An Excellent Day

Tonight, I am looking at Serbia. Kind of a fun thing to say. My hotel room here in Drobeta Turnu-Severin has an amazing view complete with red-roofed buildings, the Danube river, the shores of Serbia in the background, and beautiful flowering trees in the foreground. Apparently this town is known for its gorgeous parks, and I can see why...but I get ahead of myself.

the view from my hotel room window

I don't think today could have gone any more perfectly.  To begin with, I met at the church in Draganesti at 8 am for prayer with some of the women, and it was such a sweet time. There were some ladies I've already met – the pastor's wife and daughter, and a Canadian-Romanian woman named Dorothy, but there were also some older ladies from the church. They meet every weekday from 8-9 to pray, but Fridays are specifically devoted to giving thanks. We each thanked God for His work this past week, then took turns reading from the Psalms. Then we sang some songs, and they invited me to share a testimony of God's faithfulness. It was so sweet to see ladies who were strangers at 8am be no-longer-strangers by 8:45. The pastor's daughter, Veronica, who is about my age, invited me to join her in some house visits with 2 other American missionaries who had just gotten to town. Before I could do that, though, the pastor came down and invited me to their weekly staff meeting upstairs. I got to introduce myself to everyone, tell about my history (and possible future!) with ministry in Romania, and they prayed for me. Then I hurried back to the missions house to clean up and pack before meeting Veronica (Vera) and one of the American missionaries, Bob (Can you think of any name more American than Bob?).

Bob, Vera, and I went to the house of a man named Vasile. He lives with 8 other members of his family in 2 very small rooms composing a tiny house. He has learned a lot about Christ and Christianity and has had many conversations with local believers, but had not yet turned to Him in faith. While I mostly prayed and tried to keep his very friendly and inquisitive granddaughter quiet using my limited Romanian vocabulary, Bob and Vera walked Vasile through several passages. By the end of the conversation, Vasile had a new understanding about new birth in Christ, and his prayer at the end of the convo seemed to indicate that a new birth took place! Time will tell if his belief is genuine, but it was an extremely encouraging morning!



Marcel waiting with me at the train station

Ah, so much to say about today! After all of that, we rushed back to the church so I could eat a quick lunch of salmale (a Romanian specialty!) before catching my train. I was nervous about this but so thankful that one of the men from the ministry, Marcel, took me to the train station. He was cheerful and friendly, carried my suitcase, and waited with me in the rain for the train to come while making jokes about the stray dogs having a very important meeting across the tracks. Once I got on the train, I tried speaking Romanian but apparently it was obvious that it wasn't my native language. Sigh. :) A friendly passenger nearby asked if I spoke English or German (Ugh, I WISH I could speak 3 languages like he can!) and was my helper for the rest of the trip. He was so kind and made the trip a lot of fun, and I was especially thankful for a strapping young man to hoist my heavy suitcase up onto the luggage rack. :) I wish I took his picture, he was such a blessing.



View from the train - that's the front of my train on the right

The journey was beautiful – I wasn't bored once – and my arrival here was pretty seamless. I had to catch my breath at the train station when I realized that the 9 minute walk to my hotel through a park, which seemed so pleasant when I'd read about it, was actually 9 minutes through a park...and up a hill. I was exhausted when I got to my hotel, after lugging all my things up steps and slopes, but it was worth it. I love this hotel, and this city so far. My evening journey on foot to find dinner ended with just a lot of touristy pictures, and no dinner at all, but I found a peach nectar drink in the mini-fridge and ate some crackers and peanut butter from home. I'm glad they made me eat a lot of salmale at lunchtime!

just a tiny taste of the beautiful flowers all over this town

a memorial of some kind.  I don't really understand what it says, but it is right next to my hotel

That's all for tonight, I'm going to gaze out the window at the river and at Serbia a little bit more, and then it's early to bed for me!

making a strange face because the lion is making a strange face