My number one
fear about being in Romania is the potential of being pick pocketed by a gypsy.
Prior to coming to Romania I didn’t really even know what a gypsy was let alone
what they looked like or how they achieved their trade of theft. I had heard
horror stories and decided that all I could do was pray that the Lord would
protect us and that I would be able to surrender all of my possessions and
remove my attachment to them.
So, we packed up
our 60 pounds of possessions and hit the road to the Bucharest Train station to
await our train ride. Mind you, this was my first train ride in another country
so I was quite excited! We had an 8.5 hour train ride and all of us were pretty
exhausted and ready to sleep. When we got there, we purchased our tickets and
figured we had about an hour from the time we purchased our tickets to the time
the train left. After the hour went buy we realized we had been issued a ticket
for a train that left 5 minutes after our ticket was issued to us. Therefore,
we missed our train to Targu Mures that was leaving at 10:30pm and arriving the
next morning at 7am where our ministry contact was supposed to be meeting us.
Uh oh! Thoughts
in my head: Crud! Will my team be super upset at us? Are they going to be mad
that we are now going to have to leave and come back later? Are we going to
have to use the rest of our budget to buy another ticket?….Needless to say, I
realized the best thing to do was to usher in the favor of the Lord. My team
was extremely supportive, positive and ready for the adventure.
The ticket lady
laughed in disgust with us that we misunderstood the ticket she gave us. She
told us that we would have to eat the first ticket and buy a whole new ticket.
She said it wasn’t possible to transfer the payment of a ticket or refund it.
Favor Lord!
Reign down your favor on us!!!
Before I knew it
she booked us another train that left the next morning at 7:30am. She
transferred the price we payed for the first ticket and we only had to pay a
difference of 33 lei instead of 700+ lei for new tickets. This train lineup was
a little sketchier which to me meant all the more adventure. This was because
we had to take a small local train after our main train.
Praise the Lord!
Thank you for your favor!
It was late at
night and not the safest time to be out walking around so we decided we would
sleep at the train station which is apparently one of the top 3 most dangerous
places to be at night because of the gypsy’s, etc. But, the favor of the Lord
was upon us.
We slept in rotation,
for those that wanted to sleep and we constantly had a few people who were
awake and watching for sketchy people. I was one that stayed up the whole
night.
I felt like a mama lion ready to pounce on any one who tried to take
anything from us. Apparently when I was away getting coffee a women came up our
bags, which were surrounded buy our team and she flat out began trying to reach
her hand into peoples bags and steal things. She didn’t get very far. More so,
my team just laughed at her and were in awe of her slow efforts. She didn’t get
anything. But now provided us with an opportunity to spot her team of gypsies
that also had their eye on our things. I stared them down a number of times
making sure they knew I was aware of who they are and who they were working
with….They didn’t come near us again….
We did however
have a def man and mute man come and entertain us with card tricks! That was
quite amusing!
As we arrived in
Targu Mures, our final destination, we were asked to wait for an hour before
our contact arrived. I quickly noticed a group of gypsy’s eyeballing our
things. So, protection mode turned on again. Thank you Lord for protecting us!
We were safe and sound.
The train ride
was so much fun and quite hysterical at points. Here we are, World Racers with
50-60 pounds of luggage all trying to fit into small carts that fit 8 people at
a time. My friend Anmari, Jennifer and I were in cart with a Grandma and her
grandson. They had the two seats closest to the window and furthest away from the
door. So, we pretty much came in and graciously invaded their space. We piled
backpacks up the ceiling and sprawled out one person sleeping on the seats and
two people cuddled up sleeping on the floor. They couldn’t have gotten out even
if they wanted to. Haha. Oh the joys of sleeping on a train. By the end of the
ride we made friends with them and it was a wonderful, cramped, train ride
experience! We had some locals helping us figure out where we were to get off
the train. Thankfully for them we made it safely!
All in all the
experience was awesome! I am grateful for all that I learned and for our two
teams and their positive attitude!
