There are so many things that I want to write about from today that I really can't decide what to start with. So, let me start by describing my surroundings right now. I am in a private room with a private bath in a homey inn. The room has a double bed; the bathroom is bigger than my bathroom at home. I'm on the second floor with live modern Romanian folk music pumping up from the restaurant/bar below me. Our team just finished a tremendous meal of spicy pork with mushrooms, potatoes, cucumbers, bread, juice, and ice cream. Yet, we are in the midst of all of this in a little town of a few thousand called Baru Mare. It's described to us as not quite a village, not quite a town. It's really out in the middle of nowhere and quite surreal. Our inn is the only one in town, and our waitress tonight is the wife of the vice-mayor!
Isn't it just like God to bring encouragement right after a time of frustration?! Yesterday brought some frustrations, as I wrote, so we didn't really know what to expect today. The whole trip has been one of figuring out the plans for the day about 24 hours ahead of time. We don't know any of the people we're scheduled to meet with, and they don't really know us. It's been a real faith walk. And yet today was so good.
The day started with Bruce, Florin, and me leaving Brasov for a two hour drive to Sibiu to pick up Dave who went there last night to speak at another military academy. The booking service for the pensione tried to overcharge us by $27 but Florin was watching out for us and corrected the clerk's "mistake." The drive to Sibiu was really pretty but bone-jarring on terrible roads. We passed countless peasants working in fields in traditional dress or driving around on horse carts. We arrived at Sibiu around 10:30, picked up Dave and headed to Deva, our next scheduled stop. Along the way, the throttle cable of the van broke twice. We finally fixed it with some strategically placed packing tape that we had stuck in my suitcase upon leaving Norfolk! Deva was a really pleasant little city of about 75,000. We had lunch in a fancy restaurant with the County President, City President, County Vice-President, and County Secretary of the Christian Democratic Party. Two of them pretended to be interested in what we discussed with them, but it was pretty apparent that they really only wanted business investments. The County President was great, though, and he is genuinely interested about teaching and changing the Romanian culture through principles like the ones we bring.
When we first got to lunch, a reporter and cameraman from the local TV station were there to interview us. Look, honey, I'm on TV! They taped about a minute of interview footage and asked questions about us for about twenty minutes. It's supposed to air tomorrow evening. Interesting, huh?!
After lunch, the County and City President led us, along with a member of the Christian Democratic Youth Party up to the citadel overlooking the city. It sits on a hill 500 feet above the city and was built in the 14th century. But it was blown up accidentally by the townspeople in the mid-1800s! Oops. Anyway, the ruins were cool and the views were spectacular. Plus, we got a good look at the Romanian national gymnastics training academy which is in Deva. Pretty cool!
We left Deva to head to Baru Mare where we are now and wondered if the meeting we had just had was genuine or profitable at all. We had a real sense that the County President, Emil Danci, was a Christian and genuinely interested and simply set our sights ahead to meeting the mayor of Baru Mare, Daniel Raducanu. Well, about 2/3 of the way to Bare Maru, Florin got a phone call from Emil who was in a car directly behind us. He got in our van and led us the rest of the way to Baru Mare. I talked to him a little bit about the Party, and he joined us for dinner. We really like him; he's the real deal.
Dani Raducanu! What a breath of fresh air! He is the mayor of Baru Mare but also a pastor and evangelist. He just returned on Thursday from a one month vacation in the States where he had an invitation to remain and take a pastorate. He turned it down because he was born and raised in the Baru Mare area and knows that God has called him to be mayor and minister here in Romania. As he started to share about his town and his view of governance and ministry, I really felt like God was saying to me, "This is the guy for Romania." By that, I mean that Dani is the guy that gets it, Biblical worldview, here and that we can work with to do great things for the Lord! It was so encouraging. And this feeling came before Bruce even began to share about us and what we teach. That just brought further agreement, and I think that Dani and we were getting more pumped up the longer we talked. We will be meeting again tomorrow morning before heading on to Timisoara. I can't wait to see what God has in store for our partnership with him. What a tremendous encouragement after a rather unsure last 24 hours!
More to come...
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