Life goes On

I've been home four days now, and am slowly adjusting. Nights and days are beginning to reorder themselves in my body; this morning I slept past 4am(though I did wake up almost every hour throughout the night). Bit by bit, day by day, I'm getting there- past the afternoons of haziness and wandering in a fog. I returned to JV AWANA yesterday and had lunch with my mentee today. I felt rather neglectful leaving them for such a long time, and it was a joy to be back with all of them, even if my mental capacities weren't at their finest. I took the first three days to myself, and have now jumped back into a more regular schedule of Skype calls, meeting with people, reading, and am trying to pull together details for my July trip to (most likely) Ukraine, Hungary, Poland, and possibly Austria. Sigh. Sometimes I feel like half of what I've done this year has been travel, and the other half has been planning for the trips.

*Wanted: Personal Secretary to plan all of my trips
**Salary: Jewels in your crown

In Other News:

I've reached the 60 pound mark, as illustrated by sweet Eden. Can't wait for the 70 pound picture!

Here and There and Back Again

Whew! I made it back to Odessa, and my ears are ok! Well, I'm still not hearing so well, but they didn't hurt a lot during take-offs and landings, thank God! I had a lovely time this morning with Szymon, my Polish little brother, in the Warsaw airport. He was at the dentist in the middle of the night for some emergency dental work(literally-1am), and still showed up at 7:30am to hang out with me for two and a half hours. What a sweet friendship! Tomorrow I'm heading back to the States- woohoo! All prayers for safety, good flights, good rest, etc. would be sincerely appreciated! Final picture of the trip:

With Szymon in the Warsaw airport

The countdown

In about thirty minutes I'll leave Bircii to head to the next town with a train station and take the train back into Bucharest. I'll spend the night there in a hotel, get up super early, and have a 6am flight through Warsaw and back to Odessa. Because I originally flew in to Odessa from the States, I've got to go back there to complete the round trip segment. I'll be there less than 24 hrs. and then get back on the plane for three more flights back home(Odessa to Munich to Chicago to Charlotte), arriving home at 12:03am Thurs. I'm still congested and my ears are still not right, so I'd appreciate prayers for all of the flights. Tomorrow I have a four hour layover in Warsaw and one of our former interns, Szymon, is coming to spend the time with me at the airport, which I'm excited about. It's nice that after five weeks of people, I can still be excited about spending time with someone. =-)

Just a couple of pictures to close out my time here in Bircii:

I talked Elizabeth into doing a "photo shoot" with me to help me with taking pictures of people. I'm good with inanimate objects and animals, but not so great with people.

I just love these old doors

Saturday Sighs

I'm just going to post this one lovely photo that Elizabeth took yesterday while we were down at the Ministry Land supervising the soccer, swinging, tetherball, jumprope action that was going on. Thank God for sunny weather, because it keeps me from feeling too sorry for myself while being sick. I mean, how can you feel sorry for yourself when you're sitting out in sunny, 70 degree weather?? If you zoomed in on the photo, you'd see the peeling nose and a pocketful of tissue wads, but it was pretty great to be able to sit out in the sun and run around and play frisbee with the kids- a great distraction from the mess that is my head. Today things are slowly unclogging(woohoo!), for which I'm extremely thankful.

 I'd sure appreciate an extra abundance of prayers leading up to my departure on Monday. Please, please pray that God would give me words to calm Elizabeth's heart- well, let me rephrase that, that HE would calm her heart and that anxiety and fear would not be allowed to prevail. Would you please pray that I could be used as a tool to remind her of God's might, and His incredible love for her, and that I can keep pointing her to the truth that is only found in Him? Thanks, friends.

Thursday's Thoughts

Thursday's thoughts are ones of misery. Being sick when you're visiting someone and supposed to be encouraging them is tough. When you feel miserable, the last thing you feel like doing is trying to encourage someone else, or even just do the normal every day things. Today was rough for me, and I suspect that tomorrow might be worse. Physically, it's just a cold and sinus infection, but it's a doozy. I can't breathe through my nose at all, and haven't been able to since Tuesday, and my ears are also stopped up. My voice sounds strange because I'm so congested, and since I'm breathing only through my mouth 24 hours a day, my throat is extremely dry and sore. I'm blowing my nose constantly, as well, which means my nose is raw and has even bled several times today because my sinuses are so dry. But, what to do? I'm supposed to be here encouraging an intern whose hosts just left for the States on Tuesday, and who's definitely struggling through the beginnings of this transition, as well as culture shock, having just arrived at the end of February.

