Adventura: 3 Favorite Memories

I know you want more of Romania but I'm finding it difficult to proceed very far without PICTURES (Matthew, ahem) beyond those I took with my  own tablet. The other team members who were playing Trip Photographer are dating and at each other's homes and therefore are sort of MIA at the moment ... and yours truly is wishing she'd taken less pictures of the Decebal Head and more of the people I love.  Also, there is just so much that went into the trip that today, I'm going to simply share three favorite memories:

//Butterfly Whispers//

One morning in Arad we were given the opportunity to visit a small children's day-center down a twisting, forgotten street of the city. This charity doubles as a dentist's office and ministers to the neighborhood/street children. There were only a few children present that early in the morning: a few gypsy boys, the British care-giver's daughter, a gypsy girl (Corinna), and the daughter of a Romanian caregiver.
My favorite part about working with children in other countries is that the language barrier is not as much of a problem as with the adults. The children have no scruples against chattering at you in Romanian and are equally fine if you speak to them in English. There is no need to understand each other, really, because isn't the desire to play on a slide or chase each other around a room a universal theme? When the language barrier became too frustrating, the little girls would simply plant their feet and shout, "OANA!" till the Romanian woman came running to translate for them and explain the rules of a game rather like Ring-Around-The-Rosie. The three little girls seemed to gravitate toward a different member of our team and I found myself the chosen friend of a tiny, shy girl named Roberta. Roberta and I played chase for the longest amount of time. She was Oana's daughter and the cutest little thing I'd ever seen. At first she wouldn't let me pick her up but by the end of a solid half-our of tag, she was nestled quietly in my arms. We walked to the window and Roberta began to point outside and whisper in Romania about what she saw and what she wanted to do. It was the sweetest thing: the tiny whispers and the fact that she spoke in Romanian made me feel as if I was holding a fragile little butterfly in my arms and she was telling me things I'd like to know. We soon followed the others outside in "The Secret Garden" and my fearless little Roberta was whispering to the pet dog and pelting down the rickety slide, sliding recklessly on her belly into my arms. By the time we left, we had gotten rather attached and there were actual tears in Roberta's eyes as I set her down for the last time and waved goodbye. I couldn't help but feel glad that she was one of the children who had a steady, dependable parent. <3 I never got a photo of her but Mrs. Edmonston did manage to get a bit of a video and you can see a glimpse of my dear little Romanian butterfly:

Visiting The Children's Home

//Makeshift S'mores//

You will have heard of Stefana, our friend from last year. Stefi is one of the sweetest, most transparent young women I have had the delight to meet, and we only grew closer this trip. Leaving her was like leaving one of our best friends here in the states. I am so blessed by her testimony, her spirit, and her friendship. We spent several nights at Betel hanging out with friends local to Arad, and on the last night, I'd cracked open the bag of marshamallows I'd brought. Several sources had told me that they don't have marshmallows in Romania ... this is sort of a falsehood, for they do sell them. But they don't taste the same, they're expensive, and they are certainly NOT Jet-Puffed or whatever that good brand is called. ;)

Stefana has a sweet-tooth the size of Russia and was super excited when I brought out the marshmallows. She laughed and told us that she had tasted a marshmallow before but had never toasted them, though she'd seen it on movies. Then I had an idea: there was a kitchen in the church. Certainly we could roast marshmallows over the gas stove? We hurried into the kitchen, flipped the light-switch, and toyed with the knobs on the gas stove. Unfortunately, the gas had been turned off for the night and we didn't know Romanian stoves well enough to bother trying to get it back on. That was almost the end of our marshmallow roasting adventure, but at the last moment Alaina and I searched for a candle, found a tealight and some tiny matches, and lit a little blaze (not before I'd coughed and blown it out once, blown it out with one match, and otherwise foiled the candle several times). I speared a marshmallow on a fork and showed Stefi how to roast a marshmallow. It caught fire and she squealed but we blew it out and continued. It's rather tricky to toast these things over a tealight blaze! :D When the marshmallow was suitably gooey, I handed the fork to Stefana and watched her experience a toasty marshmallow for the first time in her life. She adored it and we laughed over the absurdity of our positions at eleven-thirty PM, crouched in a dark kitchen in Romania toasting marshmallows over a tealight. Stefana roasted her own (and possibly a third) and we let some of the gypsy women who live with friends of ours try one. (They said it was too sweet.) In the end, I gave Stefana the last half of the marshmallow bag and her eyes lit up with girlish excitement. She told us that she was going home to her husband in a few days and that she'd save them so they could have a date of toasting marshmallows over a candle. My work there was done.

