Marghita

Okay, so today I did a search on "Marghita, Romania" online with google. One of my teammates told me today thathe had heard that if he wanted the latest on Marghita that he should be checking out my blog. I started laughing and asked him what he had heard about it? He said that our computer guy noticed that my blogspot was one of the first things to come up when searching for Marghita, Romania. Well, I haven't found that to be true as I just tried it right now and didn't find my blog anywhere. But, I did find something that made me laugh. Maybe it shouldn't have but apparently the Mayor's house is starting a website for our little town here. And, of course there is some sort of techno music to accompany the opening page. Which, is all that is available to see right now. But, what is fun for you guys is that there is a great shot of Marghita on the opening page. So, click below and you can see a view of Marghita.

http://www.marghitaonline.ro

Sunshine!

The sun is out OUT! After a straight week of rain we finally have sun. It's about time, thank You Jesus. Actually I feel that Jesus is shining Himself all over the place today. I have visitors from my mission organization here right no, checking up on how I am and what I'm doing here....they've been here less than 24 hours and already I am in awe of how God uses them in their ministry of doing these 'check-ups.' And, today I took them over to Casa Alba to do some worship time with the kids. Caleb and I have been battling colds this week so I wasn't over there for my usual days during the week. But, we headed over this morning and it was incredible. The Lord gave me another song for the kids and I tested it out on them today. It went over really well and I especially like this song because it's almost 100% scripture, and it brings back the theme of being a soldier for Jesus. If you remember, that was what the kids learned about this summer at camp!
When God gives me songs for these kids I feel so honored and when you see what He does with these songs with them in their worship....let's just say, as I said before, Jesus was shining everywhere today!

Auntie Anne's Pretzels take over Marghita!

I found a recipe online today for Auntie Anne's pretzels. No way did I imagine they would turn out EXACTLY like the ones you buy in the mall. I was so excited...so was Caleb. He is a real 'dough' fan because when Mom makes dough he can make "snakies" out of it.
Here are some pictures of him chowing down just before nap time!

Road Conditions

Are horrible in my area of Romania. They are actually the worst in all of the Romania. Our half-decent road from Marghita to Oradea has turned into a mine field over the past couple of months. They are building an expressway through all of Romania, Marghita will have its own exit ramp!!, and all of these huge trucks are on this road now, destroying it with their weight as they deliver supplies to where this expressway is being built. During the day time you can do 'okay' but at night it's really stressful. Every Tues. I head to church in Oradea for prayer night. Last night it was pouring rain and I drove really slow on the way back knowing that the potholes would be looming around every turn! They were, of course, and I avoided every single one...almost that is. 10 minutes outside of Marghita I began thinking of how awesome it was that I made it without hitting a pothole and how happy my car was that I didn't hit one either! Then, SLAM! SLAM! and I had a flat tire. Thankfully one of my team members was able to drive out to me pretty quickly and change it for me. Although, I don't understand why, when I was waiting for him to get there, every car that passed me going the other direction flashed their brights at me. Or, why 1 truck driver rolled down his window and started yelling at me. I had my emergency flashers anon and I had pulled over onto the shoulder. Probably some random rule I don't know about!

Kind of random, but on the way home from church Sunday the following picture was in front of us on the road.




I really believe that there is a cloud of depression, exhaustion and mistrust that is constantly hanging over Marghita. How do I know? As soon as I drive out of this town I immediately feel a difference in my spirit. There isn't need to fight and struggle so hard, it's a complete sense of freedom in many ways. At church on Sunday I felt so free in my love for Jesus, so free in His presence, so free in tasting of His joy and teaching and words. But it just wasn't this Sunday that I experienced this, it's every Sunday and every Tuesday that I am there. Why was I so stubborn to join into a body like this for my first 2 years here? Stupidity really. Stupidity that drained what God had built and stocked up in my heart to sustain me here. And it was drained fast, let me tell you. I wonder how different it would have been had I been in this church from the start?

How awesome is this?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/6988551.stm

This story blew me away. Or, I shouldn't say the story did, more like this family did. Or more like hello God blew me away when reading this tory.
It can't be easy, that's for sure, but if God called me to do something like this I totally would. Praise God for this family that chose servant-hood over comfort, may Jesus make my heart the same. Pretty convicting I think.