Thankfully, today was a rest day from ministry. So we did just that- rested. I've been trying to drink a ton of water and hot tea with lemon and honey to help flush the infection out of my system. The weather's quite lovely, so we took blankets out in the sun to read this afternoon and then went for a nice, long walk to the highest point in the village. I made roasted veggie and chicken soup for lunch, and sausage with mushrooms, bellpeppers, and asparagus for dinner. We talked and washed dishes together, watched an episode of Monk, and another of Psych, and just tried to relax. I kind of feel like I'm about to float away with all the liquids I've been taking in, but I'm determined to get this out of my head before I have two flights on Tuesday and then three on Wednesday. If you think about me over the next few days, I'd sure appreciate prayers for quick healing. Elizabeth is also sick, but seems to be heading towards the end of her cold. I know she'd appreciate any prayers for her health and continued adjustment here, as well, though!

Village Views

A Nursery Rhyme

This little piggy went to market

This little piggy stayed home

This little piggy ate lots of roast beef

This little piggy had none

And this little piggy cried wee, wee, wee, all the way home!

Trying the pig skin, pulled straight from the pig, hair and all

Monday, Elizabeth(the Bircii intern) and I were invited to a pig slaughtering. We decided to skip that part, but ended up going for the butchering. I have a new appreciation for village life and especially for the skills of a good butcher. Pavel(the butcher in the pictures) is one of our IM missionaries here and was slaughtering and butchering one of his mother's pigs.

Weekend Wanderings

Friday I left Pitesti for Bircii, having gotten some good rest and some good time with Vali

Sat. I went to Youth Group with Elizabeth and Ron

Sun. morning I got to sit in on Sunday School with Elizabeth and Paula

Elizabeth had her debut with the Bircii Mandolin Orchestra

We spent the afternoon with some of the youth and visited some baby goats.

 Sunday evening we were back at church for the evening service, making me wish that I understood Romanian. Sitting through two services in one day in a foreign language helps you to grow in patience, and hopefully, appreciation for different cultures. =-) This is my third visit to Bircii, and I really love this little village. Spring is a beautiful time of the year to visit and see the wonders of God's hands. It's also fun to see familiar faces, kids growing up, ministry expanding, etc. I've already got a ton of pictures, so I'll keep posting them throughout the week. I'm here for another week, hopefully helping Elizabeth(the new intern) make the beginnings of transition through the Roberts' departure for the States tomorrow. You can be praying for all of us, as Paula is sick, Elizabeth's not feeling well, and I've got a bit of a scratchy throat. Thanks so much!

Dog Day

Buddies

Observing the men turning on the fountains

Chilling in the Main Square

Enjoying the warm weather and the new Spring decorations

Soaking in knowledge at the news stand

Pitesti

Today is a rest day, which is awfully good, b/c I'm not feeling so great. After getting up and having what seemed like a lovely breakfast, my stomach decided that it wasn't so lovely after all. I'm not sure yet if it just disagreed with me, or if I've got a bit of food poisoning. I'm cramping and having pains, which makes me lean more towards the side of food poisoning. If you think about me today, prayers would be appreciated that this would just be a short-lived issue. I needed to get some drinking water, so I headed out for a 10 minute walk to the City Center of Pitesti to find a little grocery store. These are some pictures from along the way(and one from check-in yesterday):

One room for Mr. Hunsucker, please. The girl at the front desk seemed to have excellent English, but is a tad confused on Mr. vs. Mrs./Miss, apparently. =-D

If your name is Betty and you need to make some copies(or be copied, I suppose), this is the place for you!

Wild doggy! Can you see his ear? In Romania, they have a tag and release program.

Another guy just relaxing in the city center

City Center- looking at the Theater

Spring is Sprung! I think this is a variety of Tulip Poplar.

Staff Conference 2013

True Confession time: I did a terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad job of taking pictures of people this year. I got so busy with meetings that I wasn't my usual self with the camera. I was also fairly exhausted most of the time, so running around with my camera was the last thing on my mind at the time. But now that it's all over, I'm sad that I didn't do a better job of taking pictures with at least those that I met with.

