On July 16th, 2012, at 12 o'clock, noon, I arrived at the Louisville International Airport. There, I met up with the other twenty members of our Romania team. Excited, we all began checking in our luggage and saying our goodbyes to loved ones, when we hit our first road..er, air? block.
After five of us were already checked in, they told us our flight had been moved from 2:30 up to 12:30, which means we had actually all missed our flight out. After a couple hours of trying to figure out what to do from there, they decided to split our team up into three groups and send us different places, and then we would all meet back up in Munich and travel to Cluj, together.
So, five of us, including myself, got our tickets and went on through security to our gate to wait on our flight to Charlotte. An hour later, we heard that six others finally got a flight out, however to Philadelphia, not Charlotte. My group finally boarded our plane to Charlotte, when there was an instrument failure and we had to get off and wait again. While waiting for them to fix the plane, the other eight team members walked up and said they got a flight out at 6pm (same gate)... so finally, after hours of wondering whether we'd even fly out on the 16th, or not, all twenty of us had tickets!
We boarded our plane once again, but only to have to get off (AGAIN) because of bad weather in Charlotte. By 5:45pm, we finally got word that all thirteen of us, who were left out of our team, would all be flying to Charlotte together on the 6:05pm flight..
At 6:02pm we were all rushed onto the plane and told we had less than seven minutes to take off, or our flight would be canceled until the next day, due to regulations.
We took off with no more than thirty seconds to spare, but nevertheless, we were finally on our way to Charlotte!
All of us arrived in Charlotte safely, but because of all the issues we had getting out of Louisville, we had missed our flight to Munich.. took several hours, but eventually we got a flight to Frankfurt, Germany (instead of Munich), so we flew for eight hours - where I slept just about the whole time :-). They then got us a flight to Munich, but once we arrived there (the other seven team members were already in Romania by this time), they said they didn't have any flights going to Cluj (Romania)... so they sent us to Budapest, Hungary, instead. From there, we slept on the floor in the airport for I don't know how many hours. We were missing several peoples luggage and totes full of VBS supplies, but at least we were safe. Our bus driver who was picking us up in Cluj, drove 8+ hours, through two countries, to pick us up in Budapest. So, after 35+ hours of traveling, we then had to sit on a bus for another 8 hours.. But, after 40+ hours, altogether, we all arrived in Finate, Romania, where we finally met up with the rest of our team, who had flown out from Louisville separately, two days prior.
We arrived at 7:30 in the morning on July 18th. We started VBS with the Romanian children at 10am that same morning... which means we were quite tired by the end of the day :) I definitely slept like a rock every single night! Was probably the first one in bed and the last one out every day ;)
We did VBS every day from 10am-noon, had lunch, and then had "field day" with the kids until 3pm. I learned how to play Volleyball, Romanian style - we played every day for several hours! I never even used to be into Volleyball, but I have to admit, I learned to like it a lot :) Some of our team went into the city to have Basketball camps and hang out with the youth.
We started a womens Bible study for the lady's in the village, which took place every evening at 8pm. It started out a very small crowd - 2 or so people - but by the end of the week we had probably about 10. One lady gave her life to Jesus even!
We went to several church services in town (Baia Mare), where the pastors on our team would preach and some of the Romanian speaking team members would sing or read a poem/scripture.
My favorite things on the trip were trying the interesting foods, that weren't really weird at all, playing volleyball with the teenagers, hanging out with the teen-translators/getting to know them, wandering the streets of the village with Cathy, Gabi and Dani (amazing people right there!), playing with and loving on the Gypsy's! And learning what it's like to be a Romanian. I always feel like I leave a piece of my heart everywhere I go.
It made me so sad to see the Gypsy's though. The children are battered and bruised, on purpose, by their parents, just so people will feel sorry for them and give them money... which the parents promptly take and use on drugs and whatnot. It's so sad. I wish I could take all the kids home with me and give them a loving family! How can you even pretend to love your children when you abuse them to get what you want?? I just don't understand :(
We did a little site seeing: hiked up a mountain, went into the city to get souvenirs and ice cream, drove for houuuurs up a windy mountain on gravel, where I was sitting on the floor in the back of the bus - talk about motion sickness! and drove along the border of Ukraine. It was cool to see the countryside, God is such an incredible artist! :)
By the end of the trip, we all felt quite at home :) None of us wanted to leave! But sadly, we had to:
Traveling home went MUCH smoother, than the trip getting there. However, unlike the travel to Romania, I didn't sleep at all! I believe Satan is the reason we had so much trouble getting to Romania. He didn't want us to share God's love with anyone... well, he didn't stop us! It's incredible how much people can see Christ in you, just by your love for them. I hope our light shined bright while we were there, and I hope we all continue to let it shine while here in the States!
It's great to be home, however much I miss the team and all of Romania. The people will always be in my heart, no matter what :)
Praying for the Romanian and Roma people!