//Give the Lady a Camera//

The trouble with travelling with a group of people you like a lot is that you always want a group photograph in nearly every spot and there really isn't one particular team member you'd like to cut out of the picture and force to snap the photo. At one particularly Alpine meadow spot, we pulled our little caravan over and arranged ourselves for a picture. We were about to send Sabine (red shirt, far left) to take the photo since he wasn't one of the Zaharias or the Americans, but then someone noticed a little old lady selling cheese at a stand. She saw our predicament and offered eagerly to take the picture. Amy (with the lingual aid of Pastor John) taught her how to work the camera and the little old lady cracked us up by arranging us, telling us to smile, and taking the picture. Amy went forward to view the product and, struck by the funny little scene, I whipped out my tablet and took a photo of the pair. 

This lady is sharp. She started jabbering about something and pointing and Pastor John said, "She see your iPad. Want to take a picture." I handed her my tablet, taught her how to use it (she was grinning ear-splittingly the whole time) and hurried back to the group. She took one photo and I helped her check it out. Not satisfied, our new friend demanded I show her how to take another and she went for Round Two. We thanked her, said goodbye, and packed back into the cars, but I'm certain I will never forget the little old lady selling her cascaval. <3

"An odd collection of various depressions"

"We continued driving with little change in the landscape till, out of nowhere, a mass of prison-like, concrete apartments appeared. We meandered through this odd collection of various depressions till we came to a large, clean white church. We were greeted by a sweet older woman named Mama Veta and ushered up a villainous staircase to a Sunday school room, where we changed into less-wrinkled clothing."

- travel journal

The hospitality of American Southerners is legendary ... among Americans. I have been greeted many times by generous hosts in the American South and I have given back some of that hospitality. But the thing about many hosts in the American South (stereotyping here, I know) is that the sacrifice we make to be hospitable is mostly mental. Sometimes we sacrifice our schedule to make way for incoming guests or maybe we'll even sacrifice a room in our house so a family will be comfortable in our home. But when do we ever really give to the point of discomfort? In Romania, we were hosted more royally than almost anything I've ever experienced here, by people who had so much less than the average Southern Family. It happened several times, this remarkable gift of hospitality, but one occasion in particular struck me as the epitome of what I mean:

There is a little town in Romania called Motru. Motru is little more than a big cluster of apartment buildings built by the communists some 50 years ago. It was strange, entering this same-city. Same building on every corner, same yellow benches out front, same sounds on every street, same people on every sidewalk. It was weird ... everything was literally identical to everything else: a socialistic community of colors. Yellow, grey, white. Even the church was big, square, plain.

But souls are colors. Did you know that? That white church, by the time it was filled with people, was as beautiful as a humming-thrumming rainbow. At the end of the service, we were packed back into the cars and carted off somewhere strange ...

... an auto-body paint shop.

A tan, blue-eyed man in an oil-stained shirt came out to greet our caravan. That shirt made me feel right at home; he looked like my dad. He spoke to Cristi and ushered us into the paint shop which, rather than being full of cars waiting to be worked on and smelling of gasoline, was spotlessly clean with that look about it that I know well: the look of having just been swept within an inch of its life. We came to the full interior of the shop and I literally almost teared up because in the main room of the place was a long long makeshift table set with several sets of china and real silverware, bottles of soda and bowls of bread. The amount of work that would go into washing up after us was a feat unto itself, the amount of work that had already gone into preparing a place for us, equally vast.

After a few moments, our new host led us into the back yard which was a sort of small farm. On one side, the extended family of this man (church members who had run home quickly to change) were barbecuing meat and other members socialized across the language barrier with us. Our host, the farmer, showed us his eighteen piglets with pride and discussed hen-manship with Pastor John. In a bit, we were called into the shop where we blessed and ate one of the best meals of the entire trip. Barbecued chicken breast, pork, and mici, golden mashed potatoes, cabbage salad, wonderful chicken soup and bread, with homemade eclairs and poppy-seed bread for dessert. This family stood and served us while we ate and the farmer spent his dinner hour chasing rogue kittens away from his guests with a determination and embarrassment that made me laugh. Cristi told us that this family lived in the little (perhaps 3-room) apartment above the shop where they had prepared all of this for a group of Americans they had never met and might never meet again. Later, we were taken to spend the night at an apartment belonging to some of the extended family members. The family had vacated it (whether just for our benefit or for a trip, we didn't understand) and were welcomed into this fully-furnished, comfortable home with beds prepared expressly for our use.