It was a smaller conference this year. Due to a change in location(normally it's in Poland or Slovakia), very few of our Polish staff came. We had about 120 people, but many were guests. As normal, though, I greatly enjoyed my time there fellowshipping and worshipping with the IM family. Things were a bit different for me this year, as I had more scheduled meetings that left me without much of a chance to see anything of the surrounding area. I began to understand more of the responsibilities of a Staff Care person and the tremendous responsibilities of our leadership. I grew both in my appreciation of and respect for the leadership of IM and their sacrificial service and care for our staff.

Here are a few pictures from the first day when I went into the closest little town and a couple of the ones I managed to take of people:

 

Bran Castle, commonly known as Dracula's Castle. Staff Conference was in the Transylvania region of Romania. Sadly, this is the closest that I made it to the castle.

The gorgeous view that surrounded us

It was such a great surprise to see Danny and Dasha at the conference! Danny is one of our former interns and Dasha is one of the first girls that I discipled in Odessa. They married in 2012 and live in Romania now.

Two of my favorite brothers, former interns, and current colleagues who serve in Poznan and Warsaw, Poland- Amadeusz and Filemon Shaded

The view out my window in Bucharest the morning.

Today I took the train south from Bucharest to Pitesti to spend three days here with one of our younger staff(former intern who went through the Odessa Training Center). He's pretty busy with university classes, which is going to enable me to rest up a bit from the craziness of the last three weeks. Ahhh, so nice. I'll be here through Friday and then will head to a newly arrived intern in the village of Bircii.

Little Dictators

For those who can't figure out the title of my post, here's a link that parents(especially of small children) will appreciate:  http://www.stevewiens.com/2013/03/12/to-parents-of-small-children-let-me-be-the-one-who-says-it-out-loud/. As for me, I just get to be the Aunt who drops in, plays with the little dictators and then returns them to their parents. The visit with Will, Phyllis, and the children was very short(only 3 days), but really great. I got lots of play time with the children and even some good conversation time with the adults. =-) Of course I have a million pictures and it's hard for me to choose, but here are some of my favorites(for more, look on facebook):

A good Aunt brings children things like Whoopie Cushions. A better Aunt brings old whoopie cushions that break quickly so that the parents don't have lo listen to the sounds of fake gas for days on end(Jaan-9).

Playing on the playground(Asya-5)

What a cutie!(Bogdan-2)

We played a lot of card games

And made silly faces

And had lots of hugs and laughs and sitting on lap time(with Raia-7)

And then said our goodbyes(Anna, Jaan, Raia, Asya, Phyllis, Bogdan, & Will)

Vikula & Marinka

Well, I have one day to update you on two different visits. I'm back in Odessa till tomorrow afternoon when I'll spend 11 hrs. flying from here to Romania. For those of you who know geography, you know that this makes zero sense. The answer lies in the fact that there are no longer direct flights from Odessa to Bucharest, so I'm flying to Germany and have a 7 hour layover in Munich. I've got to go online today to do some research on whether the center of Munich is close enough for me to get out and explore for a bit.

Anywhooo, my three short days in Krasnoarmeysk with Vika and Marina were great. They both had to work, but took some time off, as well, and we all really enjoyed the visit. After a year of not seeing each other, there was a lot to catch up on in a very short amount of time. What a blessing and encouragement they are to me, and I'm so thankful for our ongoing friendship! It was good to see some of the people they serve and to be a part of one of their weekly bible studies again, and see the growth of the small church there. I also got to meet with one of the interns from the Odessa Training Center who's doing his internship in that area, and got a general sense of how things are going for him.

Sushi at MacDuck, a Ukrainian knock-off of McDonalds. I know, I know. You're asking yourself why you can't get sushi in the States at McD's. =-D

Ukraine hadn't quite gotten the message about Spring by the time I left Odessa and made it to Krasnoarmeysk.

Love these girls(Vika on the lt., Marina on the rt.)!

I think I mentioned this before, so here's the picture. Lesya and I last saw each other 7 yrs. ago at a camp in Russia. Then we walked into the same bible study in a small apt. in E. Ukraine, both there as guests. Small, small world.