Romania 2008

This was my first time in Romania. I flew to the Southern part and stayed in Bucharest, the capital. I remember before ever living over here that I used to get Budapest and Bucharest confused. There is no confusion once you've seen these cities. Budapest is absolutely stunning. Bucharest is quite impoverished still, thanks to the communist leader Nicolaeu C.

I went to Bucharest this weekend to meet with Ryan, the international director for a student missions organization that I am looking to work more closely with in the future. Romania has a swelling move of young people who are passionately loving Jesus and also feel called to go to nations in His name. So, Ryan and I stayed at the Pentecostal Theological School Dorms. That was cool. We met a group of great students there who are in their 2nd and 3rd year of study and had a great time hearing their passion.

The Christian culture in the Romanian church where the event was hosted was interesting. I'm always conscious of cultural differences and wanted to be sensitive to that. I'm glad I brought a skirt. I had to wear it when I spoke at the meeting on Saturday because ladies wear dresses and don't normally speak in church. Apparently it was a big deal to have me speak. But this pastor, Immel, was a bit more progressive. The pastor invited us to come and talk on Sunday in his church too and it was four hours long!! Wow. It was hard not to just people watch or work really hard not to take a snoozer, especially since the entire service was in Romanian except when Ryan spoke for 40 minutes and when I gave a brief five minute introduction to the work in Hungary- both of which were translated into Romanian. I think the pastor wanted me to speak longer because when I finished, he sort of looked stunned and brought up someone to do a special song -- I think the special song was a bit impromptu.....oops -- but I didn't have anything else to say. We had already been there for 3 hours. I'm a fan of quitting when you're ahead. I was sort of done. :D

In between the college conference and Sunday service, there were meetings with pastors and leaders across denominations who are working in Romania all talking and meeting together to see about advancing student mission work in Romania. That was cool and it was interesting to watch Ryan work graciously with these men from different organizations and churches. Loved that. Well, I basically had a throbbing headache the entire trip. I"m not complaining about it because I absolutely enjoyed my time there but I just have to explain why I think I had this ongoing headache. There were many reasons for this.

First, the language. It's SOOO different from Hungarian obviously and your brain just has to work overtime when you are in a culture that is not English-speaking. I appreciated the fact that some words in Romanian were familiar just because Romanian is in the same family of languages as Italian and Spanish but my head was still.....spinning.

Second, we ate at random times and really never very well. We started the days early and ended late eating in a way I'm not used to... It just wasn't the best scenario. But, our final afternoon, pastor Immel gave some of the guys from the school money to take Ryan and I to Pizza Hut, sort of as a thank you, so that was awesome!

Third, I realized my complete addiction to coffee. We were completely on our hosts schedule and so whatever they did, we did, wherever they were going, we were going. And no one really seemed to think about coffee. Well, we did ask one morning so we could get through the headache craze and the early morning and so I had a cup of.....coffee. No cream. I don't like sugar normally but I put it in there just to help a bit.

When I got off the plane late Sunday night, it was SOO good to hear Hungarian. And that's just not normal. But on this trip, there were Romanian and Spanish speaking young people and my head was spinning. I kept wanting to respond in Hungarian but that helped no one. Fortunately, many of the Romanians spoke English.

I'm glad I decided not to bring my running shoes. There's really nowhere to run in Romania. It was quite depressing to see the streets, building, everything. Lots of poverty and I actually found myself a little depressed about that one night when we were driving back to the gated campus. That was rough.

I really enjoyed the trip. Part of this was somewhat like a "scouting" trip for me as well - to talk with Ryan about future plans to work together. It looks like I will be working more and more with Ryan and his wife Kelly and this organization. I'm excited about it and the potential of seeing young people across denominational lines come together and live for Christ in the nations.