 Motru is in one of the poorest districts in Romania and this family put on a feast for us. As far as common sense goes, this family couldn't afford to feed us like this. As far as common sense goes, this family had no room to host us. As far as common sense goes, this family was lacking any common sense whatsoever. But you know what? Real hospitality doesn't stop at common sense. Real hospitality considers others better than yourself and gives and gives and gives out of hearts full of love.

I will always remember the kindly farmer and his family as some of the most generous people I have met. I will remember the lessons learned: that a cement-bound, Communist-birthed town can harbor some of the most genuine examples of a stranger's love ever shown. So dear people of Motru, thank you for your love and your hospitality, and the fact that you treated us like visiting royalty when you could easily have begged off on a laundry-list of excuses. You've challenged my idea of the lengths you can go to show love to a complete stranger. My house and my family can give so much more as you so graciously showed. Thank you, and I pray we'll meet again. <3

Crossing off the Bucket List!

"The Big Brown Bear went LOLLOPPING over the mountain!"

-Chitty Chitty Bang Bang

(and, consequently, so did I while in Colorado!) I love how life will sometimes suddenly throw dozens of new experiences at you and ask you to juggle them accordingly. You know I've been busy busy busy with my travels and only just got back in time for my very own birthday. But now I foresee very few wanderings for a couple months and hopefully can get into the swing of quite a lot of things I've neglected over this Spring and start to the Summer. I  would appreciate prayer for wisdom regarding employment this fall. While I hope to be a published author someday, such a thing takes time, and I find I must seek some other thing that will earn me money while I pursue that dream. The current ideas a literary-themed online shop, creative-writing tutoring/mentoring, and the teaching of creative writing at some local co-op or another. These things would require me to move my botto and get out talking to people and quite frankly, that freaks me out. However, I do see the necessity and the productivity of it, so whether I pursue one of these avenues or another, I would love a spot in your prayer-time! But to round out the topic I began this post with, here are a few of the Pioneering Things I've done in recent weeks!

(bucket-list items in red!)

Cooked dinner without a single recipe in a dinky bachelor kitchen for The Three Bears.

oh look! one of the bears took a photo and instagram'd it!

I turned 21. :)

I tried Swing Dancing

I was dipped while dancing (without falling over)

I began to read my first Amish Romance (pressed upon me as a birthday gift by Abigail)

I started to save for my possible return-trip to Romania/Europe sometime next year!

I visited the real Whit's End

I set up my own iTunes account and made the choice to purchase a whole album of Kate Rusby songs simply because I like her voice and the music and now I'm nervous because I didn't consult Sarah, my Sister Who I Consult on these matters. O.o

I drank Sparkling Cider for an occasion not at all related to New Year's

I went to Colorado

I bought a grammar book

I drank an iced-coffee without the ice.

I dropped my copy of Winnie-The-Pooh on a poor man's feet next to me in the airplane.

So that's what's new with me...how about you? Having a bonny summertime?

Adventura: The Romania Trip Pt. 5

So I have gone the entire series of posts without formally introducing you to Christi, our "Glumesc". (Glumesc means 'joke') Christi fit in so terribly well with our group, it wasn't even funny. (actually, it was very funny.) He's about 30 so we all decided to adopt him as the that-much-older-brother none of us have, and he lives on in that capacity since our departure. We now have a Romanian brother. Or Captain Romania, if you'd rather. ;)

I think we're all on the same page when we say that one of the things we liked best about Christi was his ability to effortlessly slide from wild jokester into passionate preacher in the space of thirty seconds. He's learning to master the art of being just serious enough when it's needed, and just crazy enough when seriousness can go out the window. :D

Also, he speaks five or six languages fluently. (Romanian, English, French, Greek, Hebrew, and pretty much German as well as a smattering of other languages)

It was not long before we had established a catchphrase that is used to this day among our group:

"Adventura"...it's RomEnglish for "Adventure". See, it started way back during the first couple of nights when we were giving our testimonies, and I was speaking on the adventures God has planned for us. Somehow the team started teasing me every time something interesting or difficult came up:

"It's because Rachel is praying or adventures!" or  "Yeah, Rach, it's your fault!" :D

One night on the way home from a village, we loaded into the two cars. Sarah, Matthew, Amy, Christi, and I took his car and started off sedately enough. Then, perhaps because of his double dose of energy-drink, or because his crazy side came out, Glumesc started driving wildly. Before you freak out, I didn't say dangerously. Per se. ;) Swerving side to side on the roads, driving straight where signs informed us the road was turning, driving with one foot out the window, driving with his knees....you know. In Christi's defense, the road was *entirely* empty and it was a dirt road full of pot-holes so he wasn't going but so fast. We were joking, singing, shouting, laughing our heads off. It's one of those ideal moments in life that I'll keep forever in my memory, but you kinda had to be there.

Then we hit an especially large pothole that no one but Amy saw, and soon the "fwap-fwap-fwap" of a flat tire could be heard. Christi pulled over and we girls fell silent. Great. A flat. In the middle of nowhere. We wondered how Christi would take it, and what he'd do. Matthew got out to help Christi and the girls and I just kind of looked at each other. Then Christi trotted around to our open window, stuck his head through and bawled:
"GIRLS! WHY ARE YOU HAVING SAD FACES?" And since he thought the flat tire was the best joke of the night, Amy, Sarah, and I busted out laughing and the craziness went on. The tire was pumped, we piled back in, and immediately Christi started swerving back and forth and blaring his horn to the empty skies. It was amazing. :D All windows down, hair whipping in the stiff, chilly breeze, shouting and laughing as Christi tried accents and faces and all sorts of craziness.

But the tire went flat again.

He pumped it up and we went on....for a bit. It flattened again, and even Christi agreed it would have to be changed entirely. Thankfully we were near some factory that was just switching shifts and we were able to borrow a jack and a hammer.

     "Oooooh m'goodness," Christi said, still laughing, and he and Matthew set to work changing the tire. We girls stood nearby playing with a Great Pyranees that seemed friendly enough, and listening to the boys work.

  Christi's fervent "Haaaaal-lelujah's" were frequently heard toward the end when the tire-job was wrapping up. ;) As Christi and Matthew crouched near the tire and Sarah held her iPod up to the tire so they could have a little light, I asked Christi, "How do you say Adventure in Romanian?"
"Aventura" he grunted, pushi
ng on the tire.
So I wrote the RomEnglish version in the dust on the side of the car, and forever sealed the moment in our group-history.

 Amy snapped photos, we piled into the car, and spun off down the road, still laughing...

That car of people count the night Adventura was born as one of the finest moments in the entire trip, and I can guarantee it would never have happened if Christi hadn't been our driver. :D

We laughed way too hard with Christi, and learned so much from him. I recall especially the day we were sitting in the house of some church-members eating gogosi and laughing at Christi one moment, and the next I was holding back tears as he told us his personal testimony of how he came to Christ. :)

He bestowed nicknames on several of the team:

Amy = Blondie (or Sister)
Sarah = Shortie
Justin = Beauty (he was always the last person to come down when we were getting read to go)
Daniel = Daniel-son the Curly One
Alaina = Seniorita
Mrs. E = Miss Daphne, The Boss
Matthew = Justin Bieber

And in return, of course, we named him Captain Romania and Glumesc. He taught Beauty how to shop for an Italian-style outfit. He bought us shaorma from a hole-in-the-wall at midnight. He stayed up all night long the last night in Romania, and didn't go to bed even though he'd been up till 5 studying the night before. Long live Glumesc, and may he ever have plenty of shnitzel and french-fries and gogosi! May God bless and keep him, and especially bless his upcoming marriage! :)

Adventura: The Romania Trip Pt 4!

The food.

Jehosophat, the food.

It's incredible how well our hosts fed us! The portions were absolutely monumental, and certain members of the team **AHEM (Amy) AHEM** found it difficult to even make a dent in the huge plates of schnitzel, golden mashed potatoes, pickled vegetables, and other delightful things. Our chef was a brilliant cook who used to cook for Romania's last Dictator whenever he came to Arad, so obviously it was good! :D

 Each meal was a feat to consume because there was no end to the food! It was amazing. :D And the women who served us were so sweet.



I wished I could say something besides "multumesc" to let them know how much I appreciated their time and effort. It was truly a blessing. :)

whole grapefruits? Uh...yes please.