Sarmale

So finally, after over 3 years of living here, I have learned to make one of the staple Romanian foods : Sarmale. They are cabbage rolls stuffed with ground meat and rice. They are then slow cooked for as long as you can stand the smell before digging in : )
What is fun is that I learned 2 different recipes. Last Wednesday I learned from a Hungariain friend in town and on Friday a Romanian woman came to teach us volunteers to make them. I participated Friday because I thought it would be interesting to see any changes in recipes between the cultures. And, there were a lot of differences actually.
Anyway, definitely fun and I love sarmale so now I can make them whenever I want! Come and visit and I'll make them for you too!

Eastern Europe's "Lines"

So I've heard from others in Eastern Europe that lines are pretty much commonplace where they live too. You may think you understand what a line is from a Saturday morning visit to Kroger. I'm sorry to tell you that your 'long line' definition would be considered an express lane here.
Romanians are especially used to long lines. During Communism they would hear rumors of a truck coming with some sort of item. Not knowing if they actually had a voucher for that item or not they would arrive in the middle of the night to stand in line for hours until that truck arrived. Then the truck would start unloading and the people, out of obvious desperation, would swamp the truck hoping to be one of the lucky few to actually get it. Some aspects of this are still seen every day.

1. For instance, the lack of personal space and crowding. When you stand in line at the ATM it's more of a crowd around the ATM. And, more than likely I'll get handed a few ATM cards from new users who don't know how to do it and need me to make the transaction for them. Of course this doesn't happen everyday but I promise you it has happened on several occasions.

2. The hours waiting. Let's take today for an example. I had to go today and get all of the paperwork done and inspections done on the car I bought because the registration for the car was only good through today. It was today or never pretty much. Normally I wouldn't do this by myself, ever, but our car guy wasn't able to come with me. So, I loaded Caleb up and decided that it couldn't be that long of a deal since I had made an appointment last Friday for 10:30am this morning. Do you know how long I waited, or I should say Caleba nd I waited, in line for this to be done? FOUR HOURS! Do you know how many cars were in line ahead of me? SIX! And, I should mention, 1 big truck. But honestly people FOUR HOURS with a three year old in a little car for this to be done. And, we are in Oradea - over an hour away from Marghita. Did I bring lunch for Caleb? Did I bring extra drinks to last over the 4 hours? Of course not. I mean I had brought stuff for the morning when we were on the road but a 10:30am appt. should have put us back in Marghita before lunchtime. I definitely did not anticipate a 4 hour line, that's for sure.

3. Not enough for everyone. How did this play out today? Well, because I didn't bribe the people working there I didn't get put in the "fast line." The "fast line" was full of the most expensive cars that Romania has on its streets. Those guys just showed up, were put in that line, and gone a 1/2 hour later. Although I didn't see bribes changing hands sadly you know it's the only reason why it was working that way for them. And, because I had to wait so long they weren't able to get my paperwork done before they closed at 4pm. That means I have to go back tomorrow morning at either (meaning it may or may not be ready at the following times) 10am, 11am or 12pm or 1pm. I about lost it when I heard that. It's not easy to just grab a car and drive 1 1/2 hours to this office with a 3 year old who already missed his nap in a 4 hour line the day before.

Thankfully though, I did get a car to drive and pick up the papers tomorrow. Get this, the office is only open every 15 min...more interesting info for you. Caleb will be getting a HUGE "special special" for his incredible putting up with all of this. God certainly graced me today when I had an extremely HAPPY boy during out entire time today. Even when missing his nap time! And, halfway through the line I saw a break in the fencing where people could walk out and buy hot dogs and french fries - God provided lunch too!

So our day from start to finish with this specific process was 8:30am to 4:30pm. Remember how bad your line COULD be the next time you get ticked at waiting 15 minutes at the grocery store. Take a deep breath and smile - give a shout, whatever! Celebrate your short line!

Now I'm hitting the sack!

