10 Reasons to be thankful Romania Edition
1.   Home to ourselves: We stayed in their mission home this month. We each had our own bed…with some to spare. We had a fully stocked kitchen. We had a washing machine. We had 2 showers, 2 toilets and 2 sinks. We even had couches! It felt good to live as a community in a community house.
2.  Texas teams: While we were in Romania, two different teams from Magnolia, Texas and Bryan, Texas came to visit and help with the church we were at. It was nice to have a little bit of home around. They all said “ya’ll!� AND…the first team knew someone on the second team and they emailed them and asked them to bring taco seasoning so that we could have Mexican food for my birthday! Success!
3.  Cooking: For the first time on the race, we were responsible for cooking for ourselves all month. Having cereal for breakfast and a ham and cheese sandwich for lunch has never made me so happy. My teammate Pam is an awesome cook and she took good care of us all preparing everything from fried chicken to spaghetti to peanut butter cookies. And she made a wonderful Mexican meal and homemade birthday cake!!
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4.  Cherries and strawberries: We have experienced fresh fruit most of the places we have been around the world…but getting to pick cherries from a tree on the side of the road or strawberries from a field behind the church was a first. They were so good!!!
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5.  Thrift Stores: Compared to all of the other countries we’ve been to, Europeans dress closer to how we dress, or at least how we used to dress 10 months ago. This of course made us want to shop, but we’re on a tight budget and Europe is expensive! Thank goodness for thrift stores where you can buy shirts and dresses for $1-$3!!
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6.  Similar cultures: In other cultures, even when our contacts spoke good English, sometimes it was still hard to really connect to them because our cultures were so different. We worked with several different missionary families, all from somewhere in Europe, who we were able to relate with about their childhoods, their education, their dating lives and their struggles financially. Of course all the other countries have experienced these things, but in Europe they look a lot like our experiences in America.
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7.  Hair dye: For those of you who don’t know, I have a bet with my dad that I won’t be able to go all year without cutting my hair. P.S. I’m winning!! For myself, I was going to try to find my natural color out at the same time…I had not dyed my hair since March of 2010. My roots were growing out a kind of dull light brown color, but the ends of my hair that had been colored were turning a brassy, orange color because of fading and exposure to sun. Since I couldn’t cut my hair off where this brassy, orange started…I covered it up with a brown color!! Thank you Garnier!
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8.  Potential plans: This month, I was able to start mailing out resumes and filling out applications. I currently have resumes sent to TOMS shoes and to Living Water International. Please lift those up in prayer and for clear guidance on the path I need to take after the race.
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9.  Bulgaria: We were able to add two more countries to our list. The ministry we worked with this month wants to expand to Bulgaria so we were able to help with a survey trip by passing out some literature and inviting natives to an English speaking class. The best part of the trip was the very few Christians that we came across were so excited to meet us because they don’t know many other Christians. I was thankful to get to be an encouragement to them.
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10. Church: I will be honest in saying that there have been times this year when church has not been real high up on my list. Going to church in another language week after week starts to wear on you and it doesn’t always uplift you. However, this month was different! They sang songs in their language…but we knew them! They had fellowship after church. They had class for kids. They made announcements for different things that were going on in the church and in the community. Even though it was in another language, we felt uplifted every time we went to church and looked forward to going back into that community.
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