Tonight my team & I will be departing by train for Sofia, Bulgaria, at 11:22pm. We’ll arrive some time tomorrow morning where our ministry host will meet us & go on to German. I’m excited to see what we’ll be doing & finally get going with this. For the first time since this whole crazy process began, I finally feel like it’s totally right. I’m supposed to be here, and I finally don’t have doubts and what ifs and all that jazz going through my mind all the time. It’s good.
The main way I know God has this all planned out is simply this: I would never in a million years plan something like this. I would never plan to go to Romania – but hey, here I am! I would never plan to be in Bulgaria over my birthday – but, hey that’s gonna happen too! I’ve never had any desire to travel to Asia – but guess what? I’m gonna be there for over half of this coming year. God’s in the process of expanding my way of thinking, my comfort zone, my influence, and my view of Him way beyond what I can even think or fathom at this present time. It was so encouraging the other night at our last session together as a squad to have a few racers who are nearing the end of their 11-month journey come & share with us. They were insistent on the fact that they are now completely different from the people they started off as 11 months ago. Looking ahead to the transformation process makes me so excited for what is to come!
Now for a few random tidbits about my observations of what I’ve seen in Bucharest:
- Driving and parking on the sidewalks seems to be preferred.
- Speaking in Spanish is preferable to English when trying to be understood by one who only speaks Romanian (yes!)
- For the first time in my life I can literally say I’ve walked in circles while being lost in a city.
- Who knew that obnoxious barking dogs are so common in Romania too? (I do now.)
- Air conditioning is a huge blessing, in case you forgot. They’ve had above average temps here by like 15 degrees everyday. I have no clue what the real temp is cuz it’s always in Celsius, but unfortunately this’ll probably be one of the cooler months based upon where we’re heading in the months ahead.
- Surprisingly, cars stop for pedestrians in crosswalks 90% of the time.
