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Do we have "the life"?

2013-08-10T12:29:00.001-04:00

Yesterday in my Bible study time at work, I had a good discussion with my brothers about some deeper theology and around the question of whether our salvation is really secure in Christ for eternity. I've been thinking about it since then and then this morning I was reading some Scripture from a couple of Daily Bread devotionals and it lead me to two passages that just really confirmed for me the answer to this question.

The first passage is from John 14:
1 “Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. 2 In my Father's house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? 3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also. 4 And you know the way to where I am going.” 5 Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” 6 Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

Notice in the second part of verse 2 how Jesus is confirming the truth of all that He is saying. He is basically saying, "what I am telling you is true. Why would I tell you otherwise? I can only tell you what is true." This is an important concept that I believe is applicable to all of Jesus' words, including the verses that follow this.

Now, notice verse 3. Jesus says that He will come again and that He will take us to Himself (in heaven). Jesus doesn't say "I might", or "I will if you're good enough", or "if I feel like it at that time". No, He simply says, "I will". This is the promise of our risen Savior- His promise. If Christ is sinless and completely faithful, as we know He is from the Bible, then how can He break His promise of "I will" ? If He did break that promise, He would no longer be who He says He is. Our faith would be useless because we would be serving a liar. Jesus cannot break His promises. His promise is that He will come for us.

Clearly though, the promise is not to the whole world- its to individuals. How can we be a part of His promise? Thankfully, the answer follows. Thomas has the exact same question. Jesus has just made this great promise and now Thomas says in verse 5, "How do we get this? What is the way?" Jesus answers in verse 6 that He is the way- He is the answer. Those who get to the Father (get to heaven) must come through Jesus. From countless other scriptures, we know that this means humbly placing our whole faith in Jesus, His redeeming work for our sins and His resurrection, so that He then becomes "the life" in us, because He says right here that He is "the life". If we become partakers of His life and His truth in us, then we become partakers of His preceding promise, that He will come again and take us with Him; there is no question about this.

The second passage I was reading this morning is from 1 John. It was really a confirmation of the above. If we claim the promise from John 14, how do we know that it is true of us? How can we claim that we are saved and that Jesus will come for us?

In 1 John 5:13, John says that everything he has personally written is so that we will know that we are saved; that we are one of God's children and part of Christ's promise:
I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God that you may know that you have eternal life.

The book of 1 John is full of reasons why we can know that we are saved (or that we are not). Here's just a few highlights that I read today:

4:7 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.

4:13 By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit.

4:17 By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world.

4:19 We love because he first loved us. 20 If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.

5:6 ...And the Spirit is the one who testifies, because the Spirit is the truth.

5:11 And this is the testimony, that God gave us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. 12 Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.

There is so much in these verses to unpack. The main points are that we can be confident before God at the end of our life. If we have been saved, then God through His Spirit will show us that; there will be a change and we will know it and those around us will know it. The Spirit is the truth and does not lie to us. The Spirit confirms the truth of these verses to us and confirms our salvation to us. Our actions will also confirm to us and others the truth of whether we are saved or not. If we have no love for others and no love for being obedient to God, then there is a strong chance that we are liars and deceiving ourselves and that we are not truly saved. But, if we are truly saved then there is no reason for us to fear the day of judgment. God wants us to live in joyful anticipation of that day- not dread. We cannot fully serve Him in perfect love in this earthly life if we are constantly worried that we might lose our salvation or that He will just take it away. That would directly contradict His promise in John 14 and we know that we do not serve a God like that. Its not of His nature. Praise His name!

The Gospel in the Beginning of 1 Corinthians

2013-07-12T18:33:00.002-04:00

Last week, our new Bible study group started into our study on 1st Corinthians. We only got through the first nine verses but I really enjoyed some of the things we pulled out of it. It helped me to see some deep things in this passage that seems to just be introduction material, but there's actually a lot of theology present. Here's the passage from the NASB:

1 Paul, called as an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, and Sosthenes our brother, 2 To the church of God which is at Corinth, to those who have been sanctified in Christ Jesus, saints by calling, with all who in every place call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, their Lord and ours: 3 Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. 4 I thank my God always concerning you for the grace of God which was given you in Christ Jesus, 5 that in everything you were enriched in Him, in all speech and all knowledge, 6 even as the testimony concerning Christ was confirmed in you, 7 so that you are not lacking in any gift, awaiting eagerly the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ, 8 who will also confirm you to the end, blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. 9 God is faithful, through whom you were called into fellowship with His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.

We found that the essence of the Gospel of Christ is located right here in these nine verses; there's some really good stuff. Let me try to break it down a bit.

Verse 1
Paul says that he was "called...by the will of God" to be an "apostle of Jesus Christ". In verse 2, he mentions that the church in Corinth are "saints by calling". These are of course references to predestination. Without getting into an endless argument over free-will versus predestination, suffice it to say that there is clearly an element of predestination, or "God's calling" in bringing us to salvation (also see Romans 8:29-30). This helps me in evangelism because I realize that there must be a combination of God calling a person in order for that person to respond to the Gospel. I used to treat it as 100% free-will and get burnt out when I couldn't bring a person to repentance and I felt like I failed them if they didn't come around. But, now I'm more accepting that just speaking God's Word will have an impact; if God is calling them right then, then they will come around (in combination with free-will) and it will be glorious. But if not, God may not have prepared them yet or they are letting their free-will override what God is calling them to do. Recognizing all of this helps me better to "move on" from a person, trusting that God is planting a seed through His Word and then going to the next person whom God may be more specifically calling at that moment.

Verse 2
Paul mentions that the people in the Corinthian church "have been sanctified in Christ Jesus". The dictionary definition of "sanctify" is "to set apart to a sacred purpose or to religious use" or "to free from sin". Normally, I've though of "sanctification" as a lifelong process after we receive salvation, by which we learn to become closer to Christ, becoming ever more "set apart" and free from the bondage of sin. Clearly, these people were still alive, but Paul says they have already been sanctified! They are already free from sin and set apart for God. How can this be? Obviously, after salvation, we still struggle with sin, so we're not free in that sense. So, how are we free? Paul says: "in Christ Jesus". Because of what Christ did for us through his sacrifice, we are already "positionally sanctified" through Him! If we accept Christ's gift, when God looks at us, he sees someone who is "free from sin" and "set apart for His use". I think the only reason God can use us is because of the righteousness of Christ that is positionally given to us when we accept Him. Certainly, being positionally "free from sin" doesn't mean we should sin freely without care; much to the contrary (see Romans 6:1-2). And it doesn't mean that we are actually free from sin in this life- we still struggle (see Romans 7). But, thanks be to God that "there is no condemnation for those who belong to Christ" (Romans 8:1). We are already sanctified!

Verse 3
All true grace and peace only comes from God through Christ. James 1:17 says, "Every good thing given and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father...". Philippians 4:7 says, "...the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus".

Verse 4
The "grace of God" has been given to us who believe. How? Again, "in Christ Jesus". Christ's sacrifice for us, taking on all of our sin, is the ultimate gift and the most amazing display of God's grace to humans. As Romans 5:8 says, "But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." We were still in sin, yet God loved us enough to have Christ die for us. What grace, what mercy! What should our response be? Just to be thankful and move on? No! 2 Corinthians 5:15 says "He died for all, so that they who live might no longer live for themselves, but for Him who died and rose again on their behalf." Recognizing God's incredible grace for us "in Christ Jesus", we are now to live for Him. That can mean a great variety of things, but suffice it to say that if that is your heart, God will show you how and where he wants you to live for Him.

Verse 5
Paul says that the believers were enriched "in everything" and in "all speech and all knowledge". How? Again- "in Him (Christ)". When we trust Christ and receive salvation, the Holy Spirit comes to live within us. The Spirit will actually affect the way we think and talk and everything as long as we let Him (again free-will!). Not only has God given us the wonderful gift of freedom from our sin, but God has provided the Spirit to us to help us in this life. As we humble our self to the work of the Spirit, He will actually help to change our lives for the better- which is to be more like Christ. He will "enrich us in everything". Our thoughts and our speech will change- signs to us and to others of the true change that the Spirit is bringing about in us as we walk with Him. What amazing grace that God would provide us with a Helper (John 14:26) to enrich our lives and change us into new creatures!

Verse 6-7 (a)
When we believe in Christ, we "are not lacking in any gift". This is talking about spiritual gifts- the talents and abilities that God has given us to be used as we live for Him. Those things are not of us- they are all of Him. Connecting verse 6 with the start of 7, Paul is essentially saying, "because the testimony of Christ is true in your lives, you are not lacking in any gift"; implying that God has blessed us with these spiritual gifts because we have trusted Christ. Because this is true, how else could we possibly use these gifts than in service to Him? Our gratitude ought to overflow into service him with our gifts.

Verse 7 (b)
The Corinthian believers were "eagerly awaiting" for Jesus to return. I wonder how eager we are by comparison? I think over 2,000 years an element of doubt has crept in. Not that we doubt that He will return, but I think we doubt that it could happen in our lifetime. I think the Corinthians had that hope and that expectation. I think that can be a strong motivator of our behavior and our actions in this life; we ought to live more like His return is an expectation for us rather than a "future hope".

Verse 8
This verse really gets me- it is so powerful. At the end of time ("the day of our Lord Jesus Christ"), Christ Himself will confirm us before the Father- blameless! How amazing; He has taken all of our blame for our sin! The Bible is clear that Christ will be the judge of all at the end of time. For example, 2 Timothy 4:1: "Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead". How will we "pass" His judgement? By what we've done? No! By our acceptance of "the grace of God give to us in Christ Jesus" (verse 4). Jesus is the one who made the way for this gift and He is the one who will be overseeing whether we accepted it or not. Who better than to judge this than the One by which the gift was made in the first place? I would hate to have to come before Him who has done this for us and say to His face, "nope, sorry, I didn't believe; I didn't accept You". Thanks to God for opening my eyes to His truth.

Verse 9 (a)
Paul simply says, "God is faithful". This says so much. There are countless passages in Scripture of God being faithful to people in spite of their sin and poor choices, and countless testimonies in history of the same. To me, this simple statement which follows the teaching of Christ judging us as blameless, speaks volumes to me of our eternal security in Christ. If we have truly accepted God's grace to us through the gift of Christ's sacrifice, we see clearly in these nine verses that God is the one who "invented" the gift, He is the one who called us, He is the one who enriches us, and He is the one who confirms us in the end, all because of His faithfulness. If we claim that there is something that we can do of our own strength to "lose our salvation", we are directly calling into question God's faithfulness. That's not a position I want to take. When God makes a promise to us, He is always faithful to fulfill it in the end. We may zig-zag along the way, but because of His faithfulness and His great mercy to us, He absolutely will be faithful to "confirm us blameless" at the final judgement, if we have trusted in Him and accepted His gift in Christ.

Verse 9 (b)
For the believer, we have been "called into fellowship with Jesus Christ". The dictionary speaks of "fellowship" as "companionship", "company", "friendship", "comrades". Its amazing to me that not only can we have those things with Christ, but that God has called us to have those things with Christ! Its not just an "oh, by the way, you can have this", but God is actively desiring that we have fellowship with Christ. He wants us to be friends, companions, comrades of Christ- to be united in mind and purpose. Again, what grace that God would give us such an incredible privilege and gift! He didn't just leave us after the cross, but He has done so much more! He wants to be close and intimate with us, to know us and for us to know Him. As Jesus said in John 15:15, "I have called you friends". How amazing that the Creator of the universe (Colossians 1:16) would desire close friendship with us; what a great God!

Peter's Denial of Christ

2013-06-30T19:41:00.001-04:00

At my Thursday study at work, we had an interesting discussion about Matthew 26 and Peter's denial of Christ. There is much to write about, but I just want to focus on a couple things here. All four gospels have this account in them, but they all differ a little bit; they are not totally in conflict, but sort of supplement each other. I find it interesting because by using all four accounts, you can build a bigger context around this incident and start to place yourself in Peter's shoes. I'll try to bring out some of the interesting things I've noticed.

The Garden of Gethsemane

In the garden, all four gospels talk of Jesus' betrayal and then Peter cutting off the high priest's servant's ear. I find it interesting that only John calls out Peter by name in doing this. I think it is important to know that it was Peter who did this, because it perhaps helps to explain his vehement denial that is about to come.
After this incident, Matthew and Mark record something to the effect of "then all the disciples left Him and fled". I would think that "all" would include Peter & John. How far and for how long did they flee? Obviously, there were scared in the garden; but how long did that fear continue? Apparently for Peter & John, that fear did not last long because they were about to find Jesus again and follow Him to the high priest's house. Where were the other 9 disciples (we know where Judas was...)? Had they gone totally "underground" at this point, or were they also pursuing Jesus' trail, but are just not mentioned? I would guess that they were in hiding at this point and that Peter & John were venturing out on their own. Judging by how often Peter & John are mentioned in the gospels, it seems that perhaps their faith and dedication to Christ was perhaps stronger than the others at this point. So, they might have immediately fled with the others from the garden, but were quick to turn back around and follow after Him.

Where was Jesus' questioning?

When Jesus was led away and Peter & John later found Him, He was at the house of the high priest; all four gospels record this. According to John 18:15, it sounds like there was a "court" that Jesus was being questioned in- perhaps some special room in the house? It must have been decently large to hold "all the chief priests and the elders and the scribes" (Mark 14:53). Mark also records that "as Peter was below in the courtyard" (v66) which would mean that the room Jesus was in must have been on an upper floor.

Where was John?

According to John's own account, he was in the main room with Jesus. This is very interesting to me. I've always pictured the disciples as fleeing until after the resurrection. But, here is John in the middle of all of this, but apparently unafraid and more interestingly, not threatened by the people here. Was he the only one of Jesus' followers there? Seems like it. John 18:15 records, "Now that disciple was known to the high priest, and entered with Jesus into the court of the high priest". So, the high priest knew John and John was allowed to enter with Jesus. What was John's past history with the high priest? Did they have a mutual respect and partial friendship? Or, did the high priest just "know of" John and allowed him in because he wasn't a threat and as some sort of show of political courtesy? Just interesting to me that John could come right in after the high priest had already experienced Peter trying to physically defend Jesus with the sword. Why would he think John would be any different, unless he had a past history with John? Perhaps this is further evidence of why John is the "disciple whom Jesus loved" as seen various places in John's gospel. It seems that John & Jesus were pretty close and this is certainly scene in John being present as Jesus went through this tough time of questioning. I wonder if Peter wasn't a little jealous even of John's relationship with Christ and maybe that jealously resulted in some of the brash statements we see Peter make in the gospels as he tried to show Christ his faith?

Where was Peter?

According to all four accounts, Peter had kept his distance and then had come into the courtyard of the high priest's house, where some servants and some soldiers where sitting and standing around a fire to keep warm, while everything went on in the other room. John adds an interesting twist in that John had to go out and ask the servant-girl to let Peter into the courtyard through a door. How did John know Peter was out there? I'm guessing that Peter and John pursued Jesus together and then as they got close to the house, John went and entered with Jesus while Peter hung back. Then, later John came out to let Peter in, knowing that he'd be out there.

Why wasn't Peter with Jesus & John?

Since John was allowed to enter with Jesus, why not Peter? I would highly suspect that because of Peter's cutting off of the high priest's servant's ear just a little bit earlier, he was not welcome and perhaps was even on a "wanted" list. All the people in the room with Jesus would have known Peter by sight, since they had just been with him, so he would have easily been arrested for what he had done. So, probably Peter was desiring in his heart to stick with Jesus; remember his bold proclamation in Matthew 26:33: "Even though all may fall away because of You, I will never fall away". So, Peter was probably burning with passion, but knew that he needed to "lay low" after what he did. So, he got as close as he thought he could get to Jesus without being recognized by others; perhaps the people in the courtyard had not been in the garden earlier that night. I wonder too if Peter and the others in the courtyard could hear the proceedings going on above them? I expect they could. Houses were probably not as tightly made back then and I'm sure that there was much heated loud voices involved. So, Peter was able to follow what was happening to Jesus to some degree while he stood out there around the fire. There must have been other people from the community in the courtyard also, besides servants and soldiers. If Peter was the only one, it would've been very suspect and he would be found out easily. But maybe there were other neighbors or concerned folks who saw the ruckus and stopped by. The gospels do mention some "bystanders".

Peter's Denial

The first denial comes at the hands of a servant girl. Luke records in 22:56 that some period of time passed where there servant girl had been intently watching Peter at the fire. She finally decided that Peter was a disciple; perhaps she was trying to recall a memory from years before- maybe she was at one of Jesus' sermons or something? Regardless, she finally felt that she had Peter pinned and she called him out on it. Peter, of course denied this. Then, some other period of time passes. The gospels record that Peter left the fire and went out to the "porch", or the "gateway". Maybe he was afraid of others back at the fire who had heard the exchange and were getting ideas. He was removing himself from potential conflict, and it sounds like getting himself closer to the exit! The second denial was also at the hands of another servant girl, who it sounds like was over near the porch where Peter had relocated. One gospel says that she confronts him and two of them say that she accuses him, not to his face, but to the by-standing crowd. Peter of course denies he knows Jesus. After this, Luke has an interesting tidbit that says "about an hour had passed" (v59) before the final denial. I always picture the denials as happening really quickly in succession. But, it seems like this was a drawn-out process. The accusers were not entirely sure and apparently did not pursue any further and were Peter's false stories as he denied Christ. Peter probably really though he was okay after a whole hour had passed without anyone else accusing him.
The third accuser knew Peter best and there's some interesting things to draw from this. Matthew and Mark just record that the "bystanders" accused Peter again. But, Luke records that it was just one man. John has the gold nugget: "One of the slaves of the high priest, being a relative of the one whose ear Peter cut off, said, "Did I not see you in the garden with Him?" (18:26) The last accuser had just seen Peter in the garden and really knew who he was. Now if this man was in the garden with the high priest earlier, why was he down in the courtyard now with Peter? Wouldn't he likely be in the upper room for the proceedings? Luke records another gold nugget: "The Lord turned and looked at Peter" (22:61). How could Jesus and Peter see each other from different rooms on different floors? I suppose it was possible, if Jesus was near the window or just at the right angle or something. But, I suspect something further that would answer all of this- I think the questioning had ended and Jesus was being lead outside along with the whole procession. This would mean that Jesus was out in the courtyard where he could see Peter and would also mean that the accuser would be back out of the upper room and down there as well. Perhaps Peter thought he was home-free as the questioning was ending and they were coming outside. But then, this man just happened to see Peter and he knew right away it was Peter and called him out. Jesus saw the whole thing and caught Peter's eye as the rooster crowed which then jogged Peter's memory as all four gospels record. This also might explain why Matthew and Mark record the "bystanders" accusing Peter at this point- perhaps this man with the most credible testimony has loudly accused Peter. By now, word of the other two accusations had probably spread in the crowd, though nobody had enough evidence to do anything about it. When this man accused Peter, perhaps it tipped the crowd and they all starting saying what they suspected. This would also likely explain Peter's violent reaction, how he "began to curse and swear" as he denied Christ. (Matt 26:74) Why would Peter react that way unless he was now suddenly under a lot more pressure than he had been an hour previously?
Apparently, Peter is able to elude arrest and flee to where he has time to think about his denial of Christ and weep bitterly about it.