Prayer and Faith

Today at church one of the pastor's sons preached from Mark. It's the passage that talks about the woman touching Jesus' robe and instantly being healed and also Jesus bringing Jairus' daughter back to life.
You know what struck me the most from this passage that I hadn't noticed before? It was that the woman who had been bleeding for 12 years had been to doctors and instead of getting better she got worse. Yet, when she touched Jesus' robe she was immediately healed.
I'm not against doctors at all - you can ask anyone on my team here. I'm always telling them to go get the hook-up on antibiotics so that I don't get sick from whatever they have. And, I have an entire "pharmacy" in my pantry that is used by my team everyweek. My cousin is a doctor, one of my closest friends is a nurse. I'm a fan of doctors. Believe me. So I'm not trying to say that it was the doctor's faults that this woman wasn't healed through their efforts or mediciations, or that we should ban all doctors because of this passage in scripture. No, definitely not saying that.
What I am saying is that we allow ourselves to think that our doctors and their treatments are it for us sometimes. If the doctor says 3 weeks to live then we more often than not just see the three weeks. God is so much bigger than that. He can heal - just this woman touching his cloak completely healed her.
I think I've been thinking about this more often than not lately because one of my neighbor's has been given this same diagnosis. He has tumors up and down his spine and his battle with cancer has been over a few years now. His wife came to me last week asking if I could get her a wheelchair for him, he can barely walk. She told me that he wouldn't need the wheelchair for very long because he's not expected to live very long. I asked her, after dropping a wheelchair off this weekend, what else I could do for them. She said that there was nothing - all they needed was this wheelchair and 'health'. I told her we will pray for that but after today's sermon I think I need to make a more active commitment of that. If I can bring Jesus' cloak to them and if they will just touch it - I believe this man's diagnosis can turn IMMEDIATELY around.
Please pray for me as I really want to have the courage and faith to do this...

Note to Self : Always bring ice cream to Casa Alba!

Ice Cream Day at Casa Alba!

Yahoo!!!

Isn't it amazing how fast stress can leave you? This freakin' car situation was driving me crazy...and everyone else working on it. But today we finally got down to the bottem of the situation and found out what I was originally told, that YES, it is possible for me to temporarily register the car and drive it back to Romania. Now we just need to pray that the flight leaves and arrives on time in Frankfurt. This weekend a flight from Sweden to Budapest, on the same airline as Courtney and I are taking tomorrow, was delayed like 14 hours or something. That wasn't the only case with this airline last week! Most of you reading this will be starting your work days right when our flight is about to leave from Budapest. Could you please pray on your way into work for this flight to leave on time?

Problems, problems....

That seems to be my life here. Small problem after small problem after small problem. For instance, my adoption process with Caleb - everyone else's is moving along just fine and then Romania says they won't let me do the same as them because it's illegal. What? It is legal, just for me apparently it's not. Okay, that's just 1 example to introduce the car issues that are happening right now. Every car I tried to buy since last June fell through. We are talking multiple cars almost every week. It was getting pretty frustrating but then God provided a car. Yay!
Next step was to transfer the money. That took a couple of weeks of small problems again in order to figure out how to do that transfer correctly. The transfer went through but by the time it did the US dollar had fallen so low since when I had tried to originally do the transfer that my car was $240 more expensive. Arrghghgh! But, God provided someone to pay that $240 - really unexpected and really awesome. Then came buying the airplane tickets to go and pick the car up in Germany. Right in the middle of the ticket transaction online the airline decided to change the ticket price. They made me start over from the beginning and the tickets were like $40 more expensive! So, I had to re-work schedules etc.. and instead bought tickets for this Wednesday. Small problems but I was thankful because these tickets were even cheaper than the original price of Monday's. God even provided someone to go out with me and help drive the car back so I wouldn't have to do that long drive alone. Weeks ago before buying this car I made sure that I would be able to temporarily register the car in Germany. This would allow me to then permanently register the car here in Romania. Well today I found out that for some reason the offices are saying in Germany that they will not allow me to do this. Aarghghg!
There has to be a way around this because Romanians go all the time and bring back German cars. And, I was told that this would be possible from our car registration expert guys here. In fact the one guy even called the head of the Romanian version of the DMV to double check that what I wanted to do would be possible. They said yes. Germany is saying No. Aaghghgh Small problems!
What it comes down to is this - I have my airline tickets bought, I have babysittters worked out for Caleb, I have the time off from work here to do this from my boss and now I can't go and get the car? Pleae pray that Jesus will make a way here! I believe that He can overcome these small problems that seem to mark my life here. I say "seem" because that is what Satan would want me to believe more than the power of Jesus. I believe that this car can be given to me on Thursday morning with the proper registration to drive it across the borders of Germany, Austria, Hungary and Romania. I believe that there are those involved in this process who need to see that God is alive and that God is involved in the minutes of everyday. I believe that through this situation He will show those people that and that they will know that God is GOD!
Please fight through and for this situation in prayer for this to happen. Maybe it doesn't seem like much to you- oh it's just a car. But I tell you that there is much more to this than just a car