Day: July 21, 2010

We’re Here!

It’s Cori Beth! After three flights, four air ports and a six hour bus ride we’re finally here!  🙂

I always wondered what people meant by jet lag and now…I understand…I’m about ready to go to bed now and it’s not even five o’clock in the US!

We had ice at lunch today! That was a treat! So far the potatoes are my favorite food, very good with sour cream and this salt that’s kinda like sea salt and served on a saucer.  Don’t fill up on soup…good fact to remember, they have more than one course for lunch here…

So far we haven’t had the opportunity to share the full gospel but we have gotten to know several youth who will be helping us out with VBS. They understand a little bit of English…we understand no Romanian…trying to converse can be a little frustrating but it’s pretty neat talking with what little English they know then using the translators.

Well it’s about mid night here so I’m off to bed soon hopefully and the real fun begins tomorrow! Please keep us in your prayers!

As they say in Romania, Chow. (spelling?)

30 Minutes in Romania

First, about the title. Einstein said time was relative but I never really understood that until I began the last leg of our journey here. This leg consisted of a 6 hour bus ride to our destination. The roads in Hungry were better than they are back home but as soon as we entered into Romania the roads suddenly became 10x worse than kings church road when the dump was still in operation. The classic question of  ‘how much longer till we get there?’ came up many times… the response was always along the lines of ‘ehh, about 30 more minutes or something like that’. This response came from one of our translators who claims he is from Romania, but judging by his responses to our many questions we are no longer certain of this.

Some of the following may or may not make any sense.

30 hours of travel with no sleep is tough. People look younger here. They stack hay on poles instead of baling it. Light switches are on the outside of rooms. Language barriers are hard to cross while trying to make connections to share the gospel. The Internet is amazing (skype, facebook chat, ect). Don’t smile at people you don’t know in Romania. Food is good here. Ice is rare. “For-Tuna” means storm. Order water “with no gas”.

Enough with the random facts… even though their are many of them!

Today was mainly a prep day but tomorrow we start VBS for 50-75 kids. I am very excited about it! I preach on Monday to a group of teens. I am weary about it because I have no idea how to relate to these people or speak their language. But, I hope in being faithful to God’s calling, His Spirit will do the speaking and all I will have to do is show up as prepared as I can be.

Sorry for not writing as eloquently as is my custom. It is hard to put so much into so few words. Also, excuse any spelling or grammar errors; very tired and drowsy.

PS. We’re all sitting here, slap happy, laughing at John Harlan. lol!

Questioning the Ways of God

The Lord works in mysterious ways, we all know it, we all see it, but we sometimes don’t understand it. Tonight Pastor Keith and I prepared to preach a message of hope top a church of believers and the woman whose faithfulness provides a place for the church to meet inside of her home and one other lady who appeared to be a close personal friend of hers were the only ones in attendance and the woman whose home we were in had just had surgery for kidney stones and herself was not actually able to attend.

They were both apologetic, but it amazes me that it just did not matter. That seems odd to say knowing that we are here in Romania to preach the gospel, but was not the gospel preached this day to us through the women who opened their home to a group of pastors who were able to both meet together and also pray for them and each other? The question boils down to, “What is the Gospel, and how is it shared?” Christ often reached out to those who were struggling and did not need large crowds in order to love on people and to aid in and share in their struggles. Was it awkward that no one showed up, yes, but I did not see it as a failure or a problem, but according to God’s sovereignty and Hid purpose, we were faithfully there to serve in that situation. Because of the lack of attendance we were able to pray over this woman, her home, and her generosity, but also to spend time with Pastor Claudu (probably spelled wrong) who is a 30 year old pastor of a church of around 400 here in Baia Mare and encourage him in his current work.

So why do we question God’s ways? Accept the fact that he is God and that he works all thing for the good of the kingdom and be content and satisfied knowing that you were obedient to his word and his will. If you can do that, then you will truly know the joy of serving God. There will always be peaks and valleys in ministry, but we are not judged by the number in attendance in our churches but by the faithfulness by which we serve. In other words we need to not be “in ministry,” but we need to DO Ministry.

The Work Begins

Never fear, we are here. It was a long day of travel. Pastor and Cathy finally joined us at 3:00am, all of our luggage arrived, and God has already been blessing us and we are now with the entire team, translators included. This morning we were challenged by the pastor to recognize the True Jesus and to look past the preconceptions that we often place on who Jesus is in the Bible Belt. We sometimes see Jesus as our personal savior and one whom blesses us but we forget that we are to be sharing that blessing with others. This week we are going to do that, but the challenge is to not leave that in the country of Romania but to bring our service home with us so much that it becomes contagious.

In Luke 5:1-11, Luke tells the story of Jesus instructing the fishermen to fish in the deep when they knew that they should fish on the shallow. In this story we see Peter being faithful to Christ but also we see the pronoun change from the personal “I” to the pronoun “they.” For us the point is that our passion for fishing, for men that is not bass or crappie, should become contagious. God is in control and we need to Radically surrender to the Jesus of the Bible and not of the Bible belt, which often will mean abandoning what we think we know as Peter and the other fishermen had to do in Luke 5, and give authority over to Christ, and possibly with reckless abandon.

Continue to pray for us as the real work begins today.

For those who like pictures, I have uploaded some to Facebook at the link below:

http://www.facebook.com/photos.php?id=1508080875#!/album.php?aid=2065674&id=1508080875

Thank God for his blessings and for the work ahead.