The Rooster

Curiously, Matthew, Luke and John record one rooster call, but Mark records two. Actually, Mark only records one rooster call, but says it is the second of two and that Jesus had predicted two. I'm sure we'll never know the answer to this difference. Apparently after the first denial in Mark, later manuscripts add the first rooster call, but that's not in the originals. Probably later revisionists noticed the discrepancy and tried to account for it. Just curious.

Personal Lessons

We tend to draw a simple lesson from Peter in this along the lines of "don't deny Christ". That's good, but there's other stuff going on here too. I think Peter's heart was good and he had a strong faith. He was passionate about staying with Christ, even if he was putting himself in a dangerous place. I think the same passion he had for Christ may have lead to such a passionate final denial of Him. I think that Peter cared so much to be there and perhaps felt so responsible for "watching out" for Christ, that he would do anything to stay there and stick close to Jesus; even denying Him. The first two denials don't seem very passionate: perhaps the first two denials he justified to himself in order to be able to stick close to Jesus (I'm not condoning lying or denying Him; I'm just picking Peter's brain). I think that after the hour had passed, Peter was feeling pretty safe again. And as the questioning ended and he saw His Lord coming out, Peter was probably just thrilled and excited to be back near Him. Peter's mind was no longer worried about himself, but then suddenly Peter was confronted again, this time with somebody from the garden who maybe even Peter recognized. Peter's mind took a total 180 and he gave a passionate, instinctual reaction as he was now really caught, very publicly. His mind was now off of Christ and now totally in self-preservation mode. He responded as such, cursing and swearing, likely yelling and making a big scene of his denial of Christ.
I think the lesson from the 3rd denial is the most powerful to me. The first two are perhaps explainable (but not condonable), but the third one is life. What happens to us when we're going along, mostly focused on Christ, or even very passionately focused on Him, like I think Peter was, and then we're confronted with a total curve-ball from life? Somebody dies, we get sick, we lose a job, something breaks, something happens in our church, etc. These things happen all the time. What is our first reaction? Do we immediately turn away from Christ and go into self-preservation, effectively denying Him, like Peter? Or, do we immediately turn to the only One who can really help us through or really change the situation? I'm afraid that my natural instinct is much like Peter's. Its very hard to naturally turn to Christ when you've been blindsided, when you're whole perspective is now 180 of what is was.
I think a deeper lesson here is not only to not deny Christ when confronted by a person, but don't deny Him in your own heart when confronted with life's happenings. When our expectations of what life should be and what life will hold for our coming days are completely changed in an instant, how do we react? Perhaps this is why James says not to set our future expectations so high without seeking God's will first:
"Come now, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, and spend a year there and engage in business and make a profit." Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away. Instead, you ought to say, "If the Lord wills, we will live and also do this or that." (James 4:13-15)

Is this thing still on?

2013-06-30T17:29:00.000-04:00

I've been thinking about resurrecting my blog. It has been a long time since I've used this, but I've been thinking of having a place to write down some thoughts that are focused primarily on God and Christianity; spiritual stuff. So, it might have a different tenor than that of past years, but I think it will be good and hopefully will be an encouragement or help at times to anybody who might read it.

Fabio's Is Coming!

2011-02-13T20:20:00.001-05:00

I see a sign and work being done for a new Fabio's NY Pizza no less than 2 minutes from our house!

OH HAPPINESS!

The Bavarian Chef

2011-01-28T22:42:00.000-05:00

That was a truly amazing experience. I am currently fat, happy, and saucy. :-P

thank you, Restaurant Week!

2010 Eclipse

2010-12-22T01:16:00.000-05:00

Last night, I had a great time enjoying the lunar eclipse. I went to bed a little after midnight and then got up at 1:25am. The eclipse was first starting to show at around 1:30, so I took my camera outside in the cold to check it out. The full moon was incredibly bright and it was reflecting off the snow...it was almost daylight out! Unfortunately, there was a thin layer of cloud cover over the sky so the moon was bright, but always fuzzy. I was able to watch the eclipse happening, but the pictures all look out of focus because of the clouds. :-/ After freezing out there a bit, I came in at 1:50 and took a few pictures through the skylight. I tried to sleep on the couch from 2-2:20, but was too giddy, so I just lay there. At 2:20, I got up and the moon was more towards the horizon, so I couldn't see through the skylight anymore...back out into the freezing tundra! I setup the tripod outside again and enjoyed the last part of the moon gloriously disappearing. Around 2:40, it was fully covered and started its transition to the neat red color. The clouds were staring to thin up more and every now and then I'd get a few seconds of clear view, but not enough for a good picture. It was so neat though, that I just stayed out there, not really noticing the cold. Around 3, the sky just totally cleared up and I could see the stars and an incredible view of the moon. I snapped off a few shots at 25-sec exposure, but in that time the moon moved a little even! I didn't have time to play with different exposures much before the clouds were coming back...I ran in and woke up Liz to come enjoy the spectacle. When she came out around 3:10, it was cloudy again. :-/ She stayed out with me for the 3:17 peak and pretty soon after that, it was clear again for a few glorious minutes! Such beauty! I was so glad Liz got to see it clear and star-backlit. Not too much after that, the clouds were rolling in again, so we decided to stop freezing and go on to bed. I snuck back out around 4:10 and saw the first part of the moon sneaking out and glowing tremendously. It was very cool. The whole thing was a great show. Wish my pictures were better, but that's okay- I have the memories, and these get the point across.

I feel a little crazy for staying up a good bit of the night, but it was worth it. God has created such magnificence in this world and some of it is rarely seen and only by a small fraction of the historical population. Why not make the effort to experience a little piece of God that is so rare? As I sat there watching the eclipse in its full glory, I couldn't not think about how amazing He is and how amazing the world is that He has made. I mean, the structure and function and consistency of it all is just amazing to me. Mankind has done a lot of cool stuff, but it just pales in comparison with the utter complexity of the things God has created. Nature is so complex and sophisticated, yet so beautiful and functional all at the same time. Who else could create such a well-balanced thing than God Himself? I dare say no one!

And, now for the photo collage:

O Christmas Tree

2010-12-14T18:49:00.000-05:00

On Friday, we bought a Christmas tree up at the Corner Store. We walked into the midst of the tree selection and the first one I grabbed was really nice and full and a good size. I put it back and we looked at a bunch more, but then came back to that one and bought it. Love at first sight! It is an excellent tree. Got it nicely decorated on Saturday. :-)

I should go to bed

2010-11-26T23:14:00.000-05:00

its getting late. but i'm so excited to have my blog back, that its time for some pointless ramble. Its been a good Thanksgiving. Was very glad that Gwen, Raymond, and Wes were able to come to visit today. :)

we'll, I guess bed is calling after all...blah

Happy Thanksgiving!

2010-11-25T18:00:00.000-05:00

I have finally had time today to fix my blog, so I can post again. Yay!!

Our Little Mariam

2010-03-20T23:19:00.005-04:00

So, we've been sort of thinking/debating for a little while about whether it would be good to get another cat to be with Shadow. It seems like it could be either really bad for Shadow, if she can't take it, or really good for her to have a little friend around the house. I'm not sure there's much middle ground though...

Anyways, yesterday, just for fun, Liz and Mema went to the SPCA to look at cats and hold some. They came across this one cat, Mariam. She was about 7 months old, so still classified as a kitten. Liz emailed me some pictures from her phone of Mariam and told me that she was a sweetie and was just soaking up the love. :) They spent some time there with her and then came home. I got done with work and Liz talked me into driving back to the SPCA to see Mariam. I'm a sucker for cats, so we did! We went down and saw Mariam. She was in the last cage in the hallway, way in the back...poor thing. We got to her cage and she was really shy. Liz was able to coax her out and into her arms, to the tune of immediate purrs and kneading on Liz's shirt. :-) I could tell that Mariam was a sweetie. She seemed really timid, and really in need of love. Most of the cats there seemed either 1) content with themselves, 2) full of themselves, or 3) lazy and uninterested in anything. But, Mariam seemed different. She was shy, but quiet and needing affection. She seemed like maybe a good match for Shadow. Liz said that Mariam hadn't said a single word the whole time she was with her earlier today! What a quiet kitty! So, Mariam was there on Liz's shoulder chillin', but then started climbing up her some. Liz pulled her away, but then realized that Mariam was bleeding from her underside! Mariam had been spayed not too long ago, but should have been healing by now. Liz had to put her back in the cage because there was already blood on her shirt. When Mariam was back in the cage, she was SO sad. I mean, not like Shadow's partial-sadness. Mariam was SOOOOO sad! It was horrible. She crammed back in the corner, put her head on the ground, with her paws "flattened" and she let out the most horrible, lonesone, "meows" I think I've ever heard. It was heartbreaking- these were the first things we heard Mariam say. I think Mariam thought Liz was coming back for her for good, and then it just broke her little heart to be back in the cage. Liz rushed off to clean her shirt, and I tried to console Mariam with petting through the cage, but to no avail. Her little spirit was crushed. :( Liz came back after a bit and Mariam actually perked up just a tiny bit. We felt a little encouraged. We said goodbye to Mariam and then went up to tell the workers about her underside bleeding. They were concerned about it and took her out of her cage right away and into surgery. By that point, it was past closing time, so we left for the evening.

We spent a decent amount of conversation last night and this morning discussing Mariam and whether she would be a good fit for Shadow. This afternoon, we were in town after some other things, and we decided to go by the SPCA again and make sure Mariam was doing okay. We went down to her cage first thing and she wasn't there...so, we figured that maybe she was still recovering from surgery. I did notice that her papers were totally gone from the cage though. It bothered me a little. We walked around for quite a while looking at the other cats there. We got ready to leave and decided that we might as well ask how Mariam was doing. We also thought that maybe she got adopted by a nice family. :) The girl at the desk looked Mariam up and said that she was still available. So, she walked around back to see if she was in recovery. Then, she came out and told us that apparently Mariam had been bad off and had to have emergency surgery and died during it...

That news was so sad, to say the least. I had to keep my composure from crying right there and Liz cried some in the car. We hardly even knew this kitty, but had already seen and discussed her so much that there was an established relationship there that was suddenly cut off in the worst way. Mariam seemed like such a sweet cat that just needed and wanted some love. She probably didn't deserve to die at 7 months, but again, who am I to judge that? These things are so hard.

Later today, Liz and I were discussing if we should have such emotion for cats and for Mariam. Children are dying every day of much worse things. Why aren't we more emotional about that? I think that's a valid question, and a hard one to answer. The point I argue is that I think a heart that is concerned for God's little creatures is heart that is able to be concerned for all His creatures, humans included. I think people that are mean towards cats and other animals, or just have no heart for them, likely have a hard time relating and being loving in the deepest way to humans. I think God's heart grieves for all His creation when these bad things happens. So, to grieve over little Mariam's short life, I think, is a good thing, because it shows that our heart is softened where it can be impacted by human life too.

I think in many ways, God wants us to be simple-minded. And that doesn't been to be uneducated, or uninformed. That means to think about these hard things in life and to ponder them, and know about them, but to ultimately approach them with a simplistic heart of love and compassion like a child has. We shouldn't ignore people's problems because they're "too complicated" or "overseas", or "a culture we don't understand", etc, etc. I think those are weak excuses. At a core level, God has created us with the same natures and ability to understand and care for each other. I don't speak a lick of Romanian, but my heart grieves with so many people I meet over there. I call that "simplistic loving"- where you recognize the problem, understand it as best you can, be educated about it, but are able to love the person in a simple, childlike, "no barriers" way. And I think that relates back to the same heart that loves little animals like Mariam. Its a simple, yet very powerful love that God gives us. I'm thankful for it. :)

One verse that comes to mind is Matthew 18:4 - "Whoever then humbles himself as this child, he is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven."

I barely knew Mariam, but she moved my heart in the last 24 hours. In memory of her short life, here's a couple pictures of her:

Despre Moarte

2010-03-11T23:28:00.000-05:00

Death is a weird thing.
The fact that someone, or something that is so full of life, so dynamic, so interesting, and so meaningful can be fully here one minute and fully not here the next is hard to comprehend. It seems to reach beyond what we understand, into the spiritual realm that only our souls can sort of grasp, but even then, it seems but a glimpse.

This morning, I was driving into work. About 3 cars in front of me, a deer came into the road. It was weird. I'm not sure if it jumped the guard rail and then got hit, or flopped into the road. Basically, it looked like it was having a seizure, flopped over the guard rail, then bounced off a car. It was left there writhing in agony on Route 29. I swerved to miss it.

The deer really put me in a somber mood for the day. Poor thing didn't intend to die that way, I'm sure. It was probably in pain for who knows how long. It would have been much happier and still been alive if circumstances were slightly changed.

Later this afternoon, I learned that an old friend of mine, Greg Jones, had died of cancer. To say the least, I've been in shock. I had no idea that he had cancer, or that it was so bad. I wish I had known. To hear of Greg passing is almost as much of a shock to me as him getting hit by a car. Only, its almost worse, because I could have known leading up to this, and could have gone up to see him and spent some time with him. But as it stands, its too late. Its hard to believe that he's really gone. I've been out of touch with him for years now, since high school and early college. So, having him gone doesn't affect my life too much- meaning that its hard for me to "miss" him in the way people closer to him do. I'm struggling to wrap my mind around the fact that he's died and what that really means. I tend to go for the "why" questions. Why did Greg deserve to have cancer so young? Why is cancer even allowable in God's world? How can it be so deadly so fast? Why Greg?

I miss Greg for sure though. I spent a good while this evening sitting on the porch in the rain storm. It seemed an appropriate scenario to reflect on Greg and the times we shared. I never knew him extremely well, but the times we shared were always good. I've had some of the best laughs of my life with him as we drove around Lowes Island in a golf cart. He had one of the most unique senses of humor of anyone I know- he would just crack me up! I remember introducing him to Classic Rock after he had been into rap music. Man, he really took a liking to Classic Rock! It was unbelievable- he really got into it and we had a blast listening to old tunes together. :) I remember him getting his green Integra- he loved zipping around in that thing. He used to come over and hang out with Jon a lot playing video games and such. Even earlier than that, we all played baseball together. I think the last time I saw Greg was a few years ago when I was randomly down in Leesburg at a billiards place hanging out with some friends and ran into him there! I remember it felt great just to be in his presence and chat awhile. He was always soft spoken and undemanding like that.

Greg was a good guy for sure. I wish I could have gotten back in touch with him. Its so hard though. I have so many friends from the past, that its hard to keep up with everyone. I care about them and want to stay in touch, but it seems like there's a definite quantity of friends that you can stay active with at any point in your life. I dunno...

Back to the deer. This evening, I saw a fairly young deer in our back yard nibbling away at our foliage. She was pretty trusting of me and I enjoyed watching her walk around and eventually bounce off into the woods. It made me think of the deer I watched die this morning and the circle of life. Its all so hard to make sense of and to put into any sort of words or perspectives. All I know is that all of this just makes my soul long for Heaven and to be with God in His goodness. I feel like many of David's Psalms where he just yearns to be freed of this life and its hardships. When you really think on them, the burdens of this world are so heavy. I have to turn them over to God, lest I get crushed and depressed by them.

But I do and will miss Greg.

Teriyaki Tuna Steaks

2010-02-24T21:57:00.003-05:00

Had a delicious dinner tonight of Teriyaki Tuna Steaks made by muah and challah bread hand made by Liz and Debbie C. :-) Also, some springy flowers!

Good recipe

The End of an Era Brings the Start of a New Era

2010-02-10T23:03:00.002-05:00

So, this is sort of old news, but my well-liked Canon S2IS camera died back in the beginning of December. I figured out that I've taken over 25,000 pictures with that thing! The last picture I took on the Canon was during one of our first snow/ice storms of the winter, on 12/5/09. It's sort of an appropriate picture for my camera to die on:

After a couple months of research, debate, and waiting, I finally have decided and found a great deal on the Nikon D90, thus ushering in a new era of DSLR photos for me. I opened it up Monday night to much fanfare at home. :) The first picture I took with my new camera (and 35mm lens), shows the shock and un-readiness of everyone (including myself) when it made a big flash and CLICK! sound:

As much as I liked my old camera, I'm really liking this new one a lot! :)

Romania 2009

2010-01-14T23:53:00.001-05:00

Romania 2009

Finally, I'm taking some time to write about our Romania trip this past July! The first part of this was written while we were there. I always have high aspirations about journalling while I'm in Romania, but its so hard to keep up with. There's always so much to do and think about, that its difficult to take the time to keep journalling. I'm so tired after the long work days, that I don't want to think any more in the evenings! So, anyways, the first part is from my original journal, and the second part will be written from my current memories and thoughts looking back on the time.

