One week into the Race and I already experienced my first miracle! The last day of launch we were given a free day to explore Bucharest with our team in the form of a photo scavenger hunt. It was a blast! But as we were getting off the subway, I accidently stepped in between the subway and the platform. My foot got stuck and I fell forward. I sustained no injuries, but my camera was in my hand and I smacked it on the cement when I tripped. Right away, I checked my camera to make sure it was okay. It turned on just fine, but it would not do anything else. Nada. It wouldn’t even turn back off. I fiddled with my camera quite a bit taking the battery and memory card in and out, in and out, over and over with absolutely no luck. I asked my team to pray over it and I prayed over it. It is only a material object (and on the Race, we’re learning to give up these things), but it is also a new, expensive material object that was a gift from my parents, that I probably won't be able to replace readily on the World Race, and also a material object that is a ministry tool for sharing my stories from the Race with others. So I prayed hard, asking God for a miracle. After praying, I felt like I should try putting in my spare battery. And it worked! Praise God! Then I put my old battery back in…and it worked!!! Praise God! Wow! It blows my mind. My camera was not functioning. I did nothing different to fix it. God fixed it. What grace! I'm just so humbled and I feel so loved through the simple miracle of a fixed camera. Our God loves me (and YOU!!!) SO much that he fixed the camera I smashed into pavement because I didn't watch my step. I wanted to share this to encourage you to go to God in prayer about everything. Every single thing. No matter how small or insignificant you may think it is. Because God hears every prayer. And He listens. And He answers. Our God is so good. He loves us so much. Truly. I pray that you all can be encouraged by this little miracle, as I was.
I think our crazy travel itineraries are kind of fun, so I think I’ll keep up with posting them. Here’s our travel schedule from last Saturday traveling from Bucharest, Romania to Vidin, Bulgaria.
9:00am: Leave our hostel to walk to the metro.
9:15am: Board the yellow line metro, then transfer to the blue line to the train station.
9:45am: Arrive at train station. Play card games and eat French fries with sour cream…
11:20am: Board a hot hot hot train to Craiova.
4:00pm: Arrive at Craiova train station.
4:45pm: Board a semi-sketchy train to Calafat. A nice man working for the train gave us a reserved car, with just one other man, which seemed kinda sketch. They kicked out a couple people who tried to sit in there. “Gypsies” the man in the car said. As we got closer to our destination, he called his son and tried to arrange for him to drive us to our ferry. Quite sketchy. We politely declined.
8:10pm: Arrive in Calafat and walk maybe 6 or 7 blocks to the ferry. Two little girls followed us begging for money. I gave them sillybands instead.
8:40pm: Boarded a ferry to cross the Danube River into Bulgaria.
9:00pm: Arrive in Vidin’s port and walk a quarter mile up a street to Customs.
9:15pm: Pastor Yavor Kostov and some of his friends come to pick us up and take us to our apartment.
9:30pm: Home sweet home, at the apartment we share with Vince and Biser, two members of the church.
This past week we’ve been travelling to the homes of church members to encourage them and pray for them. We’ve also visited people (both Believers and non-Believers) in two villages near Vidin where there are no churches. We played with kids at an orphanage for 0-7year olds and an orphanage for severely disabled youth. We threw a surprise party for Pastor Kostov’s sweet 16-year-old daughter. And we’ve played games across the language barrio and eaten lots of yummy Bulgarian food. All around, it was a great week. Next week we’ll be travelling a bit and preaching in gypsy churches. We just found out that next month we’ll be returning to Romania instead of going to Ukraine (lots of curveballs on the Race)!
Please pray for our team as we preach the Word in Bulgaria this week!!!!
