Continuation of the story…….

 

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This is the story of how our host in Romania, Cornel Fedor, survived persecution under the communists government.

Part I –  More to come soon!

Physically, one can say that international travel does something to your insides.  For whatever reason, your body is thrown off schedule and doesn’t work right.  2 hours into our flight home, we land at the Munich Airport in Deutschland. Keep in mind we are sleep deprived, woke up at 4AM, I feel nauseated and sick, and the idea of getting on another airplane for 9 hours trans-Atlantic does not sound like “fun”.

So, I’m walking around the terminal in a soul-crushing Eeyore-like mood, saying to God, “God, I don’t know if I can do this. I can’t even stand 9 hours of torture, let alone the 14 hour flight and 9 hour layover that awaits us in trans-Pacific. I don’t even know if I want to go to Thailand anymore. This is hard. Whaaaaaaaaa.” And so forth.

As I’m crying out to the Lord of the Universe in my head in the terminal, I come face-t0-face with another gripping confirmation. In front of me is one of those wall advertisements to cover up whatever storage closet is parked in the middle of the airport. And what country could it be advertising? “Thailand, Thailand, Thailand….the land of smiles!”. What is Thailand doing in the middle of Germany? The Lufthansa airport has a sister airport in Chiang Mai and Bangkok, Thailand. Who knew? God knew! And I laughed all the way back to our gate to tell David. God has a hilarious sense of humor sometimes to get our attention.

Time in Romania was well spent. We will have to post some videos soon. A few highlights about Romania:

1) Europeans love their round-a-bouts. Traffic is no longer a problem. However the lines in the roads are merely suggestions to follow.

2) Cornel, our host, defied the Communist Regime…twice. (video of that story to come for sure)

3) The WC does not always have TP.

4) We got invited by Joseph (a pastor/shepherd) to shepherd his sheep …unfortunately we had to decline to prior obligations, but we all wanted to!

5) God bless our translators, the Fedors, Lidia, Melinda, and the power of body language/charades! But I think in total, we learned a dozen Romanian words. (My favorite, “ce pace” (chay-pach) or “what’s up”)

6) God has a HUGE heart for the Gypsies of Romania! In the past 5 years that FBC has been operating in Hasdate, there is no more crime in that village! Cornel has started another church plant in Gherla. The children are beautiful. The ladies are hospitable and welcoming. The men were curious about our digital cameras.

7) The Lord healed Michelle’s ankles and saved Sidor’s life (a Gypsy man needed medicine for his kidney operation and couldn’t afford it…and the Lord used us to bless him and the medicine probably spared him from infection and we got to pray for him and his family)

8 ) The Lord is working in many elderly widows who all have  powerful encounters in their villages by praising the Lord and serving Him in joy daily. Maria sang us a song.

9) The Lord used our testimonies to witness to others multiple times throughout the week.

10) The Lord is supernaturally blessing the land. The mountains and countryside are gorgeous! People’s wells do not dry up in times of drought (i.e. Alunis) and people get ridiculously huge chickens and crops (i.e. Gusti’s tomatoes are the size of pumpkins….and it’s all organic farming…and praying)

We just bought our plane tickets this afternoon! It just got real,really fast! Flying out of Charlotte on september 1st to San Fran to Tokyo to bangkok to chiang mai.

While David was on the Holy Cross Men’s Hike in March, I had three really awesome conversations with strangers that confirmed to us that Thailand was the option:

Person #1: I was teaching the Let’s Sea class for Barrier Island (aka “Mudpit 101”) and I was walking back with my class afterwards. The lead teacher for the school was in my group and we started talking about my job and what was to happen next. So, I told her that one of our options was to do a DTS with YWAM and I mentioned Thailand and her response was, “oh, my husband’s colleague at USC Upstate goes on hundreds of mission trips to Thailand and he loves it over there. If you ever get the chance, you should go.”

Person #2: I was encouraged by this woman’s story and dismissed my class as I walked down the beach. On my way I passed a lady walking her dog. I asked her how her morning was and figured that would be our whole conversation. However, she proceeded to ask me about my job at camp and then it proceeded to the same conversation as the woman before her.  She then tells me, “Oh, I’ve been to southern Thailand after the tsunami hit over there and it was so rewarding…”

Person #3: So this was getting a bit weirder. So then I went to the bank and was going to mail off our check with our application to Thailand and the bank teller sees the address and is like, “Oh, I’ve been there when my husband was stationed in the Navy…”

…of course you have!

We should first explain the “Yay God” story behind the journey that we are about to take to Thailand with Y.W.A.M.:

Back in January/February, we were thinking about what we were going to do about jobs once the summer ended, and where we were going to live, etcetera. We had a few options, but nothing was working out (i.e. jobs weren’t there, miscommunication, no response) and this was frustrating for us. After much prayer, we asked for God to clearly discern where he wanted us and to let us know soon… we prayed for direction through confirmations, in dreams, and words.

On February 7th, Jen had a dream in which she wrote down, “I was in a house with a group of people and I was desperate to get out. I kicked out a window and took off down the street. I looked down and saw I was carrying my contacts case. I thought to go back for the people inside, so I returned to the house. There was a woman there who said that she was taking everyone to Siam and that we were leaving on a plane. Once on the plane, I found out that she was planning to kill us once we made it over there. I panicked, but once we landed, I was in a throne room and found a map. The map had features that moved around on it when you open it (Harry Potter style), specifically boats moving on a river. The boats could only move in specific directions, backwards and forwards, from point A to point B. I then found myself running through the woods and stopped at an overlook with a lagoon and mountains beyond it. I remember being at peace where I was and there was a Buddhist temple on the mountain closest to me.”

After much prayer, discernment from the Lord, research on our own part, and words of knowledge from wise friends, the dream was interpreted and more and more was coming together. (if you need examples: Siam = Thailand, contacts case = the Lord was giving Jen eyes to see what He sees in others, the word “boat” in Thai means “church” in English, and if you read the article in the NY Times on February 8th, the article we saw (and we don’t get the paper…it was in the welcome center at camp) it was about Thailand as well!)http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/08/world/asia/08thailand.html?ref=cambodia

So we knew that we were getting the furthest with Thailand as our option, so we began to seriously consider foreign missions. We had several friends that had done programs with Y.W.A.M., and we decided to check out Y.W.A.M. Thailand.