[written in Romania]
Day 1/2 (Thurs 7/16 - Fri 7/17)
This year, we planned to pack and head up to Sterling on Wednesday night to make it easier to get to the flight on time Thursday! It worked well and we had a fun time with my family Wednesday night. We grilled up steaks and had a nice dinner time together. Thursday, I was able to get six hours of work in on my laptop and that was great. So thankful for that! Had lunch and then got to Dulles around 3:30. We saw a few people from our group there and then we go into our United line which was very long. I struggled to be patient with the workers there. We got our tickes, said goodbye to Mom and Dad, and then went back to quickly see the rest of the team over at the Lufthansa check-in. Then, we made it through security and to our gate very quickly, which was a blessing. Had about 20 minutes to spare before the 5:15 boarding call. We had a brief scare in that I realized we didn't have a boarding pass for the first flight, just some ticket management stub thing! The desk guy was nice and said he was about to call for us, and he made us boarding passes. The flight to Zurich was excellent. I think we got put in United Plus, which meant we had about an extra 6" of space or so than is normal. I was quite comfortable and got a lot of sleep on the flight. I probably slept for about 5 of the 8 hours or so. Very thankful for that! Also thankful because the plane was smaller and Liz and I got two seats alone together with a window seat. =) I think that's our first international flight where that happened. God is good! We got to Zurich and had a smooth transfer to our next flight. The Swiss seem so prompt, clean, and precise! It was evident all over the airport. A neat thing was the inter-gate transfer train. It was very quiet and cold and it played sounds from the Alps. It was beautiful! Some sort of tourism thing, I guess. So, we aited an hour or so for our flight to Romania and it went well. It was weird because most of the people on with us were Swiss tourists going to Romania. I felt very out of place! Especially when all the boarding information was read only in German, so we were almost late to board! It rained a lot in Zurich. The plane ride was great. Got an awesome view of the Alps and at one point could look down and see the Riva mountain and the valleys for the two lakes. That was cool! The Swiss Air plane was really small and the flight was smooth. They bribed us with amazing free chocolate! Flight landed in Bucharest around 1:20. We exchanged $100 at the airport for 2.79 lei/$1 and went down to get our bags. All four of our bags made it through just fine, which is a big praise! Liz and I then decided whether we should go out to the arrivals sitting area, which was public, or to sit on one of the few benches near the luggage, which was secured. We were supposed to meet Buddy and Scott before the group, but didn't see them anywhere. I wanted to go out, but Liz wanted to stay. So, we stayed! The rest of the group was coming in three hours, so we settled in. Pretty soon, a security guard came over and I think he tried to get us to leave. He knew like two Engish words- "person" and "exit". We stood up to inquire, and he left. As we were standing, we looked across the large room to see the outer doors open and some people waving frantically! They closed. Then opened again. The people were still waving- perhaps at us! So, we went on over there and saw Don and Joyce, Danny, David, Ovi, Buddy, Scott, Immanuel, and Amelia.
[written back home in December!]
We were so excited to see them, so we headed out into the crowd and met them with lots of hugs. :) I'm so thankful that God worked it out where the security guard would get us looking around just enough to see them in the crack of the door when it opened! Otherwise, we'd be waiting for like 3 more hours there, and they would have been frustrated! It was so good to see our Romanian friends that we hadn't seen in a year. :) So, we took our luggage and we all crammed into Don's green van. I'm not sure how we all got in there, with lugggage, but we did! It was cozy. Since we had a few hours until the rest of the group's plane got there- we set out on the town. First stop was for a light lunch at McDonalds. I was glad to have Romanian McDonalds again- its so good. Royal Cheese of desire. :) After lunch, we headed off to a big store called Metro- very similar to a Price Costco or Sam's Club. We were buying lots of food supplies for the team for the week. It was funny, because we had actually stopped to use the bathroom at this Metro the year before. So, it was a little familiar. This time, we got to go in and shop around. It was an interesting experience that felt so American compared with most of the Romania we see. It was quite overwhelming actually- similar to the feeling I have at Sam's! Regardless, we spent awhile in there shopping around and finding food, which wasn't always the easiest considering the language barrier. I even ran across a girl with free espresso coffee samples, which were quite good. :) Once we finally found all, or most, of what the team needed, we went out to the parking lot. The bus met us there in the lot and we were able to transfer a lot of luggage and supplies onto the bus. And it was sure hot in that parking lot! Once we got everything settled, we headed back to the airport just in time to meet up with the rest of the group flying in from Dulles. It was good to see them too. :) It was a weird feeling not being with them for the flight over, but in some ways it was nice too because I felt free to just relax and sleep or whatever and not feel guilty about trying to get to know new people. Not that I don't want to, but during the flight process, I find it nicer to just zone out. :) We got everyone in the group loaded up on the bus, Wayne shared some introductory thoughts and a prayer and then we started on our drive to the hotel. This year, the hotel wasn't too far from the airport-about 2-3 hours. I guess that was good. I personally don't mind the longer drive for think time, but it was nice to be able to go straight to our hotel right away. We stopped in for more McDonalds for dinner on the way. We got to the hotel right around sunset or so. It was a beautiful drive through the country. The hotel was settled on a mountain in the woods a little, which I thought was neat. That was the first time I've been sort of in the woods in Romania. The hotel was pretty nice for the most part. The one key disadvantage was that there was no a/c in the rooms! Our room was on the 3rd (top) floor and it was still very hot and stuffy from the warm day. We opened up the windows and that helped some. Our room was also on the end of the hotel, which meant we were situated on this courtyard area. There was a dining area down below and another hotel across the way. In the courtyard this Friday night was a rock band playing REALLY loudly! So, between them and the heat, it was impossible to get to sleep for a long time. So, I stayed up and sat on the balcony and enjoyed the band. They were actually quite good. In fact, most of their songs were cover songs of American songs. It was quite funny. They played them very well, but sometimes their grammar wasn't always correct. And the Romania accent was a funny touch on them. :-P I think the show wound down around midnight and we finally were able to get some rest!

Day 3 (Sat 7/18)
Since we got here a day earlier than usual, they decided to make Saturday a working day too so we could get a good head start on the project. We got up early and had a good breakfast at the hotel. The fair was similar to other places we've been in and it was good. Eggs, cheese, ham, bread, cereal, and Romania coffee. I drank the coffee this year and I really liked it actually. Perhaps it was just this restaurant because usually I don't. I think they were using Illy, so perhaps that's what made it good? Anyways, after a good eat, we drove to the chapel site. When we got there, it didn't look quite ready! It was a similar feeling to the previous year when it didn't seem like the chapel was ready for us to come work on it. This year was a little more finished, but still didn't seem quite ready. But that's okay- we figured it out. We gathered in the chapel together with Pastor Marian there and started out with some thoughts for the week and we had a time of prayer. We didn't go out on prayer walks, but started into work for the day after that. We got the food truck all set up nicely and got all the supplies out and organized, then got to work on the site. We spent a large part of the day getting wood cut, supplies organized and moved, etc. We were also able to get a number of the roof rafters built today, which was an excellent head start on the project. The one thing about this day though, was that it was HOT! It must have been well near or past 100 degrees in the afternoon. Then, working in the open chapel with no roof and concrete walls and floor was basically an oven. I don't want to know how hot it got in there! We were all wearing soaked towels in our hats to try and stay sort of cool. It got really bad though and at least one or two guys in our group got heat sickness. I was actually feeling quite dizzy at one point and had to rest for awhile. In light of this, our group leaders called off work early for the rest of the afternoon. Tired, sweaty, and weary, our group got on the bus to ride back to the hotel. Unfortunately, the bus had been sitting in the hot sun all afternoon, and was really hot!! None of the windows opened either. Not too long into the bus ride, the bus driver pulled off the side of the road and stopped. Apparently, the air conditioner was broken! We all got off and stood on the side of the busy road for a little bit, while he attempted some fixes and made some calls. Eventually, we got back on and had a steamy ride back. Somebody figured that the emergency hatch in the roof would open up, so that helped some, but for the most part, it was miserable. I think the day went well work-wise, but the extreme heat set a fairly bad tone starting off the trip for the team. I think a lot of people were worried! We certainly made the weather a prayer point in following days. That night, we ate dinner at the hotel and it was good. I thought they did a nice job on the food there. We probably had chicken and tomatoes and onions. :P Another thing a little different about this trip was that I brought my laptop. I was intending on creating a video to send back to Laurel Hill for them to show on Sunday during service. So, today I took a bunch of video shots and I put them on my laptop to piece together. I recorded some of the concert from the previous night and was able to pull that out as background music for the film. Also different this trip, the hotel actually had wireless internet access downstairs! So, I was able to write home during the week and keep in touch a little each night. It felt strange to be surfing the internet on my laptop in Romania, but its certainly possible! So, after dinner, we had our devotional time which was okay, but everybody was pretty wiped out, so I don't remember it being too long or spiritual! After that we went back up to our steamy 3rd floor room! And- it was Saturday night, so guess what? The band was back! So, we got another night of American hits done by the Romanian band. I was really tired, but couldn't sleep. Liz somehow passed out in her day clothes. I sat out on the balcony for awhile enjoying the music and shooting some more videos. I think they ended around midnight again and I was able to get a bit of rest.

Day 4 (Sun 7/19)
Sunday in Romania is always a nice day because we get to rest and worship! We got to sleep in just a little today and enjoyed a nice breakfast. The congregation who we were building the chapel for invited us to their house church to worship with them, so that's what we did. A blessing of the morning was that we had a new bus! The bus driver was able to exchange our bus with the broken a/c for one that worked! :) So, we drove to the town where our church was. The town's name was Piticulea. Now, we must remember that this congregation is a house church that is overgrowing its house. Add 21+ Americans and like 8 interpreters/workers and it was quite crowded inside! I sat outside on the porch with some of the congregation who had given up their seats and some others from our group. It was a pretty nice service, although I admit that I wished we could have been together more. It was very hard to hear outside, especially with the cars and farm trucks going by pretty regularly. It kind of kills the spirit of the service when you can only pick up parts of it! But, I was just thankful and happy to be there, so I didn't mind too much. After service, we went on back to the hotel for lunch which was good. Oh- and another blessing- Don went out and bought all of us fans for our rooms! That was so crucial! The rooms were so hot with no a/c and no fans. That fan made all the difference in the quality of the week for us. we were so grateful to have that simple fan to help us to sleep and cool off each night. After lunch, we were free to do whatever all afternoon. Usually, I cherish this time to get to do a little sightseeing. However, this Sunday, I had to get the video presentation together to upload back for Laurel Hill to see in their service. We were 7 hours ahead, so I figured there was plenty of time to do it. I got with Pastor Bruce and we did some takes of him doing a little message to the congregation and that turned out good. Then, I went back up to my room, sat on the balcony with my laptop, and worked on piecing together the video. It took a couple hours at least to download the video from my camera, convert it, splice it with other ones, then cut out the sound on some of them and overdub the Romanian concert music, then seamlessly put them all together, and compress them to an uploadable size! As time went on, I got more and more stressed because I was afraid I wouldn't have it done in time, and it was eating up my afternoon. I finally got it done, then went downstairs to the wireless to upload it, which took about 45 minutes to do. It got uploaded 11:00-11:15am their time in America, so I was afraid it was too late to be their for the service, but I was still hoping that my contact would check her email and be able to play it at the end of service. I found out later that night that she didn't get it in time, which was totally a bummer. I was really discouraged about that after spending so much time and effort to make it happen. :-/ (they would go on to play the video the next Sunday, which was cool, but I didn't know that for awhile). By the time the video stuff was all done, it was time for dinner and devotions. I think both went well, but I think I was a little out of it because of the video madness. I was nursing a bad attitude and kinda pulled myself out of the group spirit somewhat. That night, I did have a good quiet time, which was encouraging. I used that time to deal with my bad attitude and get over it so it didn't spoil the rest of my trip. I also needed to prepare for giving the lunch time devotional on Monday. We were also encouraged by the fan, and I think we went to bed early. While I'm thinking of it, I should mention that the town we stayed in was really interesting. It was called Sarata Montreau and was some sort of resort town that Romanians go to. It was sort of set back in the mountains a bit and looked like it had lots of hiking and things to do. There was a huge salt water pool near our hotel, complete with sand and all. Looked almost like the beach! It was jammed pack with people every day. It was crazy. And it played loud music (mostly American) all day long too! There was also lots of tennis courts and other touristy things in this town. Not so much for international tourists, but it seemed like a Romanian tourist spot for people who had money and wanted to get away from the city a bit. We saw lots of nice cars at our hotel, so it was clear that the people here were not the typical Romanians that you see everywhere. I would equate it to rich people leaving Northern Virginia and driving down to Charlottesville for a weekend in the country. So, it was a different experience being in this town, compared with others we'd been in.

Day 5 (Mon 7/20)
After a little bit of sleep, it was time to get working again! I think the bus left promptly at 7am each day, so we had to be up around 6 to have time to get ready and eat breakfast before that. It's hard to get up that early when you're so tired! We had another good breakfast at the hotel. It amazes me that the eggs in Romania are made the same, look the same, and taste the same at every hotel we've been in, in various towns. Yet, they're different than American eggs. Why is that? After breakfast, we got on the bus and drove in to the job site. It was about a 45 minute drive each day. Most of it was highway, so that was nice that it wasn't crazy and bumpy the whole way. The scenery was pretty, but not as amazing as other years. Mostly just fields and fields and fields. Looked a lot like the midwest. Not very many sunflowers this year, compared with where we were last year. We got to the jobsite and gathered around in the chapel to pray over the day. Then, we split up into groups to go on our first prayer walks of the week. I was in a group with Jack, Kathy, Scott, and Anka interpreting. This first morning, I remember we did a lot of walking and praying, but I don't think we encountered very many people to talk to. I think we talked to one older man on a bike for a little bit, who seemed to claim he was a Christian, and then talked to his wife and daughter a little later on down the road for a little bit too. I can't remember anyone else we talked to right now. We were probably out for about 45 minutes or so, then got back to the chapel to work. One sort of disconcerting thing about this morning is that the big Eastern Orthodox church across the street from us with making a racket all morning, starting with while we were praying early on. They kept ringing tons of bells and doing their drum-banging thing that makes a big racket. We all thought it was directed at us, but then found out that it was St. Elijah's Day, so that was the cause of the ruckus. The church, we found out later, was actually not very opposed to us in that town, so that was good. So working, thankfully, God was good and helped the weather to be a bit cooler today. It was still hot, but not as bad as Saturday! I helped again today on putting together the roof rafters inside the chapel. We got that done in the morning, and then started putting them up on the roof after lunch! During lunch, I had been asked by Wayne to give a devotional time. Actually, I was in charge of picking other people for each day also, which was cool. I wish I could remember the exact devotional I gave this year, because I thought it was really neat. I remember that God placed some good thoughts and verses on my heart that were relevant to the trip, but now I don't remember what it was! Oh well. After lunch, it was back to the hard work of getting the roof rafters up. I helped with lifting them and holding the center pole to flip them upright. It was going well for the most part. However, on one of the last ones, I was pushed back towards the front door of the chapel. For some reason, my helpers on the center pole stopped pushing partway up, and for a brief period of time (didn't feel so brief!) all of the weight of the rafter was on me. And my feet the slipped on the concrete rocks on the ground! I almost lost the thing, which would have been REALLY bad, but God helped me hold on until I could yell for help. It was a pretty scary and took my breath away. That's when I quit for a while and did easier things for the rest of the afternoon. That was late in the afternoon anyways, so when others got the last few rafters up, our group wrapped up work for the day. I was sure tired! We got on the bus to head back to the hotel and had a/c this time! yay! Our hotel room was warm again, but we had the fan to help a lot. :) I think dinner this night was pizza. :) The hotel had a brick pizza oven in the back and they made a bunch of varieties of good pizza. It was most enjoyable! After dinner and devotions, there was still a little light outside, so a few of us walked down the street to this open-air place where they were showing old movies an TV shows on a big projector. There were mostly older people there watching some traditional Romanian dancing on the screen, which was interesting. But, the big draw for us was the little stand selling food and drinks- and ice cream! Liz and I got bars of ice cream and they were so good. It was a white chocolate shell on the outside and really soft dark chocolate on the inside. Mmm, so good! After our ice cream time, we got back to the hotel. I spent a little time online down in the lounge, and then we went on to bed.

