La Revedere from Romania!!! (that means goodbye)...

This is Lindsey and I am from Hope church! On Tuesday afternoon we had our second group of the day. And everything went smoothly! Praise God! WE had our second evening at the group home. The group that I was in took pillowcases to decorate with the kids and they spent almost the whole time tracing shapes and drawing amazing pictures on them. They wanted them to look fabulous and they sure did! The mother of the home allowed us to come inside because of the rain and sit at the kitchen table to work on the craft. She surprised us with a cake that had cranberries in it. It was homemade and very delicious! The other groups continued to do crafts and we all had the opportunity to get to know the children a little bit more. Group three also did double dutch jump roping. For dinner, we went back to the restaurant Gramas that we went to on Saturday where we enjoyed pork and potatoes with dill pickle chunks. It was an amazingly good combination! We also got ice cream for dessert that was very delicious, of course! Before we left, we made sure that we sang “Happy Birthday” to Nick, who was celebrating the fact that he was 20. When we got back to Hotel Iris where we listened to Katie Kimble’s devotion on putting on the full armor of God, which was absolutely spectacular!
On Wednesday morning, we were back at the CDC for our fourth and final day of mission. Because one team member wasn’t feeling well, we had to shuffle the responsibilities for the day, but God provided and everything went smoothly. Meaghan and Brent did a very effective job at describing the resurrection story. The children didn’t seem as familiar with the lesson material, so it made it more exciting to share. The craft for that day was a butterfly that we had the children put sequences on to represent the resurrection. With the older group of kids, we made salvation necklaces that tell the Gospel story. Katie Kimble did such an awesome job with explaining what each bead meant. At the end of the day, we also had the older children gather outside on the lawn and sing a few of the favorite songs for us! It was so cool to be able to see them so excited to show us the songs they had learned from the multiple song leaders throughout the week! It was also very hard, for many of us to say goodbye to all of the children that we had gotten to know! For dinner, we went out to Butoiul Sasului (The German Man’s Barrel), which was a bed and breakfast, with a beautiful view! We were able to treat all of the translators with dinner and gifts that we had brought for them. The dinner was delicious and plentiful, as always! We enjoyed fellowship and friendship as we ate our last meal, knowing that we would have to say goodbye to our new friends! After dinner was over, we headed back to Hotel Iris, for our last night, where I was able to do my devotion on trusting that the Lord will keep us safe in everything we do. We all were so exhausted and ready to sleep!
On Thursday, we got up and ate our last breakfast at Hotel Iris, and then left on a 3 hour drive, 30 of those minutes were driving up an enormous mountain full of twists and turns! We visited Castle Bran, which also had some twists and turns! It was really neat but then paled in comparison to the castle we visited on Friday!
We stayed the night at a ski resort (no skiing in June!) and enjoyed a leisurely dinner, a devotion given by Nick, and then a good nights’ rest. We got up early, had a delicious breakfast of meats, eggs, breads, vegetables, tea and juices. We then drove an hour to Castle Pelesh where we shopped souvenir vendors and had a partial tour of the castle. It was quite impressive. The best part? It’s had electricity, central air and central vacuuming since it was built in the late 1800’s! We loaded back into the vans for the three hour drive to Bucharest. God is so good – we drove through a torrential downpour and were kept safe (and dry) despite the insanity of the other drivers on the road! We dropped off the luggage at the hotel and then began drove into the city to visit the People’s Palace, the Romanian Parliament building. We drove past the American Embassy and saw an American flag made of balloons! We assumed they were preparing to celebrate our Independence Day. The People’s Palace is the second largest building in the world (Pentagon is the first!) and is very ornately decorated. They began building and decorating in 1989 and are about 90% complete. It was interesting to see a bit of history.
After that we visited an upscale mall in the heart of the city where we roamed around and then had dinner at where else? Pizza Hut! Our Romanian hostess decided to start re-acclimating us to American food.
We returned to the hotel for our evening devotions and Jill spoke very well about compassion and the love of Jesus. God, may you continue breaking our hearts for what breaks Yours and teaching us how to be compassionate like you. Get us our of the way, empty us, and fill us with you.
We have had an incredible time here in Romania and the goodbye tomorrow will be difficult. But we are thankful for the time we have had and pray that God would continue to water the seeds that have been planted. Not to us, but to Your name be the glory!

On a more technical note – our flight from London to Chicago, then Chicago to Rochester has been changed. Our flight number from Chicago to Rochester is AA3960 with an anticipated arrival time of 9:53pm, local time. We can’t wait to be reunited with you, our dear loved ones.
May the Lord bless you and keep you.