Friday, Sept. 4
We’d been riding in a bus all night, about 11 hours, when we rode into several Romanian villages and our contact John asked us our team name.
“Fuel,” said Melanie, our leader.
“You’re on the wrong bus,” John told her, followed up with a “How flexible are you? Do you believe this is God’s plan?” (Which, btw, how can you answer that? We’re on the WR, of course we have to be flexible and trust. That’s what we signed up for.)
He told us our job this month would be to plant a church.
We’d been looking forward to living in a place in which all of us would have beds and what we covet the most: showers. Plus our ministry looked a lot different at the other place, with a little bit of structure which some of us really wanted.
Instead we were dropped off at a humble home of two rooms-a kitchen and a bedroom with two couches (and when I say couches I mean really hard stuff covered in upholstery) that were pulled out for the girls. The boys would sleep in the kitchen.
“Where’s the bathroom?” Our hostess pointed to an outhouse. Shower? None.
I’m starting to realize how what I’ve decided to do for the next year of my life can be seen as flat out crazy. In those moments while the wind was blowing in Ireland and I was hanging on for dear life in my tent and in that moment when I realized I may not shower for a month, I thought “What did I do?” And these two places are what will be the most livable from what I hear.
We’re starting our third day in Arcalia, a village outside of Targumures today and what we’ve come up with so far as church planting goes is prayer. Lots of prayer.
Teammates are now heading out to prayer walk round the village, the next hour will be spent in prayer as a team, both us and Team Triumph (who hopped on the wrong bus alongside us) will pray for God to move in a crazy way this month.
None of us have ever planted a church. We know we were accidentally on that bus for many reasons. (One probably being to break us of the things and rights we had at home and in Ireland that we agreed to give up in situations like these.)
We know this is what God had planned for us. To fully trust that he will work. To fully know that we can’t do anything on our own. I mean, really how can 14 second month missionaries start a church that’s only had a couple of Sunday services and has no pastor who lives in the village? We can’t.
But He can.
***A side note: As we were prayer walking a day after I wrote this blog, Emily, Melanie and I ran into a woman who spoke some English. She invited us into her home where she said we were welcome to shower any time, but that fell through today (Monday, Sept. 7 so we’re back to no showers, but I got to have one shower last week!***