Day 6 (Tues 7/21)
I was pretty sore and tired when we got up early this morning. Had worked hard the day before. But, there was more to be done, so I put on a good attitude, drank coffee, and it was off for the day! As usual, we got to the jobsite and started the day in prayer. It was awesome to have all the roof rafters up already on Monday! That was very good. :) We then went out in our group for prayer walk- same group as the day before. We encountered a few more people this morning than before. We spent a great deal of time talking with two delivery men near a shop. We shared the gospel with them and answered their questions for awhile. One of them was really listening a lot and very interested- the other one less so. It was neat to share with them though. We gave them both Bibles and they were very thankful for those- especially the one man. That was a neat opportunity. We also talked with a mother and her children who went to one of the 7th-day Adventist churches in this town. She was pleasant, but firm in her convictions. The town was interesting- it was a mixture of 7th-Day Adventists, Orthodox, and Baptist people. There were two Adventist churches in the town- one was "normal" and basically believed what we do, except for the whole Sunday thing. The other was very twisted and changed Scripture around and was very argumentative with us. They were strange and hard to talk to. The other Adventists were very kind and would come to worship with us. The Orthodox people in this town were not very strong Orthodox- they were generally kind and easy to talk to. Other towns have very strong Orthodox holds and people with badmouth us and hide from us. This town was much more accepting, thankfully. After our prayer walk, we got back to the jobsite to work for the day. Most of the hard labor was going to be on top of the roof today, and I'm not comfortable up there, so I decided to help Greg out with staining the windows and doors. This ended up being a big task! There was a small house on the property that we used to store equipment in, so we were able to take the windows and doors and lean them up against the house to work on and be in the shade most of the time. So, I pretty much worked on that all day with Greg. It was fun to get to share talk time with him. :) A couple other people came and helped for small spurts of time throughout the day, but for the most part, it was just him and I. We had 10 windows and 2 doors that needed to be stained twice and then varnished once or twice, I don't remember. Sounds simple enough, but its a lot of work do do well! ou don't want the stain to run or puddle up in one place because the people will be able to see the windows really well. Its important to make them look good! So we worked hard and made progress on them today, but there was a lot left to do. The rest of the group made great progress on the chapel. They started laying the ceiling on the inside of the chapel, which was awesome. Also, the guys on the roof got the whole tin roof placed on and the corner tin finished! I couldn't believe how far along we were! It seems like the red roof isn't totally up until Thursday usually, and today was Tuesday! It was a big encouragement to the whole team. We all went back to the hotel with a good sense of accomplishement and thankfulness for God's help in our great progress. After a nice shower, it was time for dinner. Oh, one other thing- for some reason the phone cards the Danny sold us weren't working in the phones, so that was annoying and we weren't able to call home. :( Thanksfully, we had wireless access this year, so I was able to email home. But, I had dropped my car off at Glenn's to have him work on a number of problem while I was gone, so I really needed to talk with him. So, a couple different evenings before dinner, I would borrow Danny's cell phone to call Glenn. I was relieved and surprised when Glenn told me that the awful noise my car was making was not my transmission, but was the wheel bearings! The repair would be expensive, but not as much as a transmission would be. So, that was a ongoing semi-drama in my mind during the week. Dinner and devotion time was good again. I think everyone was encouraged by the progress, slightly cooler weather, etc. I really enjoyed our team this year. It seemed like everyone genuinely wanted to be there and wanted to be flexible and fit in. It seemed that it was just a well-fit team and we all worked together quite well for the most part. That was a great blessing for sure. :) I also really enjoyed our group of interpreters this year. They were so cool! Tonight, I can't remember if we went out for ice cream or not, but its likely we did. :) After that and emailing home, it was time for bed again.

Day 7 (Wed 7/22)
I think I wasn't quite as tired this morning, as the previous, but was still pretty tired. Breakfast, coffee, and a nice ride to the job site woke me up. We started in prayer in the chapel- under the roof! It was cool. :) The acoustics are so different with the roof up and we took advantage to sing some praise songs together. Then, it was off for prayer walk again. We stuck with the same groups again. Today, we ran into a lot of Adventists, most from the "good" church. They were all so friendly and welcoming. It seemed that in general, this group of people in the town had more money than other people there. I found that interesting. One man invited us into his garden. He had a huge greenhouse full of vegetables of all varieties. It was very neat. He gave us some HUGE hot peppers to take back to the job too. Then, we talked awhile with a younger man who was working on pouring concrete for a new house. He showed us all around what had been built already. It was pretty cool. He was busy though, so we didn't get to talk long. Near the end of our walk, we talked awhile with an older man. I think he said he was 81 and had a lot of health problems. He was missing some teeth. We prayed for his upcoming surgery in Bucharest and he appreciated that. He didn't seem very receptive of the gospel, though. He was one of the ones that likes to talk/complain a lot about himself, but doesn't want to listen to us very much. My heart really went out to him though and I wish we could've done more for him. :-/ That reminds me that this town was also interesting in that it was probably 2-3 hours or less from Bucharest. Most of the people there said that they had some sort of "summer" home in this town where they would garden/farm in the warm weather, and then in the winters they would live in Bucharest. I thought that was interesting, and hadn't heard that in other villages. A number of people mentioned travelling to Bucharest soon (like the old man), and most older people mentioned having sons or daughters in Bucharest. So, it was a different place to be for me. After prayer walk, we got back to the jobsite to work for the day. I went over with Greg again to work on the windows and doors. Greg then went off on evangelism for a lot of the day, so I was left to work on the windows and doors by myself! I actually brought my IPod on this trip and loaded it up with a bunch of Mike Minter RBC sermons. So, I spent the morning listening to a couple good sermons and working on the staining. It went well. I think I got all the staining done in the morning and started varnishing before lunch. We broke for lunch and Andrew did some worship for us which was nice and uplifting. After lunch, I went back to varnishing the windows. It was a little hard because the sun was moving and it was hard to find shade for them so the varnish would dry nicely. Later on, Liz came and helped for awhile and Jack helped some too, so that was nice. :) I think we got the first coat of varnish done on all of the windows by the end of the day Wednesday. It was nice to work all afternoon, but it was a little lonely! I was struggling with wishing I was doing something else, but I decided it would be better to be content and stick with it, since somebody needed to. I was kind of hoping to get to go on evangelism, but didn't get to today. On the chapel, the roof got finished and most of the ceiling was hung! Huge progress for being the end of Wednesday. :) I think we stopped work slightly early today and got on back to the hotel for dinner and devotionals. I also think today was the day I called Glenn before dinner and found out the status of my car. The suprising news, and sort of good, was that my transmission was fine! However, my wheel bearings were shot and it would cost about $750 of work to fix them. So, I was a little distracted during dinner, trying to think of whether I should sink that much into my older car or not. After discussing with Jack, I decided to spend the money, and called Glenn back to have him go forward with the repair. After dinner, a lot of us went to the ice cream place again and had a good time. We brought Wayne and Liz with us, and we got a table with them and Buddy & Scott and enjoyed talking for a bit over ice cream. After that, we hung out with a bunch of the younger people playing the Romanian version of Uno, outside the hotel. It was quite fun. :) During the Uno playing, Ovi and Liz were talking about something and Ovi said something about waving like the Romanian president, and then he did this ridiculous wave that was so funny! Liz just burst out laughing and so did Amelia. They were both histerically laughing together for a while! It was great. :P We all went back inside for curfew around 10 I think. Then, I checked my email for a bit, and we went on to bed.

Day 8 (Thurs 7/23)
I woke up this morning, feeling pretty good. It was a beautiful morning. I spent some time out on the overhang enjoying the quiet of the morning. I enjoyed watching the hotel lady water all the plants in the courtyard every morning. She was very consistent about it, and they looked quite amazing! Breakfast and coffee were great as usual, and the bus ride in went well. We enjoyed prayer and singing under a finished roof AND finished ceiling! :) Very cool- made for great acoustics. Then, we split up into our same prayer walk groups and spent about an hour or so around the town. We spent a little time talking with a nice family from the "good" Adventist church. I thought it was funny because they were asking if we had any CDs we could sell them. They said they liked listening to the Gaithers and some other common American gospel groups. :P As we walked down that same dirt road, we came across some boys pumping water from a well, then a horse a buggy passed us, followed by a new-looking red car that was clean and shiny. I was suprised because I think it was getting quite dirty on that road! I just thought it was an interesting sequence of events because it kind of defines my Romania experiences so far- very poor circumstances, seemingly from the middle ages, mixed with random occurances of wealth and current stuff. After prayer walk, I went back to working on staining the windows and big door with the second coat of varnish. Greg was back working with me this morning, so that was fun. We got a lot done by lunch time. Wayne worked hard and had all of the ceiling lights done in the chapel by around lunch time. Because we were so far ahead on the chapel, the guys were able to start making a front porch area on the chapel. I thought that was really nice, so people could congregate out there, but stay out of the elements a bit. We worked hard most of the afternoon on varnishing the windows and doors. We got all the windows done, but didn't get the last coat done on the door. We had to wait for the first coat to dry, so it would have to wait until morning. Once we were done with varnishing, I finally had a little time to break in the late afternoon, and spent a little time sitting in a nice shaded area near the chapel, near the old house. It was fun to sit there and chat with various people for a bit. It was an area covered in vines with tiny grapes. It was very pretty! In the late afternoon, the guys on the inside of the chapel started putting up stucco and the final coating for the inside walls. It was amazing- there was one guy there that somebody talked to in the bar across the street, and he came over to volunteer! He did stucco work for a living and didn't have much to do, so he decided to help out on the chapel. Which reminds me- our bus driver was very cool. His name was Claudius and he was really into the project and helped us out a lot. He rested some during the days, but for the most part, he was all over the job site working and helping out. I really appreciated that. :) We cleaned up the job site, and then headed back to the hotel for the evening. I think we had a pizza dinner again, which was great! This was our last dinner at the hotel, so we thanked them publicly for their good service to us, which is was. Devotions were good, from what I can remember. I remember that afterwards, we went out for ice cream, of course! This time, we brought a large group of people with us for ice cream. It was crazy, and fun. :) When we got back, I hung out some more with David, an interpreter. I like him a lot. I bought him a Coke that night for something fun to do. :) After that, we did the typical- back to the hotel, checked email and news, then on off to bed.

Day 9 (Fri 7/24)
Had another decent night's rest and was able to get up on time and eat some good breakfast. It was a sort of sad drive into the job site, knowing that this morning was the last morning driving into the chapel site. :-/ We started off the morning in prayer and in song. I can't remember if groups went on prayer walks or not. I know, I was put on an early morning evangelism mission along with Pastor Bruce, Jason, and a couple others. We went down to the big marketplace down the road from the chapel, where tons of people would come every day to buy and sell produce. Pastor Marian is a Gideon, so he had boxes of Gideon' Bibles in Romanian. So, we went down to the market to pass out Bibles and witness to people. It was super cool. At first, Jason went with an interpreter and someone else, and then Pastor Bruce, Nathan, myself, and two interpreters were together. It was cool, but then I thought that it was silly to have two interpreters together, so I grabbed Daniel and we went off together on our own. It was really fun! It was definitley out of my comfort zone to go up to random hardworking Romanian people at the market and present the Gospel to them, but after just a few, God gets you flowing and you just keep going with ever-increasing strength. We would introduce ourselves, offer them Bibles, have them open to the back, show them the Gospel message in the back, and maybe explain a bit about it. Most people were really happy for the Bible gift and gladly took it. A number were timid to take it- I think they had been told by the Orthodox church that they're not allowed to have their own. Still others would wave us off and ignore us. But, in general, the response was positive. We spent probably a good hour or so down there with the people and passed out all the Bibles we had. As we walked back to the beginning, many people were still looking at their Bibles, some probably 30 minutes or more later. That was encouraging. :) I was very grateful to finally get to go out on an evangelism mission, after being "cooped up" with the painting for so long! It really lifted my spirits. When we got back to the job site, Greg and I quickly finished that last coat of varnish on the door and got that drying. I was then able to break away and walk down to the house church where they were holding VBS. I got to see some of the kids, take some pictures, and enjoy their closing crafts and stuff. :) On the road back to the chapel, I stopped in at a little store owned by a nice younger woman named Melanie. She spoke really good english and enjoyed having us in our store all week. I think she may have been a "good" adventist church-goer. I found some fun snacks there to bring back with us, and bought Liz and I some ice cream to ruin our lunch appetite! We ate those and then it was time for a quick lunch. After lunch, everyone helped to put the final touches on the chapel. We finished putting the windows in, got the doors in, finished the front porch area, cleaned up all around the chapel, and then cleaned up and took down the food trailer and supplies trailer. The Romanians continued to finish putting up the stucco on the inside and outside of the chapel walls. The leaders decided that it would be better for our team to go back to the hotel and change/shower before the service, since we finished early and had some extra time. So, we scurried to finish up and I think we left the job site by 3 or so. Went back to the hotel, showered, and changed into nicer clothes. Then, we had a quick dinner at the hotel. The previous night was supposed to be our last, and we usually just eat dinner at the job site Friday nights, but this time they changed it, so we had a quick dinner at the hotel. I think it was a really good chicken cordon. :) After dinner, we all got back on the bus and rushed to the chapel. Dinner took longer than planned, and there was no way we would make it to the chapel on time at 7pm. :-/ That was somewhat stressful. I think we got there around 7:20 or so, which was a little awkward for all of us to walk into the service then. I don't think much had happened yet though, so I guess that was good. There was a decent number of people there, but I must admit, I was a little disappointed at the turnout. I was hoping it would be bursting at its seams! I guess a lot of people stayed outside too. It was a VERY hot evening, especially inside the chapel, with very little airflow. Man, it was hot. We got there just in time for the Gypsy band that was playing some songs. They brought their own speakers and pumped it up. It was SO loud! I mean, just unexplainably loud. I think the whole town could hear it. The music was cool and all, but boy, it was loud. The rest of the service went really well. We had a lot of team testimonies, and lots of singing. Pastor Bruce had a good message to share. Most of all, I really enjoyed Pastor Marian's message. He was so clearly touched by our coming and helping build the chapel. He was pretty much on the verge of tears at some point. He told us all about the history of the church body there through the years of hardship and persecutions under the communist government. It was a really special moment. :) All told, I think that the service went about 3 hours long! I enjoyed it, but it was hard to be patient and stick with it, because it was so hot. Even by 10pm, it was still baking hot in there. Most of the people had left or walked outside to stand and listen. When the service was over, Pastor Marian got up and presented each person in our group with a certificate they had made for us and a little present. They had bought lots of little things from Romania for us, and we got to go up and chose an item. I picked a cool cowboy hat. :P I just thought it was so special that they would go to the time and expense to buy gifts and make certificates for us. That's the first time that has happened for us. Then, to top it off, they invited us all to stick around for a party, consisting of food and drinks. They made this huge pot of amazing food. It was some sort of meat and spices wrapped in big cabbage leaves all cooked together. It was so good! I think I had way too many of them. They also had some good bread and sodas. It was a very nice time. It was so nice too, because Wayne gave our group plenty of time to hang out and enjoy the time slowly. It was nice to just wind down and get a few last moments with the chapel and the people, and not have to rush off. We got back onto the bus late, and I just felt so filled with the Spirit. I was just at total peace after that service and time afterwards- it was such a blessing to be there and such a sense of accomplishment. I think I just sat in my seat quietly for awhile just feeling joyful and taking in the moment. :-) Obviously, we got back to the hotel pretty late. Being Friday night, the same cover band was back playing loudly outside! We stayed up for awhile listening to them and getting our stuff packed. I think they quit around 12:30, and we finished up slightly after that and went on to bed!

Day 10 (Sat 7/25)
We got to sleep in just a little this morning, thankfully! I was pretty tired! I was glad that we had packed the night before, because we got to enjoy our last delicious breakfast slowly. :) We then got everything packed onto the bus and then had to say our sad goodbyes to some of the interpreters. Danny took David, Immanuel, Anca, and Amelia away with him. We were sorry to see them go! The rest of us got on the bus and drove towards Bucharest for the day. We first stopped in Ploesti, which is a little north of Bucharest. I was pretty dissapointed because we had been in Ploesti the last two years also. I was really hoping to go to Bucharest. But, we got an hour to walk around, so we went to the same shopping area that we always go to. Liz and I went to a grocery store and enjoyed looking at some of the stuff in there. We got some fun chocolates. It was cool to be back and feel familiar in the area there. After everyone shopped a bit, we got back on the bus and then dropped off the interpreters Daniel and his cousin, because they lived in Ploesti. Then we drove to McDonald's for lunch, which was across the street from the hotel. The hotel was really close to the airport. It seemed like a pretty nice hotel...however- our room was SO HOT! It was on the third floor and I don't think the air conditioning had been run in that room for a long time. The room was about 98 degrees- I did the calculations. I plugged the refridgerator in and tried to revive our chocolate which had been melting pretty badly. We had an hour to do whatever before our group was to go out to Bucharest. I just felt like dying. The air conditioner would try to work and then it would just give and error code and stop. I tried opening the sliding window to get some air flow, but it did no good at all. It was just so amazingly hot. We worked on rearranging our luggage in preparation for Switzerland, but it was hard to do anything in that room. We finally got to get on the bus and leave. I was excited, because we did get to go to Bucharest for the first time! :) We got on a big road and headed for the city...pretty soon getting stuck in a bunch of bumper-to-bumper traffic. When we finally got into the city, it was neat. It was definitley much larger than anywhere we'd been in Romania. There were a lot of newer stores, like IKEA, but also, a lot of delapidated buildings mixed in. Tons of old apartments too. I did notice a lot more "Romanian" architecture. I don't know what you call it- maybe Transylvanian? It has its own look, and I hadn't seen much of it before, but Bucharest had quite a lot of old buildings with it. I enjoyed seeing that. One thing I found amazing was their wiring system. They had poles that were just overloaded with electric, cable, telephone, etc wires in huge jumbled messes. I couldn't believe it! Totally nuts! So, we were given two choices- go shopping in the big shopping area, or go see the People's Palace and adventure around. We were told that you can't tour the Palace and that anyone shopping would get to see it briefly at the very end. So, of course, I chose the adventure over the shopping. Everyone else chose the shopping! Liz came with me and so did Jack and the three of us stayed on the bus and then got off at the Palace. We walked around the side of it and it was just amazing. So large! As we walked further, we saw that there was actually an enterance, so we walked up to it and found that they were giving tours today!! I was so excited. We went in and found that there was actually an English tour starting in like 20 minutes for 15lei ($5). The tours were estimated at about 45 minutes and we were supposed to meet back at the bus by 4. With the tour starting at 3, that didn't give us much time! But, we went for it anyways...chance of a lifetime. I bought some stuff in the gift shop while we waited for the tour and then we got in line. They took our passports from us and put them in an area with lots of others...sort of organized. I found it rather disconcerting. There were also many signs around quoting Romanian law and forbidding people to go anywhere they're not supposed to. A little scary! The tour was great though. I admit that I knew nothing about the Palace beforehand and I don't think the tour guide gave an introduction- I think she assummed we knew the basics. So, for at least the first half of the tour, I was thinking the building was really old, like 1500s or something. Then, it dawned on me that this whole thing had been built by Ceausescu mostly during the 1980's! When it dawned on me that all this had been built basically by slave labor under his regime and by unwilling people, it shed a whole new light on the experience. I went from being in awe, to being in awe, but sickened! We saw like 0.5% of the building, and it was incredible. It goes beyond words, and even beyond pictures. The tour guide was great too. She was really fun and had good stuff to share with us. It got really stressful though because it went over 45 minutes. Basically, we were standing up on a balcony overlooking the big city square and could see our bus way down below that we were supposed to be at in 5 minutes...yeah, not happening. We finished the tour, then rushed ahead of the line to get our passports, then walked quickly and jogged back to the bus, getting there about 10 after 4. We were fully expecting some sort of backlash, but everyone was just milling around, taking pictures leisurely! Nobody had missed us and we were plently on time. So much for the stress! We took some group pictures in front of the Palace and then said goodbye to our last interpreter- Ovi. After that fun experience, we headed on back to the super hot hotel. Before going to our rooms, a small group of us went down the street to the Nike and Adidas outlet stores. It was an interesting experience, seeing the different Euro style of shoes there. Pretty pricey though! I think I mostly enjoyed watching, along with employees, a stray dog get into a guard booth next door and work on eating the guard's lunch when he wasn't looking. It was hilarious! When the guard found out, he was not too excited! After all that, we got back to the hotel. During our time out, I came up with a theory. I think we were setting the a/c too low and it couldn't do it. So, I thought if we cranked it down one degree at a time, it might keep up. So, we tried that, and it did!! It was thrilling. :) Of course, our chocolate was totally melted when we got back, since the electric goes off when you leave the room...argh. So, by the time dinner was ready, we had the room down to a nice 83 or so! We had a nice celebration dinner down in the hotel dinner room. We had some decent chicken and then some amazing ice cream wrapped up in crepes. It was cool! The celebration dinner went on for a long time as we all shared thoughts together about the week. I enjoyed listening to everyone. Its always a bittersweet dinner, because its a joyful time, but also its the last moments in Romania, so its sad to see it slipping to and end. After dinner, we finished packing and rearranging for Switzerland and then got on to bed.

