Highlights Live

Monday, July 27

Today was the first day doing VBS in the gypsy village of Puta Vale! We started the day off by meeting our translators a 7:00 a.m. and driving the 45 minute trip into the village. The location we’re doing VBS at this year is at a school with classrooms and great outdoor spaces for recreation. The village is very quaint and is made up of dirt roads and winding hills. Many of the gypsies in this village move about using horse-drawn covered wagons, even today! The women and girls of this village are dressed in very traditional longs skirts and colorful head scarves tied under their chins.

Getting started we set up a registration table where the kids could pick up their VBS shirts and names tags. They were all so excited they were pressed up to the gate hours before we opened. Looking out into the crowd of children you could see a sea of bright greens, yellows, oranges and red. We had about 200 kids today, ranging from the ages of 3-15 years old, and an even bigger turnout is expected tomorrow.

On our team we have 12 teachers who, throughout the week, will go with their class through different stations: craft, recreation, Bible story, snack, and a worship time. Today was hectic to say the least, but full of so much energy. The kids were so excited to sing songs together and did so LOUDLY!!! At the end of VBS we sang some songs in Romanian that the kids already knew, and taught them some new ones with a few verses in English. We could have been singing Happy Birthday over and over and the kids would still go crazy about it!

Many of these kids have never seen people with different skin colors and hair colors than their own, and were attached at the hip to their American teachers and helpers. Those with blonde hair were especially intriguing to the kids!

This village was unlike anything many of the team members had experienced before, and it was amazing. It felt like we were going back in time looking at the buildings and being surrounded by children in very traditional gypsy clothes. It was like right out of a story book, absolutely amazing!
After VBS we had lunch and debriefed with our Romanian friends in Zalou, another lengthy meal, and had some free time to shop around town or head back to the hotel to catch a few.

Later in the evening we headed back to church for dinner and to prepare for the Youth Conference that starts tomorrow. Bethany Grimes has been putting together this program for many months and it will be very exciting to see what happens! We spent an hour in prayer, giving all concerns about the event to God and getting excited for what is to come. Fliers have been passed out to many of the local churches in Zalou inviting the youth to come to a series of three services full of worship, fellowship and sermons by Jason Griffice (the capri pants man). There is general feeling around here that God is truly going to move in this place tomorrow. We don’t know what, but we can all feel that God’s going to do something crazy awesome tomorrow!

Sunday, July 26

Up and out by 9:45 a.m. this morning and we were on our way to the first of three church services for today. The first service was in the city of Zalou, where our hotel is. It was what we’d call a lengthy service, lasted a little over 2 hours. A typical Romanian Sunday service begins with singing, followed by a prayer time for whoever in the congregation to pray aloud, then scripture reading, worship time, more prayer time, the preaching, and closing worship time.

Today as we arrived we were introduced to the congregation and Paul shared our mission plans for the next two weeks. After the intro we sang SIX worship songs, (Led by Jeremy Searcy and beautifully harmonized by Kay Doerr and Nancy Ouellette) some in English and some in Romanian. Although our Romanian is not quite up to par, one could tell those in the congregation greatly appreciated the attempt. Jason Griffice got up and spoke about the Youth Conference that will happen next week and his passion for putting the fire for Christ in the youth of today. Job well done J-town…job well done. Paul then preached in English so that we too could hear the message and had a FANTASTIC translator named Haniejl (Danel with an “h”).

After the service we met our volunteer translators who we will be teaming up with for the VBS next week in the town of Pusta Vale. The majority of the translators are all pretty young, between the ages of 16-25. They all speak English beautifully as they are taught in school and then practice it as much as they can when at home. Every one of them seemed so excited for what was to come this week (except for the 7:00 a.m. call time tomorrow morning).

We hopped back on the bus and traveled 25 minutes to our next church service. On the way, Paul Muresan shared that this town was the place he grew up in. This town was definitely in the countyside, with no running water, and water buffalos and chickens hanging out on the roads. This church was very conservative with all women wearing skirts or dresses and those married or Pentecostal had scarves covering their heads. Fun fact about Romanian churches is that the men and women sit on separate sides of the church. Paul Fabian gave his testimony and had many in tears. He did a fantastic job! Paul also preached at this church, and we attemped a repeat performance of our Romanian worship songs. We manage to get a little better each time…just wait til next week!

