I cannot believe it is time to tell you where we are going NEXT! It seems like yesterday we were just arriving in Albania!
ABOVE: Our favorite lady in the kitchen- Mimosa! She loved to dance with us!
On Monday we started our journey to Romania. We had a 20 plus hour bus ride through Kosovo, Macedonia, Bulgaria, and then finally we arrived in Bucharest Romania for our month four debrief. It is during this time of debreif that staff from Adventures in Missions comes and meets us to encourage us and make sure we are spiritually healthy as well as creating a healthy team environment! We will spend a few days debriefing here in Bucharest before traveling to our ministry site near Oradea, Romania. This town is about 8 miles from Hungary in northwest Romania.
While in Romania we will be serving at Felix Family Villages International. It is home to over 200 kids who were orphaned. I do not know much about the ministry there, but I do know we will be with 2 other teams this month! That is 20 World Racers all at the same place!!
ABOVE: In Tirana at the top of this Sky Mall place- with a nice view of Tirana, the capital of Albania.
We seriously feel SO blessed to be here. Sometimes I find myself thinking about home and the conviences of life in America (such as toilets that have seats and flush), but then, I come back to the realization that I am HERE in Romania (or, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Albania…) and I get to be experiencing things that I will hold forever in my heart. I also have realized that you cannot come on the World Race and NOT have your heart changed and your mind challenged, which is exciting and somewhat scary!
And I will close this blog with a story from Albania. We were able to meet SO many college students while we were at the university. One night, we were invited over for dinner at a students apartment. My whole team came and they were trying to teach us Albanian dance- and then, I found myself doing the CHICKEN DANCE with my new Albanian friends- laughing so hard! I thought to myself…"wow, you know you have made friends when you are doing the chicken dance together!"
Oh, I have another story…. we were in our dorm room getting ready to meet some other college kids to play Dutch Blitz (my new favorite game) and this group of girls came up to us and wanted to discuss their English homework. I took a look at it- and told them I would read over it and bring it back in 1 hour. I came back to the dorm with the homework and they had apples for us! And, then, they invited us to dinner in their dorm room! So, about an hour later, they were at our door ushering us up to their room. So, there we sat in a room with 5 girls who were giggling and just wanting to serve us. They had cooked rice on a hotpot in their room- and they had an entire table set with chips, cookies, coke, cheese, salad- a whole meal just for us! We sat and talked for a while and they told us that they had been wanting to talk to us all month! I gave them Bibles and an invitation for the next Campus Crusade meeting. The next morning we were leaving at 8am on the bus- and each of the girls came and hugged us and kissed us on the cheek saying that they will miss us SO much.
ABOVE: We are all laughing SO hard because we just broke the bed frame we were sitting on to take this picture!
ABOVE: Jamos and his lady friends! I think I broke their hearts when I said we were married! Sorry ladies, he is taken!
All of that to say- you never really know what kind of impact you are having on those around you! It was my favorite happening of the entire month and it happened at 10:30pm the night before we had to leave the country.
Here are some pictures of Bucharest Romania so far…
Above: Check out the moon (bucharest)
Above: Flowers are everywhere here in Bucharest!