Day 11 (Sat 7/26)
Because the rest of the group was leaving to get on a very early flight, we got up to see them off around 4am! That was a struggle. We said our goodbyes, and then blissfully went back to be for a few more hours. We woke up around 7:30 and then enjoyed a nice breakfast buffet at the hotel. It was good! Then, I determined that the previous day I had definitley left my nice new hat at the McDonald's across the street. So, Liz and I, feeling like Frogger, crossed the big road of traffic to rescue my hat from McDonald's. Only, they didn't have it! :( I was bummed. We stopped in at the gas station to get a road map, and then Froggered back to the hotel. We grabbed our luggage and had a hotel person take us to the airport. I thought it would be like a taxi, but I'm pretty sure it was his personal car. He drove FAST! He had some techno on and was just blazing through cars on the road. He whipped around one car and then slammed on the breaks, almost hitting an old lady that was just about done crossing the street. It was quite the ride. He was nice though and I struck up a sort of spiritual talk wth him in the 5-10 minutes we had together. We made it to the airport quite early. I think our flight was at 11, and we were there around 9 or so. We actually had to wait a while until our check-in was open. We got checked in nicely and then went to the familiar airport area where we shopped for awhile getting some souveniers and gifts for people. Then, boarded our lovely Swiss Air flight and said our goodbyes to Romania for the year.

Next up...Switzerland blog...maybe.

2009 Blizzard In Pictures

2009-12-21T20:59:00.002-05:00

So, this weekend was interesting- we received the largest amount of snowfall I've ever seen in Virginia! We got 2 feet exactly of snow! It was cool. Here are some pictures of the action

A lot of snow had fallen Friday night and Saturday morning. This was taken around mid-morning while it was lightly snowing.

Not long after that, it was snowing hard again! White out!

We were around 19 inches in the early afternoon Saturday

Our new skylights were covered!

Liz with her car

Me with my car

Knee-deep snow

The back deck looked silly

It was quite difficult to walk in so much snow!

Liz with a backwards dive into the snow

Me with a backwards dive into the snow

sooo comfortable :)

nose dive!

Liz diving/stumbling off the deck

The final tally Saturday night- 24" (2 feet)

Beautiful sunrise Sunday morning

I'm not sure where our cars are!

Mid-day Sunday the sun came out and it was gorgeous

Lovely snow

I'm sure we just put two new skylights on the roof...where did they go?

House and my car buried

After 4+ hours of shoveling, we're dug out!

I'm tired!

Freedom!

Yesterday's Hike

2009-11-15T15:59:00.002-05:00

Had a fun hike yesterday in Shenandoah- the weather was amazing out! It is today too. Here's a quick photo blog of the action

Start: time: 4:15pm, elevation: 2620ft

Stop: time: 4:50pm, elevation 3587ft
After hiking 2 miles, 1000ft of elevation in just over 30 mins, and possibly running past a bear, I'm pooped!

The reward (took the last of my breath away!):

After 20 minutes of chillin, I'm feeling better. Time go go back down

Great colors on the way back down!

Back at the car (elevation 2620ft)

Remnants of sunset at an overlook

Town lights coming on

I tried to take a picture of the stars, but it didn't come out. They were AMAZING. I could see the Milky Way perfectly above me. :-) Was praising the Lord for a great time and such beauty so close to me.

1234 days

2009-11-12T22:10:00.000-05:00

So, the other day I just happened up something fun and dorky. And majorly nerdy. Actually, it was a few weeks ago, Oct 19th to be exact. Anyways, here it is:

Transmission Drama

2009-10-04T17:59:00.001-04:00

A little story to tell... :-)

So, a little over a year ago, my transmission light first came on and I thought my transmission was going bad. Then, my car started making a horrible noise and I thought it was my transmission. Then, Glenn fixed my wheel bearings this summer and my car sounded fine and my transmission was fine...or so I thought!

About a month ago, Liz and I were driving over the big mountain on the way to Harrisonburg, and the transmission light came on again, for the first time in over a year. I took it in and turned the light off. A few days later, it came back on again, which was bad. Then, the next day, my gears shifted just a little oddly. I quickly took it to a local place and had them change my transmission fluid to correct it. Well, that didn't seem to help much. The light did not come back on for two weeks. But, over those last two weeks, the shifting has been getting worse and worse. The last few days last week I really had a few times where it was really hard to get it to shift from 1st to 2nd gears. I had to be extra careful and leave myself lots of room to accelerate!!

So, the last two weeks, my transmission was going downhill quick. I hoped it would hold out a little longer though. This weekend, we came down to Blacksburg because Liz and Mema were going to Liz's cousin's baby shower in NC, and we're dropping Mema off in Blacksburg for October. We left Friday morning. Before we left, I noticed the transmission fluid was a little low, so I added some. I think I added too much...bad mistake. We had a horrible time driving to Blacksburg! The car was slipping gears really badly going down there and we had a lot of trouble accelerating to merge in. Thankfully, we made it most of the way with limited problems.

But then, right around exit 128 on 81, about 10 miles before Blacksburg, where you have to climb a mountain, and it goes to 3 lanes, bad things happened. I felt the car losing speed and then the engine started revving really high. I shifted down to 3rd and realized that my 3rd gear was shot. So then I went into 2nd for a little bit. I was doing about 35 in the far right lane with my emergency lights on and trucks passing me! I finally made it to the top of the mountain and hoped that the transmission would kick back in on the way down. No such luck! I shifted down to first gear and we drifted along on the shoulder slowly trying to get it back into gear. I couldn't even get it into first. Then, there was another hill to climb. I stopped on the shoulder, then tried to slowly get it into first...I started drifting backwards!! That's when I realized that my transmission had died.

So, there we were on the side of 81 at mile marked 123. Thankfully, that was only 5 miles away from the Blacksburg/Christiansburg exit. Liz's Mom was able to come pick up Mema and Liz, while I waited at the car for a tow truck.

So, this is a bummer, but God has many blessings in this though. I knew my transmission was going, and it was only a matter of time. As we were driving down, I was calling around to different places in Charlottesville and Blacksburg, trying to figure out my future options, not knowing that it would die a bit later down the road! If it had died in Charlottesville, the best price I would have got on a used transmission would be around $2500. There's a place in Christiansburg, though, known as the best transmission place in the area, that quoted me a lot less (about $1800). So, as we were driving, I was thinking of ways where I could maybe have my transmission done in Christiansburg to save money. I didn't think I could make it work out though. Turns out that God decided that for me! I died just outside of Christiansburg and I had my car towed right to the transmission place. The man working was surprised to see me, since I had just called him up a couple hours earlier about a theoretical quote! He was able to find me a used transmission with 50k on it for $1800 including labor, which is expensive, but a decent price, and saves me a lot of money over what Charlottesville would cost me. Plus, they're giving me a one-year warranty and I'm getting it done my a very respected and reputable place. So, I feel that God really has provided in this circumstance. He also kept us safe the whole ride down and got us within 5 miles of our exit, which was just great. :-)

Fun Saturday

2009-09-19T22:17:00.003-04:00

Just thought I'd post a quick blog about today, because it was a good day. A lot was accomplished! I woke up at 6:30 and then worked for 4 hours to finish up a project I needed to get over to the UK. Then, Liz and I went to our neighbors' house who had cut down a bunch of trees and used my car to haul back 4 or 5 trunk loads of wood. We've got a start on our Swiss Wood Stash!

This afternoon, we made Sponge Bob mac & cheese for lunch. :)
After that delightful experience, I did some small projects and then tackled the big shed. I cleaned the whole thing out, threw away a bunch of stuff, and organized a bunch of other stuff. It was great!
Liz started harvesting our basil farm and made a ton of pesto tonight. Angry Pesto, to be exact! Here's some pics:
Basil Farm:

Making Pesto:

Finished Product:

Speaking of growing things, I want to put up some pictures of our great garden, now that its the end of the season.
The Garden:

Lots of Tomatoes!:

Green Peppers!:

Snow!

2009-03-03T23:29:00.001-05:00

On Sunday night, we got our first big snow in the almost 3 years since we've lived in Charlottesville! We got almost 4 inches of snow. Wish it was more, but I'll take it. :-) Haven't seen so much snow in quite some time. Too bad it melted so quick... :-/

Here's some pics early Monday while it was still pretty

Happy Valentine's Day!

2009-02-14T11:27:00.003-05:00

Today we had a scrumptious breakfast of heart-shaped chocolate chip encrusted pancakes. :-) And its sunny and happy outside.

Gas

2008-11-10T21:53:00.001-05:00

I've seen today what I never thought I'd see again in history- gas below $2/gallon!

Multiple stations here in CVille lowered their price to $1.99 today. Apparently Sam's is at $1.95.

Wish I had time for a road trip. :-)

Election Day

2008-11-05T20:33:00.000-05:00

Today was interesting, and I felt like blogging again anyhow, so here goes-

1:15 - Left work, bound for Agnor-Hurt elementary
1:25 - Voted; no line, in and out in 3 minutes. :-)
1:35 - Picked up free Starbucks coffee
1:45 - Picked up free Chick Fil A sandwich in the madhouse that is was!
2:00 - Was back home to work on laptop and wait for cable TV man.
*bonus- stoked to have done all of this and gotten from work to home in 45 minutes (normally 18 minute commute without all the stops)
5:00 - Still no sign of cable man. Dark has fallen. Call Comcast. Something has gone wrong...they will contact the local dudes
5:45 - Finished with work.
6:00 - Still waiting. Getting anxious.
6:30 - Call from the local Comcast dudes. Apparently, they're still working and will come out around 7.
7:15 - Local Comcast dude shows up in the dark and pouring rain. Goes out to search for cable hookup point. Returns and says he needs a bucket truck to reach it and will be back in the morning!
7:30 - Throw on the bunny ears to watch the election.
9:00 - Election not going to hot for McCain. Suppose that was predictable.
10:00 - Contemplate how much I hate all the liberal TV networks.
11:00 - Obama wins. Not a big fan.
11:30 - Decide its so late that I might as well watch Obama's speech.
12:10 - Obama FINALLY gives his stupid speech. It was interesting.
12:40 - Suppose I should go to bed

Romania

2007-12-01T23:59:00.000-05:00

Ah, finally I get to blog about Romania. Its been almost three months since we returned, but I've been too lazy to get around to writing about the trip. Plus, I'm a procrastinator. Plus its a lot of work. Its taken me about two months to write all this! It's a shame I've waited so long to write about Romania because I'm afraid that I've forgotten some of the things I wanted to remember, or at least have lost some of the edge I had when we first came back. Oh well. Perhaps it will come back to me. I guess the best way to organize my thoughts will be by day. Perhaps I'll write about the day's events and then flesh out my thoughts or interpretations as I come to them. Well, now I'm just rambling to myself. On with the actual content...

Week Before, Sunday 9/2-Wednesday, 9/5

We had been warned by everyone that this trip would really be awesome and that satan would try to keep us from it or distract us heavily going into it. So far, we hadn't seen much of that, but man, the days right before the trip were TERRIBLE! We had so many things go wrong and produce stressful situations in our home and at work. The worst of which was the Internet having terrible, unexplanable problems. It got me so angry and so fed up with Comcast. It was horrible. I can't remember what all else happened that week, but it was bad. Satan did a number on each of us and I'm so thankful that we even made it to the airport after that week. Looking back, I think there was some serious spiritual warfare there and I totally let myself succumb to the attacks. :-/ It was a good lesson though. I will really remember that time for the future and will hopefully respond better when under attack like that!

Thursday, 9/6

I worked a half day at work today and took off around noon. We had most of our stuff packed up and ready to go the night before, so that was good. We tried to get on the road and made it to my house in Sterling around 3:30. We ordered some Chinese from Panda West and had that for lunch with my parents before we all headed over to Dulles Airport. It was nice to have my parents along to see us off. It just wouldn't feel the same if they didn't for some reason. Perhaps it reminds me of when we used to take my grandparents to Dulles and see them off on their missions trips. Only now, I'm the one going. But, it just seems to make it happier or more special to have my parents along to see us off on these big trips. :)

Anyhow, so we all got to the airport and checked in with no problems. We talked with my parents some more and eventually parted ways when we came to security. We all were there a couple hours before the flight, so we spent a lot of time just sitting around or wandering the airport. It was interesting just to sit and think about the team. I felt a little isolated and scared at first, just watching everyone. I only knew a couple people from our church, and vaguely knew everyone else. It seemed like most everyone else already had done this before, knew what to expect, and knew each other. But, I was feeling a little left out and was fearful that it would be that way the whole trip. Of course, it wasn't, but it was just a little hard at the very beginning.

The flight left around 8pm and everything went well aboard it. We got to sit near Carly who suprised us when she said it was her fifth trip! It seems like most of the people had come over 5, 10, 12, 15 times and loved it every time. That made me excited to be apart of this. They must be doing something right! Anyways, we flied Lufthansa overnight to Munich. It was neat to hear German again. I like German stuff a lot. There's something solid, clean, precise, and professional about everything they do it seems. Kind of like the Swiss. The plane was very nice and I thought the food was pretty decent too. Thankfully, I was able to get some decent rest on the flight. A lot of people didn't. I probably got 4-5 hours of sleep alltogether, which was great. Plus, I was still able to stay awake for the Mr. Bean's Vacation movie. :-) It sure was stupid, but I laughed because Mr. Bean is meant to be stupid, so he's quite funny in a really dumb sort of way. :-P

Friday, 9/7

The plane arrived in Munich around 10:30 their time, which was like 4:30am our time. So, we were all feeling a little groggy. We had about a three hour layover in Munich. It was nice to be back in Munich, and Europe for that matter, even if we were only in the airport. It was really neat as we flew into the city because the plane dipped a bit to the side and we could see the tops of the buildings in Munich. They looked very German and it was beautiful. Its hard to explain how it felt just to be back in Europe. There's just something about Europe that draws me in. Perhaps its just the adventure of being in a new place. Or perhaps its the memory of the amazing semester I spent with Liz over there. I'm not sure, but I know I was excited to be back. It was like coming home in a way, which is weird. I guess it was just nice to be back in the way of life that we lived for a semester. Its different in many ways from life here, so I guess its like leading two lives sort of. There's the American part of me, which is always around, and then the European part of me that went away for two years, but now it was back. It was exciting. All that to say, I wanted to take all of our three hour layover and explore every part of the airport. We sort of did, but not entirely. It was difficult for me because the European part of me wanted to see everything, but the Christian part of me reminded me that my purpose here was to serve God in Romania, rather than to sightsee. I knew beforehand it would be a struggle for me, and it was a struggle pretty much all week, beginning with the airport in Munich. So, we got to expore a little bit, but not a ton. I wanted really badly to find a Bavarian Creme doughnut of which this place in Munich has the best in the world. But, I was unable to find one. :-/ We did get a bratwurst for lunch, however, and it was glorious. :) Its amazing how quickly I splipped into my European mode also of being very cheap. Once you start seeing the prices over there and then remembering that they are in Euros, so everything costs 1.5 times in dollars, it makes me shut down, and I do lots of window shopping and window eating! I had to splurge on the brat though, and that cost me a good 8 or 9 USD. There were a lot of cool coffee and pastry shops throughout the airport. I love the European styling of things. Its very appealing. It seems like everything is just slighly a cut above, more fashionable, or every more techinical. We saw the coolest orange juicer while standing in line for the brat. I dunno. There's just something neat about being over there.

Well, after filling up on lots of free delicious Lufthansa coffee in the airport, our plane left Munich at 1:20 in the afternoon, their time. The flight to Bucharest, Romania took just over two hours and we lost another hour getting over there. So, I guess it was about 4:30 in the afternoon when we came into Romania. The country looked beautiful from above as we flew in. Tons of fields and gorgeous land. The airport wasn't too large; definitley smaller than Munich. The first order of business was to exchange our money for Romanian Lei. We got about 2.25 lei for a dollar. I thought that was decent, but then learned that it used to be a lot better before they made their currency based off the Euro this year. So, whatever. After we made it through border control and got our bags, Wayne quickly whisked us and our luggage out to the bus, telling us not to talk to anyone or accept any help from the Romanians. That was a little scary and reminded me a lot of when we flew into Milan for our Europe semester. I'm not sure that anybody would have done anything to us, but it was just a little scary to be told to not deal with the Romanians at the airport for whatever reason. Regardless, we all got on the bus that we were to use for the week. It was a very nice charter bus, very similar to the one we rode around with our class in Europe before. I was excited, because I had expected some sort of old school bus with no A/C that we would ride around dirt rodes in. For some reason, I had the view that Romania was going to be like Nicaragua or something. I was wrong. I had to battle a bad attitude on the bus because I was really tired and I didn't like being rushed through the airport. Also, the bus was very hot at the time and stuffy. I was so greatful when I got a bottle of water. We took a vote on whether to drive a short distance and turn in for the evening, or to drive a little longer, so as not to have to drive as much on Saturday, and then turn in. The later was chosen.

