Day 1

Day one was mostly driving, but even so we saw how God was in control. We took extra precautions before we left to make sure we wouldn’t have any trouble getting our visas and getting across the boarder. Now, keep in mind we had 17 people in two vans with maybe 6 different passport countries (USA, Korea, Costa Rica, Namibia, Nigeria, Switzerland). People looked at us funny. The guard took all our passports and we sat for 2 and a half hours! Cheryl, another adult on the team, decided to go in and see what the hold up was. Well, the scanners weren’t working so they were entering them in by hand. Costa Rica wasn’t on the drop down menu. The man asked Cheryl if she thinks it would be ok if he put Dominican Republic. “No! That’s a totally different place!” was her reply. So, we wait some more and a man comes out speaking some Romanian, some English, and some German. Something about “two years…two years,” he was shouting. We had no idea what he was talking about but he was holding a green card of one of our students saying he couldn’t go in to Romania. I’m not really sure what happened, but eventually he said we could go in but he couldn’t guarantee us we could get him back out of the country. Ha! Well we said, “Great!” And we entered Romania, a little nervous about what would happen on our way out! But we all got our stamps and off we went.

We decided to take a new route this year…one that took us off the beaten path…one that had pot holes the size you could swim in...and one that didn’t have a McDonalds. Surely we’d find some place to eat…we drove and drove and then we decided we’d settle for just a place we could pee! We stopped at a gas station but the toilet was broken, so we used the bushes. Then we went back on the road to try and find a place to eat. We pulled into a Romanian restaurant where they did not speak English. They had to call some friends on the phone to translate for us but they ended up taking Euro and they ended up cooking some delicious sausage and bread for us. It tasted great and the price was great. Even BETTER than McDonalds. God is good!

After a short while in the van Doug called us, told us even the missionaries get lost going the way we came and he drove out to meet us and lead us to the place. God knew our path before we did and supplied our every need. We knew He must have some great things in store for this trip!