Romania Phase 2

The time between the mission trips (what I call Phase 2 of my short 5 weeks in Romania) is coming to an end.
The second mission trip team (from Faith Bible Church) is flying out of DFW today and will arrive in Budapest tomorrow morning.

Father of the friendless,
You have guided me and taught me; You are my Mentor, my Manager. You are my truest, most trusted Friend. when i see or think about the children who have no one to take their side, to protect them, i am grieved to the point of anger; however, You are the One Who advocates for those children; therefore, anyone who hurts those children should tremble because of the retribution that will come to them. Father, You are a loving God; therefore, You will hurt those who hurt the ones You love.

the One Who holds the hand of the timid,
grant peace to the mission team from Faith during the flight and throughout the duration of the trip. cause them to trust You. instead of them trying to control what they do "for You," may they abide in Your love, and out of the overflow of their joy in Your love may there come glories unknowable.

These past weeks in Romania have been a great learning experience for me. I had very little understanding of the culture and needs of Romania in the past three trips here. Although I still have a very limited understanding, I am not as blind as I was before.

Last evening, a Romanian pastor told me that there were three great issues in Romania:

• traditionalism (a refusal to change)
• post-communism
• orthodoxy (The Eastern Orthodox church doesn't promote the gospel.)

So, I am obtaining a broader understanding.
I am also seeing the need first-hand: beggars (children, women with babies, men with obvious injuries) are often found where traffic must stop (for a train or construction). To the unaccostomed American eye, this is an easy problem to spot. There are also misconceptions as well as prejudices in the country -- such as the extreme prejudice against the Roma (the politically correct term for Gypsies, which is a derogatory term here). The sheer number and treatment of stray dogs in Romania is amazing.
Most of my time has been spent in the villages, which have a totally different set of problems than the cities (I have been told -- again, my knowledge is limited).

Being driven across the whole country to meet and stay with various people has been a major theme of Phase 2. I am sooo thankful to my heavenly Daddy that I have not gotten car sick. (God, i pray that none of the Faith team will get car sick.) We drove north to Baia Mare to meet with a pastor there; back to the Arad area where we attended a friend's wedding and helped with a VBS; west of Timisoara to visit RED Page Ministries; back to Arad; then all the way to the Black Sea on the opposite side of  the county for a family retreat with BIG Impact.

I praise God for the time at the Black Sea because He refreshed me there. I was tired and edgy. Sometimes it's easy to do things "for" God while completely ignoring Him. At the sea, I was able to spend time with God instead of running around trying to make everybody happy.

Other thoughts about the Black Sea beach: I once thought Americans had no shame; then I visited a beach in Europe. I'm pretty sure that's all I can say about that.

I will post pictures of the mission later.

That's it for now, all you lovely people!