Somebody prayed over the trip and then we were off. It was a neat bus ride. I wanted to soak everything in. I felt just like I did on the bus leaving the Milan airport on our way to Riva two years ago. Every sign, car, person, house, building, mountain, tree, etc, I wanted to notice and frame in my mind. Of coure, after a while, you get tired and start to let things slip by. But, I spent pretty much all of the time staring out the window and taking some pictures. The countryside was very beautiful. We'd drive through a small town for a few minutes, then through the countryside for a long time and then through a small town again. The bus would have to slow down through each of the towns along the way. We went through a couple small cities along the way also. I'll write more description about Romania in my entry for the next day. Right after sunset, we stopped in a city to have dinner. I'm not sure what the city was called, but we stopped at a McDonald's. Now, Romanian McDonald's are nice. They are a treat over there and considered somewhere nice to go. I've never seen such a nice one. The place was extremely clean, and it looked almost like a coffee shop on the inside. It had nice wood styling, plants, and even some lounge chairs to sit in if you wanted to. The menu was similar to the American menu, but there were much less choices. The choices that existed seemed very good. Liz and I combined our stipends, so we had 30 lei to spend on dinner. I had an amazing burger called the Royal McCheese. It actually looked and tasted as good as the one in the picture. The patty was thick and good. The fries were crisp and great also, and we shared a McFlurry which was Nestle flavored. Mmm! It was a great McDonald's experience. Then, we all got back on the bus. It was dark out then and I tried to stay awake, but finally gave in and slept for a decent bit. I woke up as our bus was pulling up to the hotel. It might have been like 8:30pm or something. The hotel lobby was kinda dark and smoky and definitley had overtowns of like 70's greens and dark oranges. It wasn't terrible, but wasn't extremely appealing either. The plants were kinda cool in the lobby. Our room was fairly cozy, but very basic. It had two twin beds with European style comforters. Much like our beds in Riva. There was some basic furniture, but not much. The bathroom was pretty old and kinda dirty. Just a tub with a hand-held head for showering off. I don't think Liz was too impressed with the room. I wasn't either, but didn't care too much considering this was Romania and we knew it wouldn't be the best. I settle in to go to bed pretty soon because I was dead tired. I looked at the wall and ceiling for awhile, thinking about how basic they were and pondering what it must have been like here during Communism not too long ago. It felt a little weird to be in a Communist country, considering all the bad wrap they got back in the States. Pretty soon I was asleep.

Saturday, 9/8

We slept in until 7:00 I think and then got up to prepare for the day. I looked out our balcony on the city we were in during sunrise. It was a pretty bleak city. Lots of apartments that all looked the same. Lots of concrete. There was a little plaza with a monument right in front of the hotel and a churh nearby it. It was sort of interesting, but still was a little dingy. So, we got ready, and thankfully, the shower was sort of warm, but we made it short because it was a little scary in the bathroom, and we had to be careful not to drink any of the Romanian water. We had to drink from bottled water all of the time, including brushing teeth. This was kind of a pain, but not too bad. It was a lot easier than it would have been if we had gotten real sick from the water! Anyhow, we went down for breakfast with everyone. We all sat at a long table in a suprisingly pretty dining room. Breakfast was decent, consisting of eggs, tomatoes, and bread. The tomatoes were mighty tasty. I had some tea also which was good. Some of the interpreters met us at the hotel and also another American pastor named Ken. It was interesting eating breakfast with everyone. I still felt a little out of place and not quite sure how to be or what to say. So, that was a little hard. I was also terrified when Roger asked Carly to name everyone's name. I was having such trouble remembering people's names, and was sure that I wouldn't be able to!

After breakfast, we had a few short minutes to explore the plaza and I had to run to see the front of the church. It had some gold on the front, but it was a kinda dirty and not as amazing as lots of the Western European churches. We piled into the bus and were off for a long day of travel. We spent pretty much the whole day driving up through Romania. It was probably about 5-6 hours of driving. Just like the day before, we spent the entire time on the highway, going through the countryside, slowing down for towns, and passing through cities every so often. Everything was interesting to me. It was obvious that Romania was probably the poorest European country we had been to. The towns we passed through we old and dirty. Houses were very old and falling apart. However, most of the houses seemed loved. They had small plots of land, but most of them had tons of plants, flowers and gardens. That was neat. :) We would pass horses carrying farmers and goods behind them in little wood trailers. It was definitly different here. It also seemed like everything was under countruction. We saw tons of houses and buildings that were only partly built. We learned that many Romanians take 10 or more years to build there houses little by little as they get the money to do so. That was interesting. There were also a few very nice houses we passed in the country we neat architecture, but this was not the norm. It was clear that there were some affluent people, but the majority seemed rather poor to me, but made the most of what they had. Also, on occassion, we would pass new commericial buildings, like car dealerships. There were some big, shiny new ones that just really poked out at you compared to everything else. The gas stations were very nice, clean, big, and shiny also. Looked just like American ones, and probably better. I found that interesting. I wonder if some of that is affluence creeping into their society in a couple of areas, and probably driven by the EU, now that they are members. I dunno. The cities were rather depressing to me. In some ways, they seemed like a typical European city, with busy people, big buildings, and old churches scattered into the mess. But, the Romanian cities just weren't that nice. They seemed dirter, older, and sadder than other cities I've been in. The apartments were falling apart and they all looked the same from city to city. I think they were left over from Communism. As we drove around, occasionally we'd see old Communist factories that had been abandonded and were falling apart. I mean, these things were to be expected, but for some reason they just made me feel a little sad and thoughtful. It made me thankful for my situation and my heart went out for the people there.

We stopped late morning for a rest stop at a McDonald's in some city. It was near an old soccer stadium which was definitely falling apart, but interesting nonetheless. In addition to the pit-stop, we met up with Don and Joyce and the rest of the interpreters there and they joined us on the bus. When we got back on the bus, I sat next to a young intepreter named Alin. He wanted me to call him Allen and I thought that was funny because it didn't seem very Romanian. He was a junior in high school I think and a very nice guy. I enjoyed getting to talk with him and kind of hang out with the Romanian interpreters in the back of the bus. We had a number of interpreters. There were three college girls- Alice, Eme, and Ena. Then, there was Alin, David, and Immanuel, and his mom, Amelia. I think David was later in college and Immanuel was just starting off in college. They were all really fun people and we really enjoyed them all throughout the trip. I thought the interpreters would be older people who were professional and kinda of boring. But, Liz and I really related to these students really well and had a great time with them. And Amelia, despite being older, was incredibly fun and might as well have been in college. :-) So, we all rode off together and stopped a little later for lunch at McDonald's. I got just about the same thing, except I tried a chocolate milkshake. I wasn't as good as I hoped. Then, I remembered that European chocolate usually isn't as sweet as American chocolate, so it was forgivable.

After lunch, we spent the afternoon driving up to our destination city, Botosani. We got there in the late afternoon around 4-5:00. This hotel was right off a busy city rode and was noticably nicer than the previous one. We had our bags carried in by a nice hotel guy and everything. The hotel elevator was a little ghetto. It was very old and creaked. The door slammed shut and I was certain there was no safety mechanism to keep it from crushing your hand if you were to slip it in there. It kinda crashed around on its way up and sometimes the lights would flicker. :-P I usually took the stairs instead. Our room here was pretty nice. Again, it had simple but pretty furniture and the same type of bed configuration as the previous room. The bathroom was a marked improvement and even contained signs that claimed everything was sanitized. A welcome bonus! We spent our hour moving in and then taking a power nap. When it was over, we went to meet with everyone in a small room adjacent to the dining room. There were some tables set up there and we all squeezed in. We spent some time praying and listening to the plan for the next week from the leaders. Everybody also we around and introduced themselves and whatnot. After some time, I was getting really tired and feeling cramped in that room, so it was stuggle again to stay positive. When all the business was over, we just stayed there for dinner. It was chicken, tomatoes, potatoes, and bread. Pretty decent tasting. Liz and I sat at the interpreters table and had a lot of fun getting to talk with them. They were really interested in our dating/marriage story, so that was fun. It was also lots of fun getting to talk to Immanuel some. He was really into computers and wanted to pursue some of the things I was into. So, that was neat. Near the end of dinner, we got wind that it was David's birthday and some of the interpreters were going to play a prank on him. So, Liz and I were invited to join. We went up and hid in his room with the lights off. Then, when he came in, we surprised him. Alin, Immanuel, and I grabbed him and tried to dump him into the tub which we had filled with water. David was like a little snake and we couldn't get him down! He was literally climbing the walls of the tub! We had to settle for splashing him pretty good. :-P After all that, the interpreters had some fun presents for him to open in the hall. After all of that, we still had some time before the 10pm curfew, so and we wanted to phone back home. So, we grabbed an interpreter and eventually they all wanted to come, so we went out into the plaza area near the hotel and found a pay phone. I got to talk to Mom for a bit which was nice. We also had a lot of fun with the intepreters, just being goofy and stuff. We played some tag, had a jumping contest, and ate lots of Fornetti, which were little bready desserts stuffed with cheese, apple, cinnamon, etc. There were lots of flavors and they were warm and delicious. :) After a bit, it was fairly late in the evening, and we had to go back in because of curfew. We went to Roger and Mary's room and they were having tea and chatting with other people, so we hung out with them for awhile longer into the evening, which was fun. :) Eventually we all got tired, so Liz and I went on to bed and got some rest after a long day.

Sunday, 9/9

On Sunday, we got to sleep in a little bit also. I think we had to be down for breakfast by 8. The breakfast was a buffet and it was pretty decent. I was excited to have some European cheese again and it was good. :) They also had various bread things, some chicken, some warm and cold meats, some basic cereals, and some yogurts. After breakfast, we all got on the bus to head off for church service. I was confused because I thought we would have church all together, but I guess they decided to split us off into three groups of people and have us go to different village chapels that were built in past years. We had a beautiful morning drive through the countryside. This was the first time the bus had really driven off of the main roads, so it was really neat to see the beautiful scenes and be a little closer to the villages. As we drove through the villages, pretty much everyone would look up at the bus with stunned looks on their faces. Some of them just looked confused, and others of them looked dissaprovingly at the bus. Nobody seemed very excited to see us. I'm not sure exactly what that means. Anyhow, Liz and I got to go to the second church stop. The church was very neat. They had taken the basic chapel that the project built for them a number of years ago and really customized it very nicely. Liz had to go to the outhouse when we first got there, so I spent some time outside the chapel waiting. It was neat just to stand there and listen to the beautiful music inside as they were starting their worship. I guess this was my first time standing in a Romanian village and it was slightly overwhelming emotionally as I took in the sites of dirt, livestock, and old buildings around me, but beautiful worship in a language I didn't understand inside of the chapel. I think this was the first time it dawned on me that this trip would be very different from all of the European travel we had done before. This trip would involve a lot more than just sightseeing. It would involve the Holy Spirit working inside me and producing deeper feelings and experiences than what I had expected.

Church was great that morning. Like I said, the church was beautiful. They had added wood panelling to the inside and decorated the windows. They had put in a wood stove and then knocked out the back wall a bit and put in a beautiful, tiled baptistry. When we came in, Liz and I sat together on the right side. There weren't too many people in the church. Probably about 15 women and like 5 men, and then about 10 more people in the choir up front. A little way in, Liz realized that she was supposed to sit on the left side with the other women! Oops! I guess we gave away our identity as Americans. :-P This church seemed to love to sing. The choir sounded beautiful to me. Their sound wasn't perfect, but there was something beautifully exotic about it that touched my heart. I wanted to cry a couple of times; I'm not exactly sure why. Perhaps I was just so happy to be in the fellowship of these Romanian believers. Perhaps the Holy Spirit was just really working that morning. Perhaps it was just the excitement of letting the reality of this trip sink in. I dunno. It was probably all of those things, but I was moved as the choir sang and the congregation sang. I tried to join in a little bit. :) The Romanian pastor seemed like a nice man. He also did a duet with his wife where they both sang and he played the accordian. I thought that was awesome and it filled me with joy also. Dave Harper got to speak to the congregation through Alin, which was cool. On the fly, he asked me to give my testimony. I totally wasn't ready and was pretty nervous, but I managed to sqeak something out! We also got to sing a song or two in English and I think we even did a couple where we would sing a part in English and they would sing it in Romanian. That was special. :) All in all, I really enjoyed the service and it got me in the mindset with the excitement I would need to start the next week on the project.

After church, we went back to the hotel for lunch. Later that afternoon, a lot of us went out with some interpreters to walk around Botosani some. We walked around for a little bit and got to see a few things, but not as much as I would've liked. I got stuck back into my tourist mode, which wasn't good. I wanted to go adventure, but we had to have an interpreter with us, so that was kind of limiting. So, I had to settle for just seeing some things. I found it interesting to remember the reactions that Europeans seem to give the Americans. Romanians, just like the people in other countries, don't seem exceptionally happy to see Americans. It made me feel a little uncomfortable as I observed the Romanians around us. After we walked around a bit, we spent some time just standing around in the plaza area where we had been the previous night. Everyone was just chilling, talking, and ordering many rounds of Fornetti to munch on. :) Later in the afternoon, we bought some ice cream on the street. It was decent, but I guess my standards/hopes were too high! After that, Liz was tired and went back to the hotel room to sleep. I stayed out with a couple people. We spent a long time sitting in front of the hotel talking. I spent most of the time just thinking and observing the Romanian life around me. It was interesting. One of the most interesting things was the tons of wedding we saw all weekend long in the city. They were everywhere. You could hear the wedding procession coming from far away because there would be a line of cars, often with some taxis mixed in, that would drive down the road blaring their horns. The newlyweds were usually in nice car that was decorated all up. :P I saw at least three of these processions while I was sitting there and heard other ones elsewhere. Our small group finally decided we wanted to go out, so we got to walk around the city streets a little bit more. We went over to see an Eastern Orthodox church. We went inside and there was an old lady there. We asked her if we could look inside and take pictures and she basically said that the priest wasn't there and she wasn't sure, but she said we could go ahead. So, we did and it was pretty neat. But then, some priests came in while we were in there and didn't look to happy. We decided it best to leave and as we did, some guy went up to the church's steeple and started banging out this rhythm with some like drum sticks. It was very loud and kinda creepy and it echoed for a long distance. Then he played some bells. Then more drumming. We left fairly quickly and I observed everyone passing the church doing full hail marys. I wasn't quite sure what to make of all of this, but it didn't make me feel very at home!! After that, we wandered around a bit more. I noticed that there were lots of stray dogs and cats all over Romania, especially in Botosani. Dogs would just walk around and then lay down in the grass and take a nap anywhere they pleased. We also saw some goats in the middle of the city. I guess that's a cheap way to keep the lawn short! A big storm was coming in, so our group raced back to the hotel. I took a power nap and then we all met for dinner downstairs. Dinner was good- tomatoes, chicken, and bread agai. :P After dinner, we spent a long time as a group, having devotionals, prayer time, and time of sharing and direction for the coming week. I was pretty tired and this time was nice, but made be VERY tired as it dragged on. I should have had a better attitude, but it was hard. After all that, we went back up to bed for the night.

Monday, 9/10

We had to get up early each day this week for the project. It was somewhat of a slap in the face! We would wake up around 5:15 or 5:30 to get ready and were supposed to be down for breakfast at 6am. I think we may have been time on this Monday, but all other days, we were progressively later for breakfast! Breakfast was about the same every day, as I described on Sunday. I tried the Romanian coffee which is pretty strong and gritty. For real men only. Our group tried to leave each day around 7am, which ended up being a little later, but not much later. We had to drive just over an hour from Botosani to the village we were building the chapel in, Mihail Kogalniceanu. The drive each morning was simple glorious. We drove through the beautiful Romanian farmlands and the land was just indescribably amazing. On occassion, we would see livestock out in the fields and shepards out there too. Very neat. I don't think I've ever seen grass so green in my life, if you don't count in those calendars of Ireland. I think the Romanian landscape would give those calendars a good challenge! Our group would also share testimonies on the bus and sing praise songs each morning on the way in and also on the way home. I usually enjoyed this, but sometimes, I just wanted to be quiet and think, which was hard to do sometimes. So, that made me have a bad attitude for a lousy reason, so I regret that and will need to work on that if I get to go back again.

We made it to the job site a little after 8am. It was so pretty! The lot for the site was just the perfect location. It was at the crossroads of the main road that spans villages and the road that goes into the village. Our church was going to pretty much be the cornerstone of the village. Very neat. :) Looking out from the church was just beautiful rolling fields and hills. It was a great view and a great spot for the church. It made me pretty excited. :) The morning was a little overcast and when we got there, the church was all locked up. The Romanians had put up the concrete structure and had also installed windows and doors, which they usually don't do. So, we joined together and had a prayer time and during that time, somebody came and unlocked the doors, so that was neat. One big thing I gathered from the trip as a whole is to pray a lot about everything. Everything we encounter, no matter how small, we ought to be praying for. God is in control of everything and there is nothing that He doesn't care about. Even if we feel like the thing is so small that it is isolated from God, it isn't, and we ought to pray about it. After we pray, we should be aware of God's work in the situation, so that we can praise Him when He answers our prayers. Overall, we should just work on being more aware of God's position in our lives and that He is worthy or our prayers, our praise, and our mental attention.

