We made it!! My squad and I are officially in Romania and we’re getting involved with the ministries here. On Friday, we were able to partner with the eyeglass ministry that Hope Church has. We had the opportunity to pass out eyeglasses and counsel the elderly at no cost to them. The Romanian people were so blessed and I received many kisses on the cheek from the elderly women. Although it was only our first day of ministry, I am SO excited to continue to partner with Hope Church and to impact this community.
Our ministry is awesome, but getting to this place was quite an adventure. The hurricane in Florida really put our travel plans through a loop. All of our original plans got changed and we ended up having 4 very long days trying to get to Romania. After an 18 hour bus ride, 12 hour layover, 7 hour flight, 12 hour layover, 4 hour flight, and 3 hour train ride, we finally made it to Draganesti-Olt, Romania. As silly as it sounds, travel days were tough. Our whole squad was running on very minimal amounts of sleep. We just said goodbye to our families so we were all emotional. We didn’t get any good introvert time. And, quite frankly, we were all pretty irritable with each other.
The morning after we arrived in Romania, I was doing my morning devotions and the Lord really spoke to my heart. In Zechariah 4:10 the Lord tells Zechariah, “‘Who dares despise the day of small things'”. As I reminisced on the travel days that had passed, I sat in awe of the way that the Lord was able to move in the midst of all the small things. Our bus ride was long, but the fellowship was amazing. Our layovers were boring, but the Starbucks was heavenly. We had a lot of down time, but the (small amounts) of sleep that I was able to get were very restful.
I was really challenged to be able to seek out the subtleties as in the midst of the mundane moments. There’s going to be so many times in the next 9 months that the Lord uses the small moments to bless me the most. I’m learning that I just have to be intentional and take a step back from the routine of life in order to notice what the Lord is doing.
