March 6th-8th 2020 - found and published in June 2021 :)

It’s strange to be back in this place again.  But mostly, it’s strange because it isn’t strange, not anymore.  Having only returned from here less than 5 months ago, in some ways it feels I never left.  The things I do notice are things I’d notice in my hometown – a new construction project has begun, for example, which may finally provide the train connecting the airport to the rest of the city and country.

The city is Bucharest.  The country is Romania.  This country has held a piece of my heart ever since a presentation in my church while I was in college flashed pictures of babies with disabilities living in cribs, of older kids with disabilities still living in cribs, and I wanted to be there, to do something.  That impulsive desire matured over several months and became a desire simply to serve God with my last summer of college, and he chose to send me to Romania for 2 weeks to do just that.  Only 2 weeks.  I felt guilty at the time: I promised God my whole summer, and I’m giving him 2 weeks? But a wise friend said to me, “Do you not think God can do something in 2 weeks?” 

Do something He did.  I found those kids in cribs, and I loved them as I’d expected to, and I brightened their days in ways that would probably soon be forgotten.  What would not be forgotten, though, was the impact that the people of Romania had on me, and the impact that that trip had on my belief in a God who was bigger than I’d previously known Him to be.  I watched Christian women do every day what I came to do for a few days – give true, nurturing, lasting care to kids that the world had abandoned.  I talked to young men only slightly older than me (yes, I too was young at the time) who told me of a childhood vastly different than mine.  In the year I’d attended kindergarten, walking to my neighborhood school in the suburbs of Phoenix and enjoying playdates with my friends, they’d watched their country come to a bloody revolution that ended a brutal dictatorship.  While my family had skipped church services altogether in favor of a favorite family tradition of Sunday morning hikes, Christian families in Romania had met secretly, risking prison terms or even death if they were found out.  These men told me stories that opened my eyes.  Oh, and the singing!  When I first heard people sing praise songs in Romanian, something obvious finally sunk in with me: Jesus was not American.  Worshiping him was not an American tradition adopted by other countries. Of course I’d known these things in my head all along, but knowing them in my heart, that was different.  God was…big! His church was so diverse, his people so multi-faceted.  I watched a man sing Amazing Grace (Maretul Har) in his congregation.  He was an old man, and it struck me that this was probably a man who’d worshipped in secret during the height of communist oppression.  You could see in his eyes that he would never again take for granted the privilege it was to worship freely.

Oh, I could go on for page after page about that first trip.  And the second and 3^rd.  Oh, and then the 4^th and 5^th and 6^th.  The 7^th was important also, and the 8^th was wonderful.  And here I am on the 9^th visit.  In so many ways, of course, I have changed since that first trip 15 years ago, but in so many ways I am the same.  And the characters here, they have been the same since trip 4.  In fact, one character from trip 1 made an appearance on my way to trip 9, and this was impactful also.  But today, I sit in a car next to a friend who came to pick me up at the airport.  He does this a lot – for me, for the teams I’ve come with, for other visitors, for his local friends.  We’ve done this before – him driving capably through traffic and windy roads, me making small talk, offering snacks, and eventually just settling in for the long journey.

It is strange to have a second home here.  More than once, I’ve considered, and worked toward, making it my HOME home – the place that I live.  And yet, so far, this hasn’t been my story.  Instead my story has been these visits – visits to a place I love.  Visits in which each year my language skills are a little better, but also each year I remember the tower of Babel and the confusion it successfully accomplished. Visits in which I spend time with faithful men and women who love Jesus and love their countrymen, and who live this out in ways I haven’t quite found in the States.  Visits in which I smile at the little things I love – the unique haystacks, the old women sitting on benches in front of their homes, the sheep that interrupt traffic in ways I find quaint, the street signs that still warn, and rightfully so, of horse-drawn carts entering the road.  I keep coming back.  This time feels different, and yet the same.  And tonight, as I sit in the home of these dear friends that make up such an important part of each of my recent years, I have the rare opportunity to process, just a little, the thoughts that swirl in my tired brain as I reacclimate to this place, to these people, to that part of my heart that first came alive seeing those troubling pictures so many years ago.

Some moments to reflect on today (March 8):

I took a walk this morning.  Not just because I felt like walking, but because I’ve been carrying only American money aside from some crumpled up lei, and it was high time I exchanged some.  It was the perfect plan: Go straight to the money exchange, then grab a vending machine cappuccino from the little store across the street from the church on the way back.  And unlike most perfect plans, this one actually worked out perfectly, with added bonuses: the quaintness of seeing a horse “parked” in front of the local restaurant with his cart full of corn stalks while his owner was presumably inside.  Seeing boys from last night’s youth meeting (in their attention-drawing “USA” sweatshirts) and reflecting once more on how sweet small towns are for just running into known people on the road.  And as I was preparing to walk home, being offered a ride by a friend who’d stopped at the church. 

Church this morning was in a storage container.  Oh, I love this place.  During my first trip to southern Romania in 2016, I was introduced to the village of Maruntei and to my sweet friends Tavi and Nicoleta, who were diligently ministering there.  There were no known believers in their town, and the work was hard.  We walked in pouring rain and asked for neighbors to let us in.  We talked about the Lord with these neighbors, told testimonies, read scripture, and sang songs.  It was beautiful.  They told me then how they were praying for a building in which they could hold church meetings.  And now…there’s a storage container!  Another short-term missionary purchased it for them, after the sudden passing of his wife.  Instead of flowers at her funeral, people contributed to the needs of a far-away church in southern Romania, and so now there is a cozy, warm shipping container in which the word of God is faithfully preached each week and people gather for worship.  To watch my friend preach there, remembering his prayers from years before, was such an encouragement to my soul.

And then I met with Dorothy.  Sweet Dorothy is such a special gift to the women in this area – both believers and nonbelievers alike.  She has a unique talent for encouraging people – for knowing who needs it and how they best receive it, for bringing little tokens of her love to women who might feel ignored or abandoned or who are hurting.  And today, we met a woman whose pain was so keenly felt.  She suffers from chronic and extreme pain, and as we talked she shifted multiple times from gut-wrenching sobs to cheerful laughter.  She was a dramatic story teller, and her face held such a range of emotions and experiences.  I told her, in my limited Romanian, that I could see the joy of the Lord on her face, and that it was evident that it was God’s grace in her life.  She wept more.  She showed me other encouraging truths she’d been pondering and said that what I had said was a response to those truths.  She hugged me hard and well.  We both cried.  She had me type it into her phone so she could remember what I’d said.  Before I left, she showed me the dress she’d like to be buried in.  She loves it so much that she wanted our pictures to include it and had to be reminded that we also wanted to see her face. 

Worship tonight in Draganesti – hard to express how meaningful this is every. Single. Year. God is faithful to these people.  They are faithful in their obedience.   Their worship fills the room. The truths on the screen, in a language that both enamors and mystifies me, in these moments lead me also to worship well.  One song sang a reprise of trusting that God is working even when we don’t feel his nearness.  I cried some more.  I received so many hugs and kisses tonight that the CDC and WHO would have screamed at the room to stop at once.  But they weren’t there, and I felt so well-loved.