Romania, Part ONE! :)

In Dulles, waiting for departure

Wow. Before I went on this trip, I had always majorly scoffed at everyone who came home from a mission's trip and said they had been "changed". Honestly, I had no patience for it. But coming home from two weeks in Romania, I can say in perfect truth that they were two of the best and most impacting weeks of my life. So much happened, so many iron bonds were formed, and my heart underwent so many changes, I'm finding it difficult to choose where to start....that being said, I shall start at the very beginning because when all else fails, logic is on our side. A quick warning: these will be long posts full of pictures, stories, and tid-bits, so sit back and enjoy 'em! You wanted updates, I give you updates!

Ahem.

The flight from DC to Paris was long and completely strange. We left DC at 10 PM American time, but somehow as we crossed the Atlantic and various time zones, we ended up in Paris around 11:30 their time which was like...6 in the morning American time? At any rate, we were awakened by the flight staff for breakfast at what felt like 3 a.m. Definitely an exotic sensation! We were flying Air France, and believe me, I delighted in hearing all the accents! Yes, I gloried in actually being in Paris...until I had to sit in the stuffy, overcrowded Charles de Gaulle (Sharl dee-gull) airport during the layover. Dan Tate was our voluntary Facebook-Quote-Keeper (and took most of these bombdiggity photos), and has me down as saying, "It felt like a greenhouse, and I was growing way too fast." Pretty much...yeah. :D I did not enjoy Paris as much as I hoped to. But then of course I didn't get out of the terminal. The toilets were nasty, and that soured my whole impression.

Because everyone eats while in Paris, right? 

From Paris to Budapest, Hungary, the accents got thicker, the plane got smaller, and my heart got thumpier. We landed in Budapest and I felt for certain how utterly American I was. My travel-journal (religiously and awesomely kept) describes the moment:

"From Paris, we took a tiny, disagreeable plane to Budapest where we were unceremoniously dumped and made to feel entirely foreign by the total lack of anyone speaking English. We gathered our luggage and wandered to the front door where I then began to second-guess whether Pastor John had or had not got my email with the information of our flights. Oh, it was a rotten moment."

^Yep. Accuracy there. {One quick note about the travel-journal: I became the group historian, and kept the thing so closely that when I left, I found my page-count at something like 104 pages, complete with illustrations. *high fives all round* This means y'all get first-hand impressions from the excerpts: things I would likely have forgotten or described differently had I waited till I was home to write them. Enjoy!}
But Pastor John was there eventually with two drivers (Branson and Mr. Frederickson) and we piled in and were soon acquainted with one of the hallmarks of the entire trip..."Verrrrry bad roads." :D Another spot in my journal is ornamented with a drawing of a car zig-zagging down a skinny, pot-hole-pitted road and the description:

"But the ROADS! Oh my gosh. If you are going to drive in the opposite lane, why not just change the law and make it legal? If you saw our van's footprint from any given stretch of road after the main highway it would look like this: (insert illustration) Absolutely bonkers. (our driver) appeared to be fully confident that driving in the left (wrong) lane to pass 4 eighteen-wheelers was a perfectly normal thing! We seemed ever to be in immediate danger from head-ons or fender-benders. I was happier asleep, while at the same time enjoying our peril."

Yep, this pass occurred at about 80 or 90 kilometers an hour

The road-terror was the first thing about my impressions of Romania to change: by the end of the trip, the "potty roads" held some of our fondest memories. Roads in America are so terribly boring. Adventura would never have been born were it not for the terrible state of the village roads...but that belongs in another story later on. :) Suffice it to say, I love dirt roads full of reckless potholes and reckless-er drivers.

We arrived  at the church and were installed in our apartments and fed the first of our legendarily enormous meals. Our chef was a fellow who, before he became a christian and cooked for God's people, used to cook for the last Dictator each time he came to Arad. This means that our chef could cook like nobody's business. Poafte Buna! ("good appetite")

The first night I wrote my slightly-homesick, disgruntled entry in my journal, which is why you get the first two excerpts above that don't sound overly enthusiastic. The next day was Sunday, and were immediately dunked into life as Pastor John's sidekicks which included three distinct services on Sunday. We were blessed to have a translator part of the time, but for the majority I just listened to the sermons in Romanian, and sang along with the songs as they came in Romanian on the screen. That was so much fun and excellent practice: the tunes were easy, and I could practice my Romanian pronunciation without the inconvenience of everyone else listening. And let it be here recorded that our dear Pastor John speaks way more English than he ordinarily lets on! We got on swimmingly through the first day of church-work! For some reason I neglected to write anything about that first Sunday (probably too exhausted) so I can't recall if we actually shared testimonies and music...at any rate, that was the kick-off day to what became three weeks of playing the VonTrapp family: our main source of ministry in Romania ended up being going around to a different village church every day of the week and conducting a children's service, and then eating dinner, and then conducting an adult service.

                    

We would sing loads of songs (often accompanied by a borrowed guitar) and then give testimonies which would be translated to the people. I'm just giving you the basics now, because later on I will elaborate on how terribly special these times became. *sniff sniff*

I think perhaps my favorite aspect of this trip was the fact that we weren't on a "Tourist Mission's Trip". Pastor John isn't your typical missionary with houses to build and wells to dig and chickens to distribute. He is a pastor and his son, Cristi (they deserve their own entire post later on) is a pastor, and they have a sprawling area of ministry (Cristi travels all over Romania and Europe to preach) and we plopped right into it and followed them at a breakneck pace. Truly, we were able to join into Romanian Church-Life on a local's level which was brilliant and unusual and perfection.

Monday morning we met Cristi (he'd been driving over 1500 miles that weekend, preaching in several places) and before the day was out, we knew we'd met someone really amazing.

 Cristi fit into our group with the ease of an older brother or an uncle or something. Seriously, we adopted him and swallowed him whole into our band of merry men. He is so much like a mash-up of all my hilarious male-relatives that we felt a deep kinship right away. So with Cristi to translate for us (and to make us laugh in the wrong moments) we began our daily schedule:

• 7:00- wake up
• 8:30- group devotions
• 9:00- breakfast
• 10:00 - 1:30- touring sites with Cristi or exploring Arad with the Bales
• 2:00- lunchtime
• 3:00 - 4:00- group practice/prepare testimonies
• 4:30- leave for villages
• 6:00 -children's/youth service
• 7:30- dinner in the village
• 8:00- Adult service
• 10:00- arrive back at the church
• 10:00 - 12:00- loaf, sing, laugh, go to bed

This is the daily schedule, and I will elaborate as time goes on. For now, enjoy this first peep into Adventura: The Romanian Trip Part One! And stay tuned for daily updates from now till we've exhausted to subject! :D If you leave comments with any questions you have, I can be sure to include my answers in the upcoming posts!