Romanian Adventures

It's hard to believe I've been back almost a month already! It's flown by. Seriously. And now that I have internet in my apartment, here I am, blogging for ya!

First, I just want to tell you what an incredible blessing it was to have Ellen here for 3 weeks. She is a young woman who is amazing. We laughed (a lot), experienced the things that just don't happen anywhere else but in rural Romania, we were frustrated at the lack of internet together, and became friends very fast. I must say that I'm really happy knowing that there is someone who loves Romania the way that I do. Come back soon, Ellen! We all miss you. George keeps saying that he loves you and not me. Hahaha.

Look at Ellen rocking that Mission Romania shirt!

My first weekend back, I was very blessed to have my friend Jordan visit. He's been traversing the world for the last couple months, and he was in Budapest, which is only 4 hours from here, so he decided to come visit. I was ecstatic to have him here. He got to experience trying to drive through the cattle drive and me getting hit with a cowtail because my window was down. Jordan, Ellen, and I also went to Ukraine...without a Romanian...The border is just a 15 minute drive from here, so we were like YOLO! (this is an example of the phrase used properly. Hahaha) It was quite the adventure. Let me tell you that. The Romanian border police officer was joking with us asking why in the world we, 3 young Americans, wanted to go to Ukraine. We told him we wanted the stamps in our passports, to get some gas for Fr. Remus' Land Rover, and Jordan wanted a postcard. He laughed and said, "You Americans are crazy. Don't go." So, we got through the neutral space and then through the Ukrainian border and that's when the adventure really began. It all started when we had the old English license plates from the previous owner of the Land Rover in the trunk, which then caused the Ukrainian border police to ask to look at the registration and the VIN number on the car. Turns out there was a typo on the registration and that made them decide to send us back. It was quite an adventure because the border people spoke no English and only one of them spoke a little bit of Romanian. I'm pretty sure I spoke more Romanian than he did. So, we got like 10 feet into Ukraine and we got our stamps. And we have one heck of a story. So, we were happy. When we got back to the Romanian border station, the same guard was there and he was like "Back so fast?" and we told him we had issues with the license plates and without a second of hesitation, he goes, "Told you so" and start cracking up. So, we went to Ukraine and got our passport stamps. That was enough for me. Jordan, thank for an amazing weekend full of laughter and craziness :)

I was recently asked to start blogging for the Archdiocese of Cincinnati's blog "Being Catholic" and I wrote my first post the other day. You can see it here. I hope to be writing for them a couple times a month.

Update on Casa de Copii Don Bosco: the town hall has offered us 3 buildings. They area all schools that are barely in use. We would have to make some major changes to all of them, but we can do it. We hope to find out soon which is the final building they are giving us. Money wise, we're at just over $32,000. So, if you can donate anything at all, even just $5, that helps. You can find a link to the donation page on the top right side of my blog.

As always, please continue to pray for the mission. Prayers are our driving force. I ask especially that you pray for a new missionary. We need another full-time person in the near future to help keep things going. If you know of anyone who would be interested in full time mission work, have them check out the Missions of Hope website (bringhope.org) and consider applying for the mission.

"Expect great things from God; attempt great things for God." -William Carey, missionary to India