free place for homeless people to stay for the night to get out of the cold and we didn’t feel like we could safely settle in there for 5 hours). The scouts found the gas station and we all loaded up our packs and made our way down the street. When I put my big pack down on the floor of the gas station, it dawned on me… I had left my purse on my seat of the train.
My purse contained both of our passports, two ATM/credit cards, approximately $100 worth of cash and our train tickets to Serbia (we couldn’t have gone into Serbia without our passports anyway, so the train tickets didn’t matter at that point). In all the commotion of traveling, being tired and sleeping on the train, I had not done a good check of our room and left it hanging on my seat. When I realized that it was missing, I immediately yelled to Chris across the gas station and we took off running back towards the train station.
I thought that that looking for my purse on the train was a hopeless cause because our experience with the trains is that they stop at the station for about 45 seconds before they are moving again. There was no way that we would be able to track down the train and get my purse back from wherever the train was heading in time to make our next train to Serbia. We ran to the train station anyway, hoping that somehow the train was still there. We followed the path that we remembered back to the train and sure enough, the train was still sitting there in the station. This meant there was still hope!
We tried the door to the train car that we were sitting in and the entire car was locked. We pounded on the doors, but no one was answering. We circled the entire train trying to somehow get inside and finally we found one open door. We hopped into that car and tried to get to our car from the inside of the train but the passageway between the cars was locked as well. The train seemed out of commission for the night. We walked through the car that we were in, looking and thinking maybe we were somehow wrong and this was the car that we were sitting in. We looked in all the seats that could have potentially been mine, but there was no purse.
As we were leaving the train car, I noticed a man sitting inside one of the cars had on a reflective vest and that meant that he worked on the train. He was settled into a room for the night trying to get some sleep. I tapped on the window of his room and startled him awake. I was kind of going crazy, so I think he was a little afraid of us at first. He came out of his room and we tried to communicate to him that I had left my purse on the train. He didn’t speak a word of English… and we didn’t speak a word of Romanian… but somehow he understood what we were trying to say. I motioned to him that it was on the car next to the one we were in to see if he would let us go look in that car.
He took us back to the car that we were sitting in and I breathed a big sigh of relief because I thought surely, no one has been on the train since we got off and my purse is still sitting on the seat where I left it. We walked to the room that we had been sitting in and I looked all over for my purse… but it wasn’t there.
While I sat in disappointment in the seat that I had left my purse, the train person who was with us found another guy who worked in the car that I had left my purse in and told him what had happened. He came to us and smiled and shook his head up and down and said something in Romanian and I thought oh, he found my purse and put it somewhere, once again this was communicating only through the use of charades.
Chris and I sat on the train for a long time while the two train workers called what seemed like everyone they know in search for my purse. After about 10 minutes I had given up. I thought, they have no idea what we are trying to say or what we’re looking for. The people they are talking to on the phone haven’t seen my purse, and that this search is hopeless. I sat and prayed in the car that somehow God would bring my purse back to me.
After about 20-25 minutes of sitting on the dark, cold train, listening to the workers talk on the phone, they suddenly waved us to get up and follow them. We got up and followed them to the door of the train car. We saw a man walking onto the train car and sure enough, he was holding my purse in his hand.
This was truly a miracle.
We couldn’t communicate one word to the people on the train car but after playing a long game of charades and praying while listening to them talk on the phone, my purse walked right back into my hands. Nothing was missing from my purse, and nothing had been touched.
When the man gave my purse back to me, he could tell that I was ecstatic. I immediately opened it and showed him that it contained both of our passports and they all looked at me and grunted, knowing how important the contents of the purse were. We thanked them the best that we could and set off walking back to the gas station at 1:45am.
God was taking care of us. Not only did He bring my purse back to me; He kept us safe and He helped us to communicate when we had no words. Amen.
