Up Early? Believe it or not!

Most who know me know that I am a night owl and dread mornings, but I find that when I am away from home I am still a night owl, but mornings are actually really easy. I was awake about an hour before my alarm this morning, the sun was shining and it is already hot and muggy, but I am looking forward to the day and the new challenges it will bring.

I was thankful to read the blogs from Cori Beth and Joey since pastor and I are not with the rest of the team it helps to keep up with what they are involved in. This morning we are preaching at the camp and then again tonight. Pray that hearts will be broken for the gospel as this morning at breakfast we observed many in the streets of Baia Mare who were wandering the streets in need of salvation. This is why I am up early, because their is an urgency here for the gospel, but there is also an urgency back home in the states, probably even more so because we have cleverly disguised Christianity with religion and many are just as lost as those we witnessed this morning on the street, perhaps more so.

It is my prayer that we do not lose sight of this when we leave here. It is so easy to find the lost in a culture dominated by years of communism and Greek Orthodoxy, but may the Lord grant us the wisdom to seek out the religious in the states who are hiding amongst us with just as much a false sense of salvation as those who blatantly oppose the gospel. May we be ever vigilant in our efforts to see Jesus’ name made famous in both the US and Romania, but also in the rest of the world. (Acts 1:8)

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.

Almost There?!?

Travel has been quite amazing so far.  No set-backs, but there has been several blessings from God.  One of the first ones we experienced was at the check-in counter in Louisville.  Not only was the US Airway staff (3 of them) doing a great job helping us get checked in, but when it was over, we did not get charged for any of our totes, which should have been $50 a piece since they were considered a 2nd check bag.  The flight from Louisville to Charlotte was uneventful, another blessing, except for John Harlan.  We will let him tell you about the little boy and the blue water.  The flight was great from Charlotte, NC to Munich Germany.  The gentleman sitting next to me was from Jacksonville, FL and was traveling to Greece with 2 other members from his church to check out property as they are starting a church plant in Greece.  He and his wife/kids will be moving to Greece in 2011 as he will be the Senior Pastor at the church plant.  What an amazing God we have!!!  The flight was not full, so we were able to move seats a little.  After “supper” I moved back to the row with my sister as she was the only one in the section of 4 seats.  We were able to “lay” down and sleep just a little.  So we are sitting at the gate in Munich Germany waiting on our last plane boarding routine to take place until we are ready to go home.   We will be traveling to Budapest, Hungary and then getting on a bus to get to Romania.  Share more later.  Isaiah – love you and praying you are having a great night’s rest as it is 2:30am (Central Time) your time as I am writing this.  Have fun this week!!!

Munich Germany

According to my clock it is 9:00am and we are in Munich Germany waiting for our flight to Budapest. It is interesting that we keep getting a “Free Public WiFi” showing up, but we are not able to access the internet on it, go figure, so this is a postdated blog done in Word while sitting in the airport. By the way, according to your clock it is 3:00am EST.

So far so good, no turbulence to speak of and we landed a little early. It seems weird to say that we have traveled over 80% of the distance but according to time we are only half way there. Continue to pray for us and that we will get some sleep soon.

Less than 2 Hours in the States

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We are in Charlotte, NC awaiting a flight to Germany. The trip has begun and already we have been blessed. We knew before we left that we were a little short of money that we were hoping to have to the sum $500. When we arrived at the Louisville Airport we began to check our bags and the 10 totes that we are taking. These totes would cost us $50 a piece. God in his extreme awesomeness, when we checked in our bags and totes expecting to pay for them we were told the computer showed no charge so we did not owe anything. Now you do the math, the total saved=the total needed.

If this is an introduction of what is about to happen then I look forward to the next blog post. Also, the counter worker checking us in at the Lufthansa desk is from Baia Marre, Romania, which is where we are going, so we were able to brighten her day also.

Pray for us and for Cathy for safe travel and preparedness for the next week and a half.

20 Hours

The team is now 20 hours from leaving and already Satan is trying to spoil what God has paved the way for. Pastor has heard from a friend of his about his health and the outcome looks bleak. I know his mind will be with them we are out of the country, but I know that his heart will be with the people of Romania as will be his friend’s for he knows and understands the need of the Word of God to be shared with the world.

I covet your prayers as we travel over the next few days. We will be on the go for 30 hours once we begin our first flight which leaves at 12:15 EST. I think all of us our a little nervous, but it is a different nervousness, more of an excitement because we really do not know what to expect but we are all prepared to allow God to work.

We all should be blogging right here while we are gone so return often for updates and feel free to leave us comments, anything from home is nice when you are out of the country.

We look forward to sharing with you soon.

Romania 2010

This is my 1st post…I have been praying for this trip to be all that God has planned & to help me to not be nervous!  I am not big into travel =)  Right now I think what is the most overwhelming is packing….

kp