The third and final church was where Paul Muresan’s wife, Tatiana, grew up. We got a sneak peak of that church as it has just been re-done and will be dedicated next month. Paul preached again and remarkably never repeated sermon. Once again we managed to get through the 6 worship songs, the smiles on the congregations faces could only began to show how much they appreciated our being there. As i’m sure you can imagine, energy was pretty low at the end of the last service, and looking around one could find a few of the team members dozing off…not to name any names but…Jeremy, Ken, Jason…

UPDATES
- Jason got his luggage this morning. Believe me, we are ALL overjoyed that that man finally has clean clothes to wear.
- Weather has been fantastic. It’s been in the 80’s but with a really nice breeze and gorgeous clouds all over the place.
- Weather’s been great, but the HUNDREDS of mosquitos…not soo much. We’ve seen many cases of bumpy, itchy arms and legs…and even a toe oddly enough (Andrew Griffice). With the help from Paul Fabian and his Jungle Juice repellent, we’ll have better luck tonight…hopefully…
- Healthwise everyone is doing pretty well, but still getting used to the time change. There are more than a few team members waking up at about 4:00 in the morning…bummer…
- VBS starts tomorrow can’t wait!

Saturday, July 25

We had a 9:00 a.m. – 7:00 p.m. travel day today. Early start this morning. Breakfast at 7:00 a.m. and on the road by 8:00 a.m. Today our task was to drive from Budapest, Hungary, to Zalaou, Romania, a lengthy 6-7 hour drive. For the entirety of our trip we will be driven around in a charter bus driven by Eileen, a man who the team has worked with and ministered to for several years. This year, the main VBS will be done in his hometown, and he and his family are quite excited.

The weather has been fantastic to say the least. As of a couple of days ago the weather all around Romania was in the high 90’s. Thankfully it was been in the 70’s or cooler, even a little drizzle here and there!

The drive from Budapest to Zalaou is a remarkably beautiful one. Every minute of it, we were surrounded by green pastures for as far as we could see and fields upon fields of corn crops, sunflowers, you name it, we saw it. It was a beautiful but windy ride, we had a few cases of motion sickness, everyone made it out alive.

We stopped for a quick lunch only to be reminded that “quick” is not a word associated with Romanian dining experience. Many Romanian lunches consist of four courses. Today our meal started off with soup, and was followed by a salad (Romanian salads typically consist of diced cucumbers and tomatoes or cabbage. Our main course consisted of chicken and potatoes and was followed by incredible ice cream Sundays (very unexpected but definitely appreciated!)

We hopped back in the bus and had the chance to stop at the Romanian version of Costco to find some clothes and things for Jason and Eddy as they still were waiting for their bags to arrive. You might be interested to know that Jason has purchased his very own pair of very European looking Capri pants…and he pulls them off remarkably well. It was quite interesting trying to buy things without any Romanian currency (called Lei)…A few tried to use their cards (all declined) but Alex Ivascu saved the day by purchasing ALL of our items on his credit card that worked…thanks buddy!

Few more hours in the bus and we arrived at our hotel. It’s absolutely fantastic, better than anyone could expect! It’s like a bed and breakfast almost that overlooks rolling hills covered with colorful homes…quite picturesque I’d say. There’s a beautiful garden outside and this place even has internet access! Turns out, the sun starts to set around 9pm around these parts, so we get to enjoy the view late into the night.

We practiced our songs while dinner was being prepared and learned later on that a few of the other hotel staff and guests commented to Paul M. that he brought “an amazing choir” with him to Romanina…we’re they sure they were listening to us?

The team is in high spirits and excited for the upcoming week! It’s beautiful here!!!

Thursday/Friday, July 23/24, 2009

Wow, what a day (or couple of days?)! We all met at LAX in the afternoon, checked in our bags and 20-something supply boxes and were ready to go. Our flight to London was great—long, but great. We then hopped on to our flight to Budapest, Hungary, to finish the journey. You might ask yourself why a team going on a mission trip to Romania is flying into Hungary—the reason our team flies into Budapest is because it tends to be safer when traveling as a missionary group with so many supplies as the Romanian government can switch things up and not allow certain items in their country. It was initially supposed to be a 2½-hour flight but there was heavy rain in London and so we were stuck on the tarmac for about an hour…not too bad. I’m pretty sure everyone used that time to catch up on sleep.

We arrived in Hungary at who knows what time, got our passports stamped and headed out to the baggage claim. As for any traveler, baggage claim was an especially nerve racking experience…Did all of our luggage arrive?…Did all the supply boxes make it?…Everything was looking great until we learned Paul’s gigantor tripod and Jason and Eddy’s entire suitcases didn’t make it to Budapest…BIG bummer. They all took it remarkably well and are waiting patiently for their arrival. Jason’s made do recently with a pair of airplane socks and borrowed t-shirts.

We spent a couple of hours at the airport and headed to a hotel for the night. It was an INCREDIBLY long day but everyone is excited for what’s to come!