I'm doing the first 2 days together because they have completely run together for us. We have not slept, other than a fitful nap on the various flights, (and not even that for most) since we left St. Louis on Thursday at 7 AM. That was over 30 hours ago. We lost pretty much a full day in transit as it is now 10:30 PM in Romania.
We flew from STL to Chicago to Munich to Bucharest for a total in transit time of around 20 hours in the air and then had a couple of hours left in vans to reach Campina, and Pastor Vasile's home--our final destination. The travel was more or less uneventful once we got Bruce and Conner back off of the plane to Toronto that they mistakenly boarded while we were in St. Louis. Also, after last year's team arrived in Bucharest with none of their checked bags, we were only missing one--Ken's bag with his clothes in it. Fortunately, we all packed an extra change of clothes in our carry on bags for just such a contingency. So long as his bag catches up to us tomorrow, he will be fine. Of the 12 of us on the trip, 3 have been here before and 9 of us are 'newbies'. But the pastor and his family have taken us in as if we are lifelong friends. They are wonderful people with great hearts for God.
Once we arrived at the Vasiles' home around 3:00 PM local time, we unloaded our stuff, claimed our rooms and had a brief meeting with the team. Many of us grabbed quick naps prior to supper at 6:00. It was a great meal, nothing exotic or out of the ordinary except that we had fresh peaches that were delicious.
After the meal several of us went out into the neighborhood where they live and passed out flyers for an upcoming evangelistic event that a cooperative of local evangelical churches have organized. We were accompanied by his younger son and daughter, Christina (16) and Timmy (13). We were out for a couple of hours and walked quite a distance. We met a lot of people and most of them were quite nice. I learned some Romanian words from Christina, which I used haltingly during my meeting with the locals. Josh used them quite freely and with a fair amount of comic effect. Especially when he stopped at a home along the way and bought a watermelon from a man who was selling them in his yard. Very funny stuff.
We are readying for bed (thankfully) after having met with an American missionary who lives in Bucharest. He stopped by to see Pastor Vasile and Bruce and Lucy. We had more cookies, fresh pears from the family's tree out back and Josh's watermelon to top it off. We are exhausted and happy. Tomorrow we do some sight-seeing (hopefully to Dracula's castle) and then on Sunday we will help with church services in 3 of the local village church plants. I will be speaking at Miner Village, Bruce at one of the others and Chris at a third. Then we will all attend the main joint service with the local churches in Campina.
Click this link to view photos of the first couple of days-- http://picasaweb.google.com/mcarojcc/Romania2008
God bless...please pray for us. I am going to try and post some pics, but that may or may not work out. If they are not available on the blog, I will also have then on facebook.
Mike
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