My journal reflects many instances of food-related things...

"All the food has been amazing. But oh-my-chocolate-pudding they would stuff a GIANT! How are Americans so fat when we eat a third of the portions they serve here? We are flopped on the bed with stomachs full to bursting. The first course of was soup--a really good one--with a hint of fennel and chopped parsley. Alaina said to be sure we didn't eat too much soup and bread cuz there is usually another course. I was somewhat full but took her advice, then oh my goodness: they brought out plates heaping with creamy rice and pork, then bowls of salad...Daniel would love it. I barely managed half of that before dessert came out. Ooomph. I will be so huge after two weeks here! How do they manage? :D"

"Lunch at the Zaharia's was absolutely amazing. Marianna made schnitzel, mashed potatoes, pork, and bread with plum cake and coffee for dessert. The food was served with pickled peppers and cauliflower from her garden...."

"...Christi said that on Sunday we will come again for lunch and he will make us his garlic sauce which is better than anyone's. He says he loves to cook and lectured us poetically on the best way to marinate venison and how to make schnitzel."

"I forgot! We also had sarmali, which are rolls of meat and rice wrapped in cabbage leaves--so good. Marianna made a perfectly divine soup with kohlrabi in it. Yummo! Vegetable soup here is called soupa de legume. Soup is only ever the first course so don't eat too much. Marianna smiled at us all. 'Eat slowly and eat lots', she said. She told us we must eat all the piles of schnitzel and mashed potatoes. We ate as much as we could."

"...afterward we ate pizza. Their pizza is so funny but delicious. They put ham, cheese, no sauce, mushrooms, corn, and olives with the pits still in it on top..."

"...there was bean soup with sausage from Christi's pig. (he had made it) and slabs of homemade bread. Some of the best ever! There were pickles and schnitzel with sesame seeds, and pork. When we were stuffed they brought out gogosi (which are the doughnuts) stuffed with plum or prune jam. Yum!"

"On the way back up the Square we stopped at an icecream cart and bought soft-serve for 2.5 lei. It was amazing! And I'm not just saying that because it was a novelty. Best soft-serve ever! Foarte bun!"

"We went into many stores, and got lemon and sour-cherry gelato from a storefront shop. It was so pure and good. As I walked down the street with our group and Oana and Stefana, eating gelato, and watching life go by I thought to myself, 'is there any felicity in the world superior to this?' Honestly, I thought that perhaps I would be forever happy to walk in that moment." 

"We piled into the cars and drove into downton Arad onto a decidedly sketch street lined  with shaorma and kebab joints. Christi wanted us to try shaorma before we left, and since I've long wanted to taste it, I was game. Seriously now. Standing at midnight on a street in Arad eating shaorma and laughing over nothing and everything..."

Haha! Obviously food was a major thing for us there! I didn't even share lots of the other times I mentioned food. Wow. I didn't realize how much I wrote about it! :D Of course I realize that the Romanian people don't eat like this all the time--it was special just for us, and that made it twice as much of a blessing. They put so much work into hosting us!

Dinner at the gipsie house was spectacular!

"Home" was the church, and most of the time there, it seems like we were either eating or singing. :D

We spent much of our "free time" wandering around Arad, but if we were home, we would practice music for the next night, study for our testimonies, play ping-pong, or stand at the top of the five-story stairwell and sing down the flights of stairs, listening for the chill echoes. :)

Haha. We also liked to take strange photos at night...

This is only one of the really neat series we took of airborne-Justin.

I think one of my absolutely favorite things about life at the church was the fact that there were absolutely no screens in the windows, and the windowsills were beautifully wide, and the windows cranked open. That meant that I was able to spend half the day hanging out the window-sill, or sitting on the ledge in peril of falling out backwards. It was delightful. :D

We spent a deal of time in the little courtyard, and had lots of laughs, including an incident with snails, described below:

"So. The snails. I mentioned that Sarah and I went snail-hunting a few days ago. We squeezed into the back garden and found hundreds of big, meaty ones just peppering the grass. For a space of five minutes Sarah and I collected the snails and put them into an old, discarded paint cloth. We brought the snails out front and since we wanted to tease Christi that we loved escargot, we wrapped the snails up well and deposited them into a flowerpot beneath the hose, meaning to release them later.
We forgot.
The next day I exited the church to follow Christi to the car, and the kitchen lady was standing with a broom, a dustpan, and a horrified and bemused expression at forty or fifty fat snails decorating the church wall. She consulted Christi with confusion as to why the dickens so many snails ended up in that particular spot. I suppose it would have remained a mystery had I not come outside, seen the commotion, and completely lost it. I was laugh SO hard. I fled back into the church and collapsed with Sarah against the glass doors. Christi crept up and shoved a snail over my shoulder and into my face, but I was laughing already. I explained between bouts of gasping for air that we had gathered the snails and put them there.
"Have you?" and his smile was that 'these-are-American-crazies-but-I-still-like-them' smile that sometimes comes over these Romanian faces."

