Romania Trip -- Part 2

The second half of our trip to Romania was busy and profitable. Thursday we spent with our teammate Felicia Oana. She showed us around the city of Oradea, a city of around 300,000 people. We enjoyed seeing the old, historic buildings and interesting sites. Particularly interesting was the university in Oradea. She took us on campus where we got to see the opportunities first hand. The university is one of about 30,000 students. The Oanas have a specific burden for this group of young people hoping to have help reaching out to them. The ministry would entail weekly Bible studies and activities on and off campus. What a great opportunity is here. We also got to go to the Oana's church (Maranatha Baptist) later that evening for their mid-week Bible study. That was a good opportunity to spend with the young people and share our testimonies with them.

Friday was busy as we visited a children's hospital in Oradea where some abandoned babies are kept. We got to hold and feed these adorable babies. This was a bitter sweet experience as it was hard to leave them in such lonely and not-so-ideal conditions. I don't think we'll soon forget that experience. That night we went to another Romanian house for dinner. Luci and Nellu were so gracious and more than filled our stomachs. We had three courses, and each one was enough to fill us. We kindly ate the first course, telling them how much we liked it. It was a sort of breakfast pizza with veggies and chesse on it along with cheese-stuffed veggies. Then, to our surprise, here comes the second course, which was meat and potatoes. Even though I was stuffed from the first course, I had to try the potatoes (you know, potatoes are the reason I'm going to Romania). They were great!! Then came dessert, which, if you know European desserts, did not slide down too easily. After dinner, they taught us how to sing "Trust and Obey" in Romanian, so we could sing it with them in church on Sunday. It was a good time.

Well, if I go through every day, we could be here longer than we wish. So, I will just hit a couple more highlights. Sunday was a great day in three services again. We were exhausted, but enjoyed meeting new people and seeing other Gypsy works. The highlight, or rather lowlight, for Sunday was that I forgot the camera! Can you believe it!? We commented that this was about as bad as forgetting your underwear. In fact, it was worse! But anyway, the Lord is sovereign, and I probably enjoyed the day a little more as I wasn't always worrying about catching every moment on the cameras.

Monday evening we got to spend with our teammates, the Finks. This was a great time. They are great people, and we really connected with them as we shared our hearts with each other.

It is good to be home, but we praise the Lord for allowing us to take this trip. It really gave us something to look forward to and a reason to get on the ball with the deputation process. As we have said so many times, we praise the Lord for the privilege it is to serve Him. His grace is amazing to us, every day.
Travis