Romania 2018: Looking Back, Looking Ahead

One of those strange things about Facebook and other social media is that some of the people who read posts are part of your daily life, your everyday interactions and conversations.  And others are not - you haven't seen them in a few weeks, or months, or years, or maybe a decade, and you value keeping up on their lives, and vice versa, but many of the details are lost. 

And I say all of this because I realize that some of the people reading my posts know my whole Romania story - my long-term history, the decisions I've wrestled with in the past year, and my plans for this leg of my journey.  But some of you only know one part of that, or last got an update a month ago or 6 months ago, or really don't know what my fascination is with Romania but just know that I talk about it an awful lot.  And so, before I head across the ocean and hopefully pick up more frequent blogging, here's a little story.

In 2005, I first went to Romania with a group called International Children's Aid Foundation.  I'd heard about it from a girl from my church, went with a group from New Jersey, stayed 2 weeks, and fell in love with the people and the culture and the language and what God has done and was doing there.  I went back in 2006 for 2 weeks again, doing similar work with a similar team.  I worked with orphans in a private orphanage and in a public one, used some of my emerging music therapy skills (hadn't finished my degree yet) and helped with English clubs and health clinics.

In 2007, I went again, for a month, with 2 friends I'd met through ICAF.  We spent time with the people we'd met on earlier trips and then joined up with an Alege Viata team (the Romanian branch of Campus Crusade for Christ).  I was only falling more in love with all things Romania, and when I came home I began to work toward moving to Romania as a long-term missionary in 08.  For a variety of reasons, this didn't happen, and between 2007 and 2016, my only interactions with Romania were in my prayers, and in my long-distance interactions with friends there, and in my new friendships with Romanians here in Arizona.

In 2016, I was asked to help chaperone a group of students that my friend Derek was taking to Romania on a 1-week mission trip.  The students stayed for 1 week, I stayed for 3, I toured 8 different Romanian cities, and fulfilled the 9-year-old dream of getting back to the country I so deeply loved.  I connected with a different region in Romania than I'd been in previously, and was drawn in by a dear body of local believers working in hard circumstances in a region permeated by a strange combination of witchcraft and orthodoxy.  I was blown away by God's kindness in bringing me there and in causing my life to intersect with the life of Biserica Speranta (Hope Church).  But when questions were asked about me moving there, I froze up.  For some reason, that wasn't what I wanted in 2016.

2017 was the same in many ways and different in others.  I went with the same friend and some of the same students for about the same amount of time to the same church to do some of the same work.  But this time instead of being a tourist, I used my extra couple weeks to build on friendships that had been established in 2016 and to help with ministry.  And when I left, I was pretty sure I wanted to move there again after all. That is the very simplified version of what was going on in my head and heart.

From March to November, I prepared for a possible long-term move to Romania.  And it got really serious this time around - the pastor from Hope Church came and met my pastors and parents, and I told my plans to my employer and got special permission to take a 6-week trip in 2018 and still come back to a job while I raised support to move there more permanently.  But, for reasons WAY too complex for a blog post, I decided at the end of November to step off that path.  

So 2018 has arrived, and I am super excited to go back to Romania, for 3 weeks...and to come home again for probably 49 weeks after that.  I have no idea what the long-term future holds, but I am thankful that God continues to provide the means for me to take now-annual trips to this country so deeply ingrained in my heart...and that the life and relationships and roles and ministries I have here in Arizona are also so precious and worth coming home to.  

If you read this far, bravo.  Now perhaps you know more than you did.  And if nobody read this far, at least I cleared my head a little.  Perhaps my next post will be from across the ocean!