The people at Bethel certainly made us feel beautifully welcome. :)

With Lavi, one of our favorite translators. :)

 I hope someday we might have the opportunity to give someone as good of a time as they gave us. That church became home to us, and I loved spending time there....

Next up: a whole post about Christi, and how Adventura was born! 

Adventura: the Romanian Trip Pt 3

So I've covered the basic schedule of the trip, and I've covered the churches and some of the people we met there. But I haven't told you anything about the places we visited that were, for lack of a better term, "tourist attractions."

During the first week, we went to the Bear's Caves in Bihor and wandered around there for a bit. I loved getting to drive around in the mountains...not sure who has the picture from the caves in their possession, but it looked so much like a snippet from The Sound of Music that we started singing the music on the way home, and got Cristi laughing over our attempts to yodel in "The Lonely Goatherd" song. :D Inside the caverns, Cristi scared the piddiddle outta me by snorting right behind my ear in the darkest part of the cave. I would not have been scared if it was a bear-noise he made, having expected that. But to hear something like a wild-boar right in my ear was definitely startling enough to make me scream. The Bear Caves reminded me a whole lot of Luray Caverns. I have no idea where the pictures are from that day though...you had to pay 15 leu to bring a camera in (like 5 bucks) so only one or two of our group did so, and I forget who it was. :D Beautiful stalactites and stalagmites...I touched even though it said no touching. *oopsie*

Friday night of the first week we were able to go with the youth from Bethel and stand in the Town Square of Arad. We sang "Ma-ncred in El" ("Muncrayed un yell", more or less...we don't really have phonetic spelling for their letters) in English and Romanian were twenty years ago, 100,000 Christians were flat on their faces with Communist guns pointed at them. Really powerful stuff.

Justin had to ride in the trunk because we were packing way too many people into Adventura. (Christi's car). At the stoplights he kept popping the lid and waving at people.

The buildings in The Square were beautiful...

An excerpt from my journal:

Standing there in the quiet, brilliantly lit Square, a chill traveled down my spine. I listened while Alex read the inscription on the plaque, and the tune of "Red and Black" began to spin through my mind. The names on the monument had ages beside them...most were 18,19,20, 21...our ages. The appropriateness of this group of Christians standing in the Square where 20 years ago many were killed settled upon my heart...As Christi and Pastor John told us, the Government may press the Church, but they cannot steal Jesus' bride. "Amin".

We also went to Timisoara's Town Square where the whole Revolution actually started. That was really neat as well, though I was focused less on the history, and more on Italian shoes and catching pigeons...and buying the world's most amazing softserve.

I tried so desperately hard to catch a pigeon, even pilfering some of Matthew's Romanian Chicken Nuggets...they were cannibalistic enough to eat the nuggets, but I never did get my hands on one.

Sometimes we stayed closer to home and visited more...common places like the Mall! My only complaint about the new, three-story mall in Arad is that you can still smoke inside. And that gives me a headache. Especially when we walked past the hookah-bar. O.o Christi took us bowling at the mall on e day after a funeral. :D He and Justin were the best bowlers.

We were able to go a really neat basilica (and old cathedral) made in 1520! It was absolutely breathtaking...

Here is my initial take on it from The Journal:

We drove out first to an immense cathedral that, at first glance, appears to be entirely crumbling. Crumbling, yes, but entirely powerful and intimidating. We walked up at our leisure--it seems a boorish thing to rush a cathedral--and made it up the 3 immense flights of stairs to the castle-style front doors...so much pomp and circumstance, but little heart. The building made me dizzy. Literally so much splendour and the soaring arches were so high I couldn't look up without tipping over. :) The name of the church was Maria Radna, and I know there are so many stories behind that church...

These are a few of the amazing places we were privileged to see. Of course I enjoyed going to all the random little villages--so special. 