After we were done praying, we broke off into groups to go on prayer walks around the village. Each day, before work started, small groups would go around the village and pray for it and its people. If we met people, we would invite them to the church or to the week's activities, or even do some evangelism if the opportunity is there. I went off with a rather large group of people with two interpreters. One of the big hinderences in this village was that all of the roads were dirt and there was no shortage of rain, so they were mud. Thick mud and horse manure was what we had to deal with all week as we tredged through the village! It was interesting. :P One of the first people I talked to was a farmer man. I approached him with Daniel and Immanuel. He was probably in his 50s and had just come in off his horse. We said hello and asked him some questions about God. He was a strong Orthodox and had quick responses for our questions. He was a pretty stern man and I pretty much melted in his presence. It just occured to me that here I was, this young, clean cut, well paid, American computer programmer, and I'm trying to convince this old, weathered, hard working, been through Communism, firm, Romanian farmer of his need for Christ. I realize that God can do anything, and we shouldn't fear, but this being my first experience with this, I felt pathetic in this man's presence. So, needless to say, it didn't go so well. He was nice, but I was useless. The rest of the prayer walk, the women did the talking for the most part. This was because we ran into mostly women in the village. The men were either out working, or were dead. Most of the women we met were widows and part of their introduction was "and my husband has been dead for XX number of years." It was crazy. The men just work themselves to death, literally. They work so hard and the conditions and health care just aren't there, so they don't live very long compared to us. So, we went along and met a lot of people. We met a nice family who had the husband and wife there, and the grandmother. They were a bit younger, maybe in their thirties, and were very nice and said they were excited about the church. We also met a nice lady who had some grandkids with her. She had beautiful blonde-gray hair in long braids and Liz made a comment about them. The lady was really sweet and took a liking to Liz. She joked with Liz saying "you love my hair, but do you love me?". She repeated that joke throughout the week. :P She was pretty neat. I eventually really enjoyed the prayer walk and our group adventured everywhere talking to people. We were the last ones back to the job site because we were out for so long!

When we got back, we had a quick break with some warm tea and snacks and then got to work on building the chapel. I did a variety of activities throughout the day. I did lots of moving things around such as the wood and the roof panels. It was a little tiring. I was involved in the first accident of the job too! Daniel and I were carrying some boards and he tripped and my hand came off the board, which then hit the ground and bounced right up into his chin, which knocked him to the ground. It happened really fast and was a little scary, but thankfully all he came away with was a cut near his lip. :-/ We had a lunch break around midday or so. Each day, the nice ladies would make us a scrumptous lunch. After each lunch, we would have some time as a group for a devotion and to just share with each other about the day so far. That was always a nice break along with lunch. After lunch, I helped clean up the old church. The old church was a little one-room shack that they had been using. We used it to store supplies and also to have our lunch devotions at. We also wanted to use it for the ladies Bible study groups in the afternoon. So, I just really felt led to fix it up nice for the ladies that afternoon. I figured that the village ladies would dress up nice to come down and meet with the American ladies, so they probably wouldn't want to sit in the dirt and dust that was in there before. So I laid out the chairs in a circle and cleaned them up and then put down a bunch of blanket throws that were there to make a carpet. It was nice a cozy for the ladies, and I was looking forward to seeing them get to use it later on. :-) After that, I spent a lot of the afternoon helping James with cutting out and moving the wood for the rafters. I got pretty sad midway through the afternoon. I thought the ladies ministry was going to be at 2pm, but nobody showed up. I was kinda bummed about it, but went about my business. Then, around 4pm the ladies came streaming in. There were tons of them! It made me so happy, and I was super excited when they got to sit around in the room for the Bible study. :) I think we had a turnout of about 25 women or so that first day, which was great considering the village was less than 60 houses. That made me happy. :) Not long after that, I finished up the rafters with James. The kids had gotten out of VBS and were hanging out all around the church. That was another neat thing about this chapel. The villagers, especially the kids were really excited about it. All week, they would hang out around the chapel or help out with building it. The kids would be there from morning until nightfall just about. It was really neat to see their excitement and support. :) Anyways, there were a lot of kids out there, so I went to be with them and play soccer with them. I wasn't very good at it. Eventually, I just ended up kicking a ball with this one boy. He was very good at soccer, and wasn't very impressed with me. He stuck with me for awhile, but it was evident that he was becoming increasingly annoyed at my lack of skill as we kicked the ball back and forth. Then, another boy joined in and the first boy left. The second boy was really nice and took an interest in me. I think he saw how pathetic I was. He took a lot of time to try and teach me a whole variety of soccer moves. It was really neat. We both couldn't speak to each other at all, but we were able to communicate just fine and make friends and he taught me soccer. :) That was lots of fun. Later, a full soccer game broke out on the road. It was crazy. The kids were really good and they would just push each other over into the road when they were going for the ball, but it was expected and nobody got hurt or had their feelings hurt. They just bounced back up and kept playing! It seemed to me like football-soccer! :-P It was neat to watch the boys interact though. I played goalie and that was fun. Eventually, we had to clean up at the end of the day and then get back on the bus for a beautiful drive home through the countryside as the sun set.

We had dinner back at the hotel in Botosani. It was pretty good. Chicken and tomatoes cooked slightly different than the night before. :-P After dinner, we had a devotion and sharing time which was nice. We did this every evening after dinner, and it was a nice way to wind down the evening and reflect on what God was doing within the village and within the team. After that, Liz and Kelly took over our room to have some time to talk, so I went outside on the balcony overlooking Botosani. It was beautiful out. I love looking over cities from balconies. It reminded me a lot of some of the evenings I spent alone doing that the last time we were in Europe. Its just so peaceful to me and gives me room to think and contemplate on all sorts of things. It did make me rather sad this time as I looked out over the city at all of the many apartment complexes and people turned their lights out little by little. Many of them had TVs flickering. I wondered how many of those thousands of people were Christians. I wondered how many of them were happy. I found myself longing for heaven, when I won't have to worry about such things. I tend to get overwhelmed in the precence of lots of people who seem spiritually desolate, as seems to be largely the case in European cities. I wish I could change that, but I can't. It makes me question God some, but that's a trust struggle that I need to work out on my own. I was out there for a little over an hour, so I had a lot of time to think and stuggle. :) It was most enjoyable. Once Liz came out to get me, we both went over to Roger and Mary's room for some tea and chat. I enjoyed this time with them a lot. Usually, Rudy, Barbara, Dave, Kathy, and Michelle would be there too. It was fun to get to know all of them a little better. When we tired of that, it was late and time to get to bed!

Tuesday, 9/11

We got up really early again this morning and had another breakfast at the hotel which was pretty much the same as the day before. The food was decent, but we had the same thing every morning! The bus ride through the country was beautiful again. I wanted to have quiet times while driving in the morning, but I just couldn't focus enough to do it. I enjoyed looking out the windows and thinking too much! We opened the morning with a prayer circle again and then split up to go on prayer walk. Today's prayer walk went okay. It wasn't as exciting as the day before. We didn't run into very many people this morning for some reason. But, we spent a lot of time just praying for people's houses, families, health, crops, etc, based on Dave Harper's recommendation. I thought that was really neat and something I hadn't considered doing before. And often people would see us praying and be interested, so it would be a good conversation starter. Our group met a man who said he had donated the land for the chapel to be built on. He was rather interesting. I just noticed how hard and dirty he was. He was covered in dirt and mud and probably hadn't worried about a shower in some time. His hands were like leather and his fingertips were black. He was smoking a cigarette as we talked to him, and I noticed as the thing burned down almost all the way to the end in his fingers. It was almost as if he couldn't even feel it burning him. Maybe he couldn't. I didn't have much to say to him because I was thinking too much about him. It humbled me as I watched him. And, he wasn't the only one like this. He was just a typical Romanian villager. It was an interesting chat with him. After prayer walk, we all came back to the chapel for a quick snack and then to get on to work.

Today, Roger decided to put me on the evangelism team. I felt kinda bad because I wanted to be helping with the physical labor on the jobsite. So, I was excited to get to do evangelism, but felt sort of like a slacker. But, I know thats not true, because it is very important to evangelize also. So, in the morning, I got to go out with Liz, Liz Duley and Karen Harper around the village. We had Alice and Emma as our interpreters. Emma had just joined us today. She was the granddaughter of the lady who was the widow of the pastor of this group of belivers. So, that was neat. We visited some people who had asked us to visit them at some point. Some were home and others weren't. It went okay. We didn't get to speak to anyone for very long. I guess the weather was nice today, so it seemed like a lot of the people were in a hurry to keep working, so they didn't want to talk long. They would never say that, but Liz was really good at reading their body language. That's one thing I learned from her. I just forge ahead talking to somebody, assuming that they want to chat if they don't say otherwise. But, she's really in touch with their body language and can tell when they want or need to go, but are just being polite. We only got to be out for about two hours and I don't remember anything amazing happening. I was a little dissappointed when we came back for lunch and devotion time, because it just seemed like the villagers weren't as receptive today.

After lunch, I got to go back out on evangelism for the afternoon. This time, I was with Dave Harper and Liz (my Liz). Our interpreters were Alice and Emma again. We walked around a little bit and spent some time praying over houses. Dave Harper is really cool. I liked that he wasn't afraid of anyone or anything. He would just go up to people and start conversations and people would listen. He found great ways to relate to all types of people. It was a blessing to watch him evangelize. I really never said much; I just watched him and smiled. It was a great learning experience though. :) After awhile, Dave got into a talk with a young lady on the main road into the village. She was really interested. After some time, we saw another person coming down the road, so Liz, Emma, and I split off to go talk to the lady, while Dave and Alice stayed with talking. I don't think our chat went so well. We decided to go adventure off because we might be more useful that way. So, we stopped at the next intersection and prayed for God's leading on where to go. We also prayed that God would help us to be more bold. None of us had said much all afternoon and we were feeling pretty pathetic about it. But, now it was up to us, so we needed to step it up without Dave! So, we prayed for God's help and then decided to turn right. There was a house immediately on the left, but it was hard to reach because of the mud. I thought I heard somebody over there, but then we didn't see anyone, so we kept walking. But, then Emma just really wanted to go back and try again, so we did and she yelled out a number of "hellos". Eventually, an older lady came out on the porch and invited us over to her. It was really neat, because her son came out from behind some stuff. He was about my age and they had been working. I think they may have been avoiding us at first, but God somehow allowed us to come and get to talk to them. And Emma just got all filled with the Spirit and really started talking to them. It was awesome! I don't know what she was saying in Romanian, but they seemed pretty interested. It was such an answer to our prayers for God's boldness. :) I heard some rustling from the house next to us, so I got the feeling other people were listening in too. Eventually, Dave and Alice came and joined us and did great evangelizing them some more. We parted ways with the people after awhile and then walked down the street. As soon as we got in front of the adjacent house, this girl came running down to us smiling and greeting us. I'm almost certain she had been eavesdropping on us from before. It was so exciting! I've never seen anyone so excited to come hear God's truth like that before. It was obvious that she was so excited to come talk with us and learn more about what she had overheard. What a great memory of God's goodness. :) This girl was a young woman. She was pretty and was pregnant. Her sister came down with her also and her sister had a cute little boy with her. Dave talked to them for a very long time. They were both very interested, responsive, and had lots of questions. It was so cool. I don't know quite how to describe it. After having partial success with other people, it was totally amazing to see God's words working in the hearts of these girls. I've never seen anything like it. So, anyways, we left them after a long time and left a Bible with them. Later that week, the pregant women was saved and so was her husband. I think her sister was close too. It was so awesome. You could tell at the end of the week that she had changed. Very, very neat. :) And, so awesome for God to answer our meek prayer for strength in that way. This whole saga may not have come about had God not lead us to split off and go to that first house. He is so good to allow me to be a part of that. What a blessing. After that whole experience, I think we talked to a couple more people briefly (relatively) and then headed back to the chapel. By that time, it was late in the afternoon and we helped clean up everything.

Earlier in the afternoon, Emma had invited us over with the interpreters to her house for some games and snacks in the evening. She lived in Botosani about five minutes from the hotel. So, Roger and Don were nice and agreed that we could go. Also, we planned to eat at the job site for dinner so we could get more work in. But, Roger was thoughtful and sped everyone along so that we could leave the job site early enough so that we could have some time at Emma's house before we needed to be back for the 10pm curfew. So, we had a great pasta dinner, did devotions and then got on the bus to head on back. At the hotel, Emma's Dad came in a truck with a camper shell on back. He took a few people over and then came back for the rest of us. Emma's house was very nice. They were a little better off than the average Romanian it seemed. Her parents and grandmother were all very nice. It was weird because we couldn't speak to them because of the language barrier, but that didn't seem much of a hinderance. Looking back on memories like this, I can't believe I never spoke to these people like this! Its amazing how much you can communicate by body movements and just your eyes. I feel like I had conversations that I never had with these people. :P Weird, but neat! Anyhow, we had a great time at Emma's house. It was just us young people- the intepreters, and then Liz, me, Kelly, Carly, and Kayla. We got to hang out for about 1.5 hours. Her parents made us tea and all sorts of amazing snacks. We played their version of Jenga and that was lots of fun. :) It felt really special to be a part of this group of people and to have friends in Romania. Sometimes I wish I could just go back anytime I wanted to and see them again. It was good times. Unfortunately, the evening had to end too soon because of the curfew! We were running late, so we managed to cram all of us into the truck! There were like 6 girls up in the cab and then another 6 or 7 of us back in the back of the truck. It was a sorta rickety truck too and knocked us around quite a bit. It was quite the five minute ride home. :P Good memories though. It was a very fun night. We didn't do too much back at the hotel and tried to get to bed a little earlier than usual.

Wednesday, 9/12

Wednesday morning was a little difficult to get up. It had been raining all night and was still raining some in the morning when we got up. It was just overcast and cold and just felt like a day that would be better suited staying in bed. Plus, I think we were just far enough into the week that we were starting to feel really tired and not up to going into "work" for the day. But, we eventually pulled ourselves together and mozied down for breakfast. I think every morning we were a little later for breakfast than the day before. :P We got on the bus and rode over to the job site in the cold and drizzle. When we got there, it was so muddy from the night before. It was pretty bad. It had stopped raining, though, so that was good. However, everyone seemed to be in a similar mood to me. It just seemed like everyone was a little tired and under the weather and rather moody also. There wasn't very many good vibes going around. When we went out on prayer walk, I really didn't want to go and then I got stuck in a group I didn't really want to be in. We slowly trudged through the super-mud, trying hard not to slip. Not very many villagers were out this morning. Eventually, we saw a lady coming to get some water from the well. I talked her into letting me carry her water and then we tried to share with her about God. She was pretty firm in her convictions towards the Orthodox church and it was apparent that she wasn't extrememly happy about the church we were building. It was rather difficult talking to her and I didn't really know what to say, especially since I was in a bad mood and just didn't feel like dealing with it. :-/ So, we followed the old lady to her house with the water. When we got there, another lady came out of the house. She was barefoot and kind of dirty and I suppose was the older lady's daughter. This woman suddendly just started talking to us a whole lot and was really intense about some stuff and using lots of hand motions. She would spontaneously start crying also. Our translator, Immanuel wasn't saying a whole lot and later he said that she was saying lots of unrepeatable things and gibberish and she was drunk early in the morning. Not too much later, a middle-aged man wandered out of the house. He too looked rather drunk and he was just filthy. I noticed that he didn't have any shoes and they had dirt floors in their house. I held out my hand to him to shake his and he took mine and kissed it. He talked to us a little bit. It seemed at first that I was able to speak to him through Immanuel, but pretty soon he was just losing it. He would talk and talk and then burst into tears and then talk some more and the other lady would talk and cry some too. Something about this man just broke me inside. I was already emotional this morning and it just set me over the top. My heart to broke inside and was going out to him. Eventually, all I could bring myself to say was "Jesus loves you". He was going on and on about Jesus and how Judas betrayed him and other things and was just crying and falling all over himself. I know he was probably drunk, but the pain in his eyes and evident all over him just overwhelmed me. I'm still getting choked up three months later as I type this. Its rare that things are that real and penetrating to me, but this was. I wanted so badly to help him in some way- any way. I wanted him to be better, to not have a dirt floor, to not be drunk at 9am and to have hope in Christ. But, I couldn't. It was out of my hands. I wanted to stay there with him and talk with him and be his friend. But, I couldn't. I just had to trust God with it. I knew that at the time, but I didn't trust God with it. We walked away from them and my heart was just crushed inside of me. I remember looking back and seeing the man smiling and waving. For that brief second he looked exactly like Grandpa Claeys; it was weird. But that just really set me over the edge with all of the sad feelings I had concerning his recent death. I couldn't handle it and I couldn't just fall apart in front of everyone. I quickly volunteered to go down a side road and look for some more houses. That gave me a few minutes just to pull my emotions together temporarily. It was horrible. There were no more houses down there, so I came back to our group and we just decided to go back to the job site. When we got back, I was just out of it. I was so depressed and useless.

