Hello friends and family! I
finally have Romania updates for you! Sorry it has taken me so long! Internet
access is much harder to come by out here. Luckily we have free wi-fi at the
mall, but the problem is getting there from the village we live in. It usually
takes a 30 minute walk to the bus stop to the next village, then a 15 minute
drive after that on the bus until we arrive in the city center in front of the
mall. So it’s a bit of a process! Welcome to the life of a World Racer! That
being said, here is what life has been like in the last three weeks.
We arrived in Bucharest in the evening
on September 1st. Once everyone had their bags sorted and had piled
onto the bus, we were off to our ministry location! My team, Kingdom Unity, was
partnered with another team called Goodness! Gracious! We dubbed ourselves
KU-G-G (here’s the phonetic for you: ki-ji-ji, like the classifieds website).
After a 4 or 5 hour sleepless bus ride through winding roads with uncomfortable
seats and blaring disco music, we arrived in a little village called Stejeris. Its
in Transylvania (which is a county, not a city by the way).
It is now 5am. We were exhausted from
travel and were freezing cold. We had heard that we’d be sleeping on the floor
in a church. I was not looking forward to blowing up my thermarest, sleeping on
a hard floor and putting layers upon layers of clothes on to stay warm. So you
can imagine my surprise, actually, everyone’s surprise, when we pull up to a
beautiful little guest house. I almost cried except I was too tired to do
anything but just take it all in. The I Squad from the June Race had stayed
there just before us and left us little notes on each room of the house telling
us who stayed in it, what kind of silly things happened there and advice we’d
need to know about the windows and such. There was a huge welcome sign on the
door too. They even left us extra food that they didn’t use and a little info
paper telling us where we were an how to get into the big city of Targu Mures,
people we should find, which buses to take and where to get the free wi-fi. We
ooohed and aaahed over how sweet they were and by the house that we in. W
e had
beds! BEDS! Since I’ve been gone I’ve either tented or slept on the floor. I
felt so grateful and blessed.
So after exploring the house, we stood
outside on a balcony, finally being able to see some of our surroundings as the
sun began to rise. Cornfields surrounded us with slight rolling hills. The
faded figures of mountains loomed off in the distance and a silver church spire
from a nearby village jutted into the sky, just beginning to sparkle as the sun
started to peek over the hills. And we thanked God for allowing us to be here
and felt overwhelmed and blessed. This moment was unlike anything I have ever
seen or known. This is my life, right now. Here, in this moment. I am in
Romania on a mission to serve my King and transform lives by advancing the
kingdom! Wow. What an honor! I can’t tell you how blessed I felt. I can try,
but it just doesn’t do it justice.
unpack. I got into my bed and realized that for the first time in a month, I
was going to sleep with warm feet. I wasn’t cold or freezing. It sounds silly,
but it was so surreal to me. I almost cried. Its amazing how such little things
get taken for granted. Beds, normal sized pillows, blankets, warm feet… My head
hit a what now seemed huge, non travel sized pillow at 6am and didn’t leave it
until 2pm. I slept solidly and spent the rest of my day unpacking, journaling
and being rather introverted, just taking everything in. Processing where I was
and wondering what God was about to do over the next three weeks.
Then we found out that we weren’t even supposed to be here. Our team
was supposed to go with the other teams to stay in a village further
away and a different team was supposed to be where we now were.
“Somehow” there was a mix up and our teams swapped ministry locations. I like to call that “Somehow” a Someone named God. It just so happened that our contact’s translator was on holidays for the next week and they had no idea how they were going to communicate with us.
Luckily for us, my teammate Stacy Povian is Romanian and speaks the
language fluently. So we knew without a shadow of a doubt that God
brought us here for a reason and its exactly where we needed to be for
the next month. God is so good! He really does work everything out for the good of those who love him.
I am in Romania and I’m following my
King. This is my life.
