I’m not sure what
I expected when coming to Romania, but it’s been better than I
imagined. This country is beautiful! It’s modern but also old
fashioned at the same time. Our team is working with another team
this month (Establish Dominance), and our ministry has changed since
the last time I wrote. We are no longer staying in Bucharest and
working with an orphanage but working near Targu Mures. Our first
week we are staying in a village and helping with a conference. The
next three weeks will be in Targu Mures doing evangelism and other
outreach.
We arrived in
Bucharest from Dublin, Ireland, Saturday night. My team and a few
other teams stayed night in the airport and then traveled by train
the next day. The trains are an enjoyable way to travel, and the
scenery is amazing. It began with high cliffs and mountains streams,
followed by rolling hills and trees then farmland. I saw several
horses pulling carts out in the fields. It was so surreal. I was able
to pet one of the horses yesterday. A cart pulled in by the house
where we are staying and I went over to pet the horse and feed him
some apples. An older man asked, in broken English, if I wanted to
sit on the horse. Of course I said yes so they let me get on for a
little bit. That definitely made my day!
The culture is
much different, and we have to adjust to not speaking the language
again. We’ve been privileged with English being somewhat common in
Africa, but we’ve come across few people who know English here. It’s
either Romanian or Hungarian. They do drive on the right side of the
road, which actually feels strange now.
We went for a
hike up a hill yesterday and met a wonderful 72-year-old lady named
Ido. She insisted we come to her orchard and pick plums and apples.
She didn’t let us leave until we had a huge bag full of fruit. The
plums were delicious! Ido talked a mile a minute and said she was a
believer. We prayed for her and her family. It was such a blessing to
meet her!
We’ve had some
good times of prayer leading up to our ministry here, and we are
really praying against the strongholds here such as darkness,
tradition and conflict. We pray God will open the eyes of the people
to see Him as the one and only God.