Roger said I could go on evangelism again today. I went out with Karen Harper and Liz Duley in the morning and we talked to a few people. I went off with the ladies to a different part of the village, down the main road. We were able to stop by a family's house and they invited us in to their little house. It was really small, but they made it happy inside. They also had a large TV which was kind of funny because it dwarfed everything else in there. You couldn't stand fully up because the ceilings were too low. But, we talked to this family- grandmother, daughter, and daughter's son. The son seemed to be right around my age. The ladies talked to them for a long time about stuff. Apparently they were part of the church body but had been hurt by something somebody said or something like that. So, we spent time talking about forgiveness and reading scripture together. We talked some about the gospel and it became evident that some of their theology was off. Its amazing the influence that the Orthodox church has had over Romanians, even those that profess to be followers of Christ. I guess, if you grow up for years in any one way of thinking, its hard to totally break free from that. So, it was a good time with them and they were so thankful for us coming by. They said they wished we could come a couple times a week and explain the Bible to them more! They were so hungry for this knowledge we had. Hopefully the church will be able to teach them. I wanted to talk to the son some more also, but wasn't sure what to say. I invited him up to the church and said we might have a men's devotional if he came up. He seemed like he wanted to then, but I don't think he ever did make it. :-/ But, after the time with them, I felt a lot more encouraged and had recovered a lot from the earlier morning. Walking back up the hill to the job site, we heard a car coming behind us, so we moved off the road to the side, but then the car pulled over to us and slowed down. This Romanian man drove by slowly just yelling at us and waving his hand. He was so angry and really mean. It was pretty scary. I assume he wasn't happy about the chapel we were building. Liz quickly took it as the devil attacking (which it was) and prayed it off. But, the incident kind of shook me up again and stirred up the shaky ground my heart was already in. We walked back up the hill to the job site and were really late for lunch because we spent so much time at that family's house! I was feeling better, but was still pretty distracted by my emotions. During devotions, I think I kind of sat outside of the group. I just needed time alone and was afraid to take it. After lunch, Roger wanted me to go out again on evangelism with Liz Duley, Dave, and Karen. I finally just had to grab Liz Duley and explain to her how distraught I was. I didn't want to be useless the rest of the day. She was really encouraging and was able to relate to how I felt. She used to get really emotional on her earlier trips too but she's learned to trust God with it. It just helped to tell someone and she helped to encourage me to let it go and let God handle what He wants to do. I wasn't immediately better, but it helped.

I split off with Liz and an interpreter and we went along to more houses along the road. I really enjoyed going along with her for the next couple hours. We met a lot of people and she let me speak first to the men. We didn't meet too many men and the ones we met were busy with trying to get stuff done, so we didn't hold them up much, but it was fun to get to talk to some and invite them up to the church. We talked to a number of different women. I didn't talk too much but spent a lot of time observing how Liz approach different types of women. It was neat and a great experience. I was able to share a little with one older lady a bit later on and that was neat. She seemed rather receptive to what we had to say. At the end of the stream was a little stream and Liz and I walked down there to say hello to a few boys down there fishing. One of them, the kid who didn't like my lack of soccer skills the other day, had a real fishing pole. The others were just using sticks. That was interesting. Walking back up the hill to the job site, we noticed a police car up by the church. That was pretty scary. Romania had just put into place anti-Christian evangelism laws that year, but so far nobody had been affected by them. We had our Bibles out walking towards the chapel, and I wasn't quite sure what to expect. I think we just prayed as we walked up and then walked by them. They didn't do anything. When we got to the chapel, everyone was asking about the police out front. Eventually, we found out that it was just border control, I guess looking for people as they came from or went to Moldova. The village was very close to the country border. So, we were thankful for that! By that time of day, our evangelism had taken all afternoon and it was time to head back up to the job site to wrap up the day. It had been a great afternoon. I spent it mostly observing Liz and some of Dave and Karen, but it was very valuable. I'm not so experienced with evangelizing, but it was very encouraging and great to experience first-hand how other people did it. I really appreciated being able to have that time with them. :) I helped clean up a bit at the job site and then we headed on back to Botosani. I think everyone was tired of eating chicken, tomatoes, and cabbage, so we decided to go out for pizza! There was a place near the hotel that we all went to and we got our own personal pizzas. :) It wasn't the best pizza ever, but it sure tasted great after our other dinners. :P It was a good time there and then our group headed back to the hotel and had our devotional time up in the common hall area near our rooms. Liz and I then spent an hour or so in Roger and Mary's room with the usual suspects sipping tea and sharing stories. It was a nice time. :) I think the first time or two that we spent at "tea time" I got tired of it, but later in the week, I relaxed more around everyone and really enjoyed the time, and then missed it when it was all over. I think I tend to that pattern too much and miss out on a lot of good things in my life by just not having the right attitude or something. Perhaps if we get to do another Romania trip, I'll have to keep this in mind. :) After tea time, we wandered back to our room and got some much needed rest!

Thursday, 9/13

Today ended up being a much different day than Tuesday and Wednesday. In fact, I don't have quite as much to write...thank goodness! :) If I remember right, I think it was raining some in the morning again when we got on the bus and were going into the village. We prayed that it would stop raining so we could work better, but we had determined to work anyways even if it didn't. But, God was good and held the rain off the whole day as soon as we got the the job site. :) It seemed like everyone was doing a little better this morning than yesterday. A lot of people had gotten sick by this point, which was a bummer. :( I think it was the cold, damp mornings that gave many of us the chills. But, despite the illnesses, everyone still wanted to help and spirits were a lot higher this morning. I think everyone was feeling encouraged and starting to see the end of the chapel in site. :) We had our group prayer time and then went out on prayer walk. I don't remember today's walk as well. I don't think we talked to many people; perhaps none at all. I think it was shorter too because people were anxious to get back to work on the chapel.

Today I spent pretty much the whole day working inside of the chapel. I spent some of the morning helping Wayne with doing his electrical work. I also spent a lot of time helping cut and transport boards for the ceiling and moving the scaffolding around. We broke for lunch and devotion and then got back to work. Almost the entire afternoon, I spent up on the scaffolding working on the ceiling with Amelia. I would grab the ceiling wood and line it up and hold it in place while she would take the nail gun and nail the boards on. We had quite a good system going and got the whole thing done by the end of the day. We probably did about half of the entire ceiling after lunch. It was neat. :) I was tired though! It was encouraging to be a part of the physical job of building the chapel. I really enjoyed doing evagelism the two days before, but I was feeling a little sad or guilty that I hadn't been much involved in the actual chapel. It was good to be able to leave my mark on the ceiling. :) Once the ceiling was done, that was just about it! We spent some time cleaning up. They decided to make dinner for us at the job site in the evening so we could stay later and work longer. So, while dinner was cooking, Alice and Emme went into the chapel with the new ceiling done and started singing. You could hear it from all over the job site and it was beautiful! Some other people joined in singing and it was so pretty. It was so exciting to be so close to done and those girls just really filled a lot of us with the Spirit that evening as they were singing. As some people have said, we had our first worship service in the chapel right then. :) It was very exciting.

We had dinner and then cleaned up to leave. The Romanian painters had come in by then to start painting the inside and outside of the chapel, which was exciting to see start taking place. :) We drove off into the dusk of evening and got back to the hotel for our nightly devotion, and then of course off to have tea time in Roger's room, and then on to bed. It was a good day overall, but I was glad to go to bed! :-)

Friday, 9/14

Today started very interestingly. We had our breakfast and were late as usual after slogging out of bed! Then, there was this little black and white kitty cat who was trying to get into the hotel as we were trying to leave. We all got on the bus and I noticed that cat run across the street and under the bus as we were leaving. The drive went well at first. I finally shared my testimony with everyone on the bus. Almost everyone else had shared theirs throughout the week, but I had been procrastinating because I really didn't want to. But, it went really well. I don't think I've ever really shared a full testimony before, so it was an experience. I really enjoyed it though and perhaps talked too much. :P Then, not more than ten minutes after I was done, the bus driver pulled into a town and off the road. We weren't too sure what was going on. I was in the front seat of the bus, so I went out to help him with anything. The engine had overheated because a bunch of the belts had come off of it! And the saddest thing of all was that the little kitty cat had gotten up in there, probably to be warm, and had gotten stuck in a belt and killed. In the process, the fan belt was knocked off and the engine heated up. I felt so bad for the poor cat. It looked like it died quickly though and was probably just suffocated, so that was good. But, it was still pretty sad and a bad way to start off the day. Eventually, a few more people came off the bus. There wasn't too much we could help the bus driver with. He had a lot of difficulty getting everything back together though and we were stopped for quite a while. I guess a couple neat things that happened during that time were that Dave went down a bar in town and shared with Gospel with a bunch of interested men. Also, Pastor Bruce came out and shared some with the people whose house was next to where we stopped. It was neat to see these men taking advantage of the time. There was a sketchy guy who came by and started begging for money from me and the others. I didn't give him any, but I really felt lead to witness to him. But, there was no interpreter immediatley there and then I lost my nerve. :-/ I'm such a wimp sometimes. I regret just letting him leave, but I guess maybe I just need to remember that lesson for the future.

Marcello finally got the bus all fixed up. As an aside, I should say that Marcello, the bus driver, was awesome. I don't think he spoke any English, but he was so nice. He would help us carry wood and stuff around the job site all day and was just really involved with everything. He loved the kids and they loved him. He let them cover his front bus window with animal stickers from VBS and had the kids singing karaoke on the bus microphone one evening. :) He was a very hard worker and such a pleasure to observe. Anyhow, so we left from there but had probabably lost at least an hour of the morning. This was difficult because all the events of the day had been moved up a lot. I think VBS and the ladies' group were both supposed to be at 11am instead of in the afternoon! So, this made it a little stressful for everyone! I did appreciate that despite the setback, we still went on with our morning group prayer and prayer walks. I went on prayer walk with a group that went up to the small school and we prayed over it for awhile. Then we hurried back to the job site an prepared for VBS. We had to make little gift bags for all the kids and there was so much involved in doing that. It was crazy! We were hurridly counting things, sorting things, and tossing them into paper bags for the kids. It was really insane. Then we grabbed everything and rushed off to the school in time for VBS. This was my first time getting to work with the VBS kids and it was really neat. :) We started off by playing some games. I played some sort of tag/dodgeball with some of the kids for awhile. I really didn't know what we were doing because I couldn't speak with them, but they seemed to have a great time. Kids of any nation seem to love being chased and getting to chase. :) I was pretty worn out by them at the end of it all! Then the kids sang some songs that they had been practicing all week. That was really fun to watch. :) Most of them were totally into it. Not to mention, I think there were 46 kids on the last day! The numbers just grew all week and it was so awesome to see the turnouts of kids. It was just so neat that we were able to teach them all the Gospel message and bring them some joy. :) After singing, we had a Bible lesson and then the kids did crafts. I helped some with the crafts. I was handing out different colored ribbons for the kids and just noticed how well behaved, honest, and grateful they were compared to kids back here in America. I kept expecting that some of the kids would try to get a second ribbon, or complain about the color I gave them, but not a one. Almost all of them said "thank you" ("multumesc") and were happy with what I gave them. It was so refreshing! Then, at the end, we needed to hand out their bags of gifts to them, so we had them all line up in line. They were so cooperative and waited patiently in line. Also, the kids who were in families together would help each other and the older kids would lead the younger ones and stuff. I know some of that happens in America, but it just seemed like the Romanian kids in this small village were so much kinder, well-behaved, and content than most kids I've seen. Very interesting.

VBS took at least two hours and when we got back we had missed lunch totally, but were able to scrape up some food. By that time the chapel was all painted and Wayne had all the lights in place and they had brought some makeshift pews in. It was neat! Everything was all done except for just general clean up. :-) It was such a blessing to experience that feeling of fulfillment at having finished that chapel. The afternoon was really chill. Dani and a few of the interpreters had to leave right after lunch to go on to the next project and set up some stuff. We helped them pack up and leave. Then, there was not much to do. I just spent a lot of time walking around, taking pictures, and just enjoying time to think and reflect. It was a gloriously beautiful day and just felt so peaceful with all the work done. :) There was also a growing sense of anticipation as the 7pm dedication service grew closer and closer. Villagers started showing up to hang out around the chapel or to help decorate it some for the service and there were kids everywhere just excited and waiting. Liz and I got to spend some time with some of the kids and it was so much fun. They did some singing in the chapel which was neat. One of the mothers was in there with the kids and she had this incredibly shrill voice, but there was something addictively lovely about it as she sang. I just sat there and couldn't stop listening. Perhaps it was the Holy Spirit working that drew me to her music as she was singing praises. I'm not sure, but it sure was beautiful to me and made me so happy. I started welling up at one point and finally just had to leave! :P I got to hang out with my soccer-teaching friend some more. The boy tried unsuccessfully to teach me some Romanian. :) He was so persistent and fun. I think I'm a lost cause though! I taught him a little English. :) It was a great afternoon though. I have such fond memories of it and wish that every afternoon could be just like it. Such a blessing to be there!

Well, we had a quick sandwich for dinner and then had to get ready for the dedication service. I changed on the bus with the other men. It smelled like a men's locker room! :-P I got all snazzed up in a suit for the night. Then, people started showing up for service. Tons of people came, it was so neat! The house was packed and some people had to stand in the back. The service was neat. A lot of people spoke and there was a lot of music. Wayne brought these neat wireless ear pieces so we could all listen to an interpreter without much interruption to the servie. The whole thing was very much a blessing, but at the time I got a really bad attitude. The whole thing lasted probably almost three hours. I had gotten really warm, tired, and uncomfortable on the old pew I was on and was just kind of grumpy by the end. It was almost 10pm when we left and our group leaders really whisked our group onto the bus. That made me really sad and angry also. I had really enjoyed time with some of the kids and villagers in the afternoon and was wishing there was time to say goodbye to some of them, but we had to leave in such a rush. I guess I was just too sentimental and didn't want to leave at all. But, I had a horrible attitude and a headache. Then, on the bus everyone else was happy and having a big party, but I wanted to be all grumpy and quiet. I shouldn't have been such a jerk, but I was. :( I kind of regret missing out on the fun time on the bus, but oh well. It was quite late, of course, when we all got back to the hotel and we were ready for bed.

Saturday, 9/15

On Saturday, we finally got to sleep in a little bit! It was so great! But, not too long because we had to pack up all our stuff to be able to leave. We got packed up and then had breakfast and left. The trip on back to Bucharest was pretty good. We had some fun times in the back of the bus, including having Pastor Bruce do a puppet wedding. :P The interpreter girls were so much fun. They really just brought a lot of life and love to the whole group and kept everyone happy and singing the whole week. I know Liz really enjoyed them a lot. Anyhow, the bus ride was fine. We got pulled over once, which was exciting. Then, we found out that the police just wanted to warn the bus that there was a bridge coming up that he wasn't allowed to go over or something. I'm not too sure exactly. We made a couple of stops. On one of them, we bought some candies and stuff at a gas station. We ate at McDonald's one more time for lunch and it was good. Got to spend some time with Carly there which was fun. The rest of the trip went well. Most of the time was pretty quiet on the bus. I think a lot of people were tired and slept a lot. I think I napped some too! Later in the afternoon, we came to the city of Ploiesti which is just north of Bucharest and close to our airport. Our hotel was a little newer than the other places we had been in. Typical of Europe, it was smokey, but decently clean. We brought our stuff into our room, but then my key got stuck in the door! I couldn't do anything to get it out. We had to get some guy to come work on it and he couldn't get it to budge either. It made me so angry and we finally had to change rooms. And it was stressful because a group of us was leaving to go shopping at a particular time and the time was running short. I shouldn't have been so angry, but I was, and stressed. :( We finally got into our new room and then had to get downstairs quick to leave on the bus. We went out to a little indoor shopping mall in downtown. We only had an hour to shop which also made me angry because it was really stressful. They wanted us to always have an interpreter, so there was like a group of 4 of us with an interpreter trying to shop, but we weren't supposed to split off to look at our own stuff. I was thouroughly annoyed and the mall we went into was lousy and didn't have much selection of things I would want to buy for souveniers. I finally found a couple things as last-minute decisions and then we all raced out of there and back to the bus. I wasn't in a very good mood. :-/ We got back to the hotel with almost an hour before dinner, which made me angry because I didn't understand why we had to rush the shopping so much! Oh well. I don't think they were very prepared for us to have dinner at the hotel. They made chicken cordon bleu and it was decent. They did give us ice cream that was really good. :) We were supposed to get to use the dining room for our wrap-up celebration time of sharing, but they booted us out. We had to all squeeze into the hall upstairs for it! It was a little uncomforable, but it went really well. We just spent a couple hours sharing thoughts about the trip and wrapping things up. It was a nice, chill time to be with everyone. When that was done, we were all quite tired. Somehow, Liz and I got back with the interpreter girls and spent awhile chatting in the hall which was pretty fun. We were being pretty goofy. :P We finally went to bed later on.

Sunday, 9/16

Sunday morning we got to sleep in a little bit, then had breakfast down in the hotel. It was decent. Then we had to get back on the bus and leave. The hotel was kind of sketch. They hadn't been very nice about our meals and making us sit in the hall, and the before we left they tried to charge the group for a bunch of stuff we didn't buy! It was really ridiculous and put a lot of people in a bad mood. Don't think we'll go back there again! We took the bus about 30 minutes to the airport and got all checked in. We got there well before the flight and had at least a good two hours to kill. It wasn't a big airport and I got through all the shopping in about 10 minutes, so it was a pretty boring wait. We did burn up the rest of our calling card by calling some of our siblings. :P It was like 3am their time, so it was kind of funny to us! The plane ride went pretty well. We had an hour layover in Munich which went by really fast. Didn't get to do much there. On the long flight, I spent lot of time thinking and sleeping. Got to watch Oceans 13 and that was neat. I guess the most interesting thing was customs. The customs form asked if we had been on any farms or near any livestock which we defintley were. I didn't want to say yes because I didn't want to be hassled with anything and was afraid of losing stuff. But, Liz really thought that was should be honest. God eventually dealt with my heart and reminded me that we were coming back from a missions trip and here I was, already trying to cheat and be dishonest! So, I felt pretty bad about that and agreed that we should be honest and trust God with what will happen. When the flight ended, Liz and I had to go off to customs alone. I guess no one else on the trip was honest! They asked us some questions and then we found out that all they were going to do was to clean off our shoes for us! That was so awesome because we needed to clean them anyways. All we had to do was wait for a little bit and our shoes came back mud free. :) God is good! I felt like he really blessed our decision to be honest even though we didn't know what the outcome would be. It was a good lesson. Unfortunately, we missed being able to say goodbye to everyone! Oh well. We find my parents and it was great to see them. They took us home and we had some dinner and looked at some Romania slides right away. :P Then, somehow I had the energy to drive us back to Charlottesville late Sunday night so that I could work in the morning. I think that was crazy. I came down sick later that week!

The trip was great though. Looking back, I learned so much and have so many fond memories. God was so good to let us go over there together. Perhaps he will lead us to again this year. We shall see. :)