Day 154: 5am- woke up to finish packing. 6am- Said goodbye and started our long journey to Eastern Europe. 8am- Met up with the rest of Z-squad. 10am- Crossed the boarder into South Africa. 2pm- Arrived at the airport. 9pm- Flight takes off for Turkey. 11pm- fell asleep on a plane over Africa.
Day 155: 5am- Flight lands in Istanbul, Turkey. 7am- Flight leaves for Romania. 9am- Flight lands in 2 feet of snow in Bucharest. 11am- Get on a bus to the train station. 12pm- Arrive at train station (with limited heat and no winter clothes). 10pm- Get on an 6 hour train ride. 11pm- Fall asleep on a train somewhere in the middle of Romania.
Day 156: 4am- Train stops in the middle of a snowy field and kicks us off (many of us are still wearing summer shoes). We hike though the field with our gear and sit in an unheated, dark train station freezing for several hours. 6am- Get on a second train to Tigra Mures, find our seats and then the conductor starts yelling at us to get off the train. We then realize that we got on the wrong train and have to get off and walk down the tracks through the snow to the correct one. 8am- Arrive at our destination city, but wait for 2 hours in another train station for our bus to arrive. 11am- Finally arrive at our house for the month… many of us went right to bed.
Day 157: Our contact took us into the city to go shopping for winter clothes. It was in the negative temperatures, which was a big shock to our system after being in 100+ degrees throughout our time in Africa. Luckily, we found several great thrift stores. After we had our warm shoes and coats, we went on a prayer walk through the city.
Day 158: We took a bus to several of the villages near where we are living. The first was gypsy community and the others were a mix of Hungarian and Romanian residents. We prayed for many families including a man who is dying from a lung condition, a man with a hurt knee, and a woman with arthritis in her hand. I also enjoyed some time playing with the kids in the snow. This is only the second time a team has ever been here in the winter…so they were very excited to see us!
Day 159: Today we bussed back in to the city to one of the universities and spent time talking with students and inviting them to the church run by our contact. We also made a trip to the mall to get the winter gear we were unable to find at thrift stores earlier this week.
Day 160: Today our teams split up and were able to go to different ministries. Matt, JM and I decided to return to the village we visited the other day. We went back to check on the man with lung problems and his wife began to cry as soon as she open the door. The kids were thrilled that we came back to see them. The young boys kept making kissing noises and yelling beautiful. One continually acted as though his heart was beating to hard and would pretend to pass out every time I walked by. I let them take turns pulling me down the “shoe-skating” hill.
Day 161: Day Off. I went into town with six of my squadmates for a day of feeling semi-normal. We went to McDonalds for lunch, hung out for several hours at an underground cafe, found a $5 buffet for dinner, and then went to a pub to play pool. I almost forgot I was in Romania (until I walked back outside and tried to explain to our taxi driver how to get us home).
Day 162: My first time on the World Race having two days off in a row! Kat, Amaris and I decided to go back to town. We spent most of the day strolling the streets and hung out in several cute cafes.
Day 163: Today we walked to one of the villages near our house. It was snowing a lot and we had to trudge though a huge field to get there. Once we arrived we met a woman named Rosalee (she didn’t speak any English) who was shoveling her sidewalk. We offered to shovel for her but she wouldn’t let us so we decided to sing for her. She loved it and invited us in for homemade pastries and juice. On our way home we were invited into a cafe by an older man who bought all 7 of us espresso. We found out that his daughter had been a translator for the previous World Race Team that was here.
Day 164: HAPPY VALENTINE’S DAY! I spent the day at two different universities telling students about the greatest love of all! When we were at the medical college, we also found an empty dissecting room and decided to have some fun. After ministry team Sound of Strength went out for dinner and on our taxi ride home we shared Jesus with our driver and invited him to church!
AND in honor of Vanentine's Day…. I want you to meet my new boyfriend…