Next up: Home and Eatables! ;D

Adventura: The Romanian Trip Pt. 2

I'm going to start categorizing so we can get through this in some semblance of order! Today will be the churches! :)

One of the first churches we went to was a Gyspy church. This was the church with the kids that stole my heart. :) 

I loved the kids at the other churches too, but there was something about this group of kids that got at me; maybe because I had more time with them than some of the other groups... I'm afraid I caused a rumpus and taught them wild hand-games and made them far too loud....but it was all in good fun, and they loved it as much as I did. Besides--hand-games like thumb-wars, and the slapping game and Down-By-The-Banks--don't require much translation, which was a boon as I didn't want to bother Cristi and they didn't speak much English. :) 

This was also the church where Matthew earned the nickname "Justin Bieber". Every tween-aged girl in that church wanted their picture taken with him...and only him. Cristi and I came up with the nickname almost simultaneously, and it stuck for the rest of the trip! Here is the evidence of that night:

Hahahahaha. Oh m'gooooodness. We had so much fun teasing Bieber about that night!

The churches we were working with (and staying with) are Baptist churches, and I found the depth of passion for Christ in these places extremely inspiring/challenging. It isn't easy not being Orthodox, as the Orthodox church is the one that the government supports, yet the believers in these churches are so joyful and faithful...some of the most courageous people I have ever met. 

We were staying in apartments in Pastor John's own church, which was really neat. It's a huge echoing building all built of tile and cement and glass (they don't believe in wood construction because they don't last long enough) so we would go stand at the very top floor and sing down the stairwell. Our favorites were "The Misty Mountain Song" and "Pentatonix: Somebody that I Used to Know". Such fun. We even got some of the songs on recording, which is pretty neat. The guys loved to play around with photography on the various levels of the church building in the evenings! They are really good with the cameras and effects if I do say so myself. (Credit for all these photos is going to Daphne Edmonston, Daniel Tate, Matthew, and Justin Wright.)

Arad was a beautiful city in it's quiet, patient, turbulent, long-suffering way. :)

Each night we would visit a village church. (if we weren't at Bethel) Some were near to Arad, others we had to drive a distance. I think we visited 7 different churches, all told, some more than once. We made lots of friends this way, and I loved going around to all the different towns! That is one thing you don't usually get to do. The people were so hospitable, and always prepared a meal for us and served us: they wouldn't let us help them do a thing. So sweet. At one village we even got to eat in the mayor's office...Christi enjoyed his momentary prestige. ;)

          

I enjoyed every village for a different reason...some for their natural beauty, like Cladova, others for the people we met. :) The last several churches we visited were overseen by the same deacon, so we got to know he and his family a bit. His daughter is an Audrey Hepburn lookalike, I think! :)

Her name is Bianca, and she speaks far better English than she gives herself credit for, and she's an excellent translator! Actually, her voice is so nice and clear that I found myself often thinking she'd be perfect for a How to Learn Romanian computer program. :D Wow...me and my mind. 

Christi or Pastor John would start off the services with a prayer and a bit of speaking, then they would pass the torch off to us, and we'd do songs and testimonies for the next hour or so. :) It became a daily challenge to try to remember which songs we'd done at which churches, trying not to repeat ourselves too often. At the churches where we did two services, we sometimes had to rearrange so the same group of people wouldn't have to hear the same songs twice. :D It was definitely a mind-game, and toward the end we stopped caring. ;) After all, poor Christi had to translate many of the same testimonies/ mini-sermons over and over. Actually, it was a funny sensation, having the opportunity to retell the same stories of God's faithfulness in my life over and over...I tried to word things differently each time, and ended up gathering several testimonies to rotate so the whole team wouldn't die of boredom. :D 

Christi liked to make us laugh in the middle of services (or would accidentally do so) so we all learned when it was safe or perilous to look at him up there at the pulpit. Once or twice he would be listening to us and translating, and we'd give a spin to our story that he wasn't expecting, and he'd bust into laughter... like the time I used the same opening I had been using for my usual testimony, but launched into a story of God healing my terrible temper as a kid...he gave me this brief, hilarious, befuddled look and then busted out laughing. :D Thankfully it was just a children's service in a tiny church so no one minded. :D

Ahhh....good times. Good times.

All right, then. There you have a post about the various churches. Stay tuned for tomorrow's post about Touristy-Things! :)