God watches out for His children..

Today was an unusual but amazing day! I finally got to sleep in... until about 8. It was wonderful though. We got ready and several of us walked to McD's to get breakfast. Across the street from McD's is a place called Fornetti's. Side note: you can never come to Romania with out getting Fornetti's. It is amazing. We decided to cancel on McD's and go for the Fornetti's. We then went to a Cafe to finish eating and just sit and relax because the new team would be coming in the next day. We went back to the hotel and started getting everything together and planned for the next group. At 2 o'clock is where my day took an interesting turn...
One of the men here is a policeman in Virginia. He brought a patch to give to a Romanian policeman just out of the blue as a way to strike up a conversation about why we were here. Well, it made that policeman's day. In return, that policeman gave the Virginia policeman a Romanian police badge. Well, the Romanian man asked the Virginia man to come and eat dinner with he and his wife and to bring friends. Jane (my roomie) and I decided we should go. So, basically here is how it played out. I meet a Romanian man with Steve and Jane. We go and get into his car. His car wouldn't start at first, so he had to walk across to the gas station to get some gas. Then, we were off. We were told that we were going to his house nearby to have bar-b-que with his wife. Once we are in the car though, he tells us he is taking us somewhere special. He wouldn't tell us where. He drove, and drove, and drove some more. We drove at least two hours, not knowing where we were going. Still, some how we felt like there was a reason for it all. It ends up pouring down rain, and he can't see to drive. He pulls off the road and we wait the storm out. We then go up into the mountains to this little hotel/retreat type place. It is called Pensiunea Lara. It was beautiful!

We were kind of confused as to why he brought us here, but hey, it was pretty so we figured we would walk around and look at it. He was so excited to show us everything. It had lakes, restaurants, hotel rooms, decorative things, trails and so on. We spent probably two hours there. The man offered to buy us some cokes if we wanted to just sit and talk with him. We told him that we would, so we started walking towards the restaurant. This is when we noticed our next interesting thing. There was a goat on the roof. On the top of this very nice place, there was a goat on the roof. This was not your typical place. It was al connected in some weird way, and the roof had grass on top. So, basically they had goats that lived on the roof at all times.

We went and had our cokes with the man before leaving the place. He had a lot of questions about America and different religious type things. We found out that he is Eastern Orthodox. This was something that opened doors for us to talk about God and Jesus with him. We then left and headed towards his house.

On the way down from this winding mountain, we ran into cows that were standing in the very middle of the road. They had no one with them, they were just roaming around. We waited for them to cross, and started our journey to his house again.

We mentioned how beautiful the scenery was, so he pulls over and stops for us to look at it. It was at this time that he starts picking fruit from the trees for us to eat. He said the fruit didn't have a name, but he had just told us before stopping that some things are poisonous. Great, right?! Well, I waited until he ate it before I did. :) It ended up being great, but we aren't sure how we will be feeling tomorrow. Then, we ended up starting our journey to his house again. On the way to his house we see these massive structures covered in hay. Jane asks him what they are, but he didn't know. So, what does he do? He puts the car in reverse to go to that house to ask what they are. We get out at some random persons house to ask about hay. It ends up the man does these massive pieces of art with hay. It was interesting. He invited us to come in his field to look at them. These things were like 20 or 30 foot high. Unbelievable. The artist wanted us to sign his guest book telling what we thought about it. This gave us a chance to tell them who we are and why we were here.

We finally made it there where his wife and 5 month old baby girl was. They were beautiful. In there back yard/garden area they had a a table for us. They had watermelon, cake, cookies, pretzels, and coke just for us. How amazing is this? I go to a foreign country, meet a random Romanian, and here they treat us SO well. We felt so comfortable there. They continued to appologize for not giving us nicer food. It was just incredible. They were so hospitable, and they were appologizing for it. I could not imagine this happening too often in the states, but it was a wonderful experience. It showed me how wonderful and friendly the Romanians are. We did have other snacks there that were quite interesting and we aren't real sure what they were.

These people though did not know us, but they still presented the very best of what they had. It just blew me away! We stayed for a while longer before heading back to the hotel. We ended up spending well over 7 hours with this man. He and his family were a joy to be around. I am still not sure the purpose for God leading me through this, but I know there is one. Maybe it is the fact we had a chance to share our love for the gypsy people. They were Romanian, so they do not like the gypsies. Maybe God will use this to open their eyes to loving people. Maybe it is the fact we got to talk about Jesus with this man. Maybe it was the fact that God wanted to take me on this adventure to where I was not in control at all (no car, no cell phone, huge language barrier, no idea what direction we were even travelling) just to show me still to lean on Him for all things. Whatever it was, it was interesting and I loved it!! This is a day that I will never forget. Here are several pictures from my wonderful adventure: