Noah & the Ark

That's what our Sunday School lesson was about this last Sunday. Teaching was a stretch for me, since I didn't know I was teaching until Wednesday afternoon & there just isn't a spare minute in my schedule right now. But, in the end, it came together okay.

While I was preparing, I started thinking about the story from a new viewpoint. What was it like to be one of those standing outside the ark when the rain began to fall? They had laughed & mocked for years as Noah built his big boat, gathered all of the animals and climbed aboard with his family, all the while warning of God's impending judgment. And, suddenly, God closed the door, and the rain began to fall.

I'm guessing their mocking and laughter came to a sudden halt. As the water level began to rise dramatically, I can imagine hoards of people pounding on the side of the boat, begging Noah to let them in, to save them. But God had given them a chance. Lots of chances, in fact. And they had ignored every one. Then He closed the door. The chances were over. It was too late. And now they were ready to listen.

It was a sobering lesson for our teens. They, too, have had lots of opportunities to respond to God's warnings of judgment. And like the people of Noah's time, some of them are more prone to mock or laugh than they are to accept the one way God has provided to escape destruction. Others just figure they can enjoy themselves for one more day, one more party, one more... But, the day is coming when God will close the door, and it will be too late. I just pray that they won't have to feel the raindrops falling on their head before they realize that God isn't joking when He promises to judge sin.

What Else Is Going On

January in nutshell (so far!):
1. Baptism at Libertatii on January 6. Nelutu came to Christ this last year and absolutely couldn't wait any longer to be baptized. January 6 is also the day that the church in Romania celebrates the baptism of Christ, so that made it especially meaningful.

2. Team Meeting - budgeting, strategic planning, all that "fun" stuff.

3. Dinner with Gabi - Even though she is still doing some freelance work for us, we wanted to celebrate Gabi's time with us as she moves on to another full-time job. So, we took her out for dinner, looked at pictures from the last couple of years, and gave her flowers and a small gift.

4. Wrote letters to supporters, mailed packages to a bunch of other people. Going to the post office was quite an adventure, as usual. When I asked for 32 airmail stamps to the US, the lady just stared at me (has no one ever mailed that many letters before???) and then disappeared into the back of the post office for over 10 minutes. Then, it took quite a bit of convincing for her to believe that I really wanted to send my packages airmail even though it costs more (at least then I know they will probably get there this year!). And, of course, there is no such thing as self-stick stamps or computers that spit out labels with the exact amount of postage. So, after she scrambled around the office for another 10 minutes trying to come up with the right combination of stamps to make up the amount I needed,I got to spend another 20 minutes licking all of the stamps & affixing them to the proper envelopes. It took an hour, but, mission accomplished...eventually!

5. Finished collating and binding all of the teacher's manuals for quarter 8. (The light at the end of the tunnel is getting brighter!!!)

6. Got a fun package from Jenny. Along with some weird looks from the postal workers (I pick up packages from a different post office than the one where I invested an hour of my life earlier in the week). Guess they haven't seen too many envelopes like this.

And the customs officer wasn't quite sure what to make of the customs declaration. "DVD, can of soup, random assortment of junk." I had some yummy tomato soup for dinner that night! And some good laughs, too.

7. After a long saga, I FINALLY received my license plates. It only took 10 trips to the police station.

8. Finally took down my Christmas tree last Friday (the 18th). Glad I did it then before I had to run out of town! I didn't feel too guilty about the fact it was still up since most of my friends here hadn't taken theirs down either. Of course, they also didn't put theirs up until Christmas Eve...
Since I won't be here for Christmas next year, I wrapped the tree up well so that it can be stored in less space. Each section is "trussed up" with leftover Christmas ribbon. And it stores in about half of the space that it did last year!

So there you have it...all of the "excitement" in my life in recent weeks. Truthfully, trying to keep all of the balls in the air and not let anything fall through the cracks is taking every ounce of energy and every moment of my days. But, I'll still try to update once a week!

The Best Laid Plans

I promised a better update last weekend, and then didn't follow through. I apologize. My plans for the weekend took an unanticipated twist when I had to make a last-minute trip to Bucharest. We made the decision at 11:30 Saturday morning that I needed to go, and I was on the road by 1 pm. Despite a thick fog blanketing the entire country, the roads were pretty clear, and I was able to arrive in Bucharest around 6:30 pm. I had an extra hour in the evening, so I took a walk through downtown, praying and taking some pictures. What I saw...

KFC - haven't eaten there in a long time!

This is one of the big changes in Romania in the time that I have been here - the country is being taken over by casinos. In 1 kilometer, I passed 4 large casinos. It makes me sad and angry at the same time; sad that people who have so little waste it in such a foolish way, and angry that that their dreams and aspirations for a better life are targeted and taken advantage of by people who already have so much more than they do (I realize that this doesn't remove their own responsibility for the choices they make).

The Intercontinental Hotel at Piata Universitatii. We went to a steak house at the hotel just before Christmas...absolutely fabulous dessert...chocolate cinnamon triangles. Try 'em if you get a chance!

I made it home from Bucharest just in time for choir rehearsal on Sunday evening and then in time to start another crazy week.

Leaving comments...

A couple of people have sent me e-mail messages asking how to leave comments. So, here you go:
1. At the bottom of each post, after "posted by Becky" and the time, you will see "0 comments" (or occasionally "1 comment"). Click on this.
2. You will be redirected to another page with a box on the left where you can type your comment.
3. ANYONE can leave a comment. If you have a blogger or google account, you can sign in with that. If not, just click on the "anonymous" box...but make sure you include your name in your comment so that I know who you are!
4. Click "publish comment" (I think that's what it says...my blogger is in Romanian, so I can't see exactly what it will say on your English page).
5. Congratulations! You have successfully left a comment. It should show up in the next couple of minutes.
**EDIT** This is important...don't click on the envelope to leave a comment. You click on the envelope if you want to send an e-mail link to someone else so that they can read what you just read. To leave a comment, click on the word "comments" NEXT TO the envelope.
You can practice now ;)

Still Here

I haven't disappeared. Really. Just extremely busy, doing all the normal stuff, picking up the slack after Gabi resigned, and teaching 4 afternoons a week at the English school (which I agreed to do BEFORE Gabi resigned). I'm exhausted at the end of every day, but hopeful that I'll soon adjust to the new level of craziness and cope a little better.

Tomorrow's my "day off" (we'll see how that holds up...it's shaping up to be a busy day, no matter how hard I've tried to protect it...grrr!). At the very least, I'm looking forward to sleeping in a little bit. And spending some good, unrushed time reading the Word. One of my goals for 2008 is to read through the Bible; I haven't done that in several years. Just to make it a little more fun/challenging/fresh (choose one!), I'm reading it all in Romanian. Genesis was great. Exodus, a little more challenging. Leviticus...well, it's slow-going. Looking forward to some concentrated reading time tomorrow!

Tomorrow, I'll try to update with some pictures from the last couple of weeks. Until then...

The Romanian Diaspora

That's what the newspapers call it, the fact that Romanians are leaving the country in droves. President Traian Basescu last year said that 8 million Romanians are currently living somewhere outside the country. Official numbers put it somewhere closer to 4 million, but that's still a huge percentage of the population (Romania's official population is about 21.4 million).

I was watching the news a couple of minutes ago and saw that 26,000 Romanians crossed the border in the last 24 hours to return to their workplaces around Europe after celebrating the holidays with family and friends. The lines at some border crossings are up to a mile long.

Where are they going? Italy, Ireland, and Spain seem to be the destinations of choice for most who are working beyond Romanian borders. Most likely, this is due to (1) the availability of jobs in those countries, (2) the already large Romanian communities in these places, making it easier to find friends, services, churches, etc. in their native language and (3) the similarity between their languages and Romanian (well, Italian and Spanish are similar to Romanian; Irish English not so much...but lots of Romanians know at least some English).

Why are they going? Generally speaking, to find better jobs or, at least, better-paying jobs than they can find here. Some settle in for life, but many others are looking only to save enough money to purchase a home, a car, and whatever else they think they need to make life here a little easier. Still others are sending money back to their families who remain in the country. Last I heard, over half of Romania's gross national product comes from money earned outside the country and sent/brought back into the country.

As you can imagine, this "diaspora" presents unique challenges for the existing church and for church-planting efforts across Romania. Churches are full of the young and the old, while the young adult generation are conspicuously missing. Some send money back to their home churches, but money doesn't make up for the vacuum left by their absence!

(The picture posted above is actually entering Romania, not leaving. It's one I took when we returned from Moldova in November.)

Video!

It's not perfect, but here's a video clip of our choir singing on Christmas night. For more, you can look here. Eventually, I'll try to post links to video clips from caroling, the teens' Christmas program, and the kids' program on the 2nd day of Christmas (Boxing Day in former British colonies, return-gifts-to-the-store day in the US). And eventually, I'll receive the registration codes for the program I used to convert the video from the "proprietary" (unusable!) format in which my video camera records. Then I can get rid of the annoying message that flashes across the screen. But, you can get the idea at least!

Bureaucrazy Pt. 2

I know you are waiting with baited breath for the rest of the story...so here it is.

Today I returned to the police station as instructed the last time I was there. In case you are keeping track, this was trip #8 in the process of trying to obtain my new license plates. Took my number, waited my turn - you know the drill by now. My number was finally called, so I fought my way up to the window (a lot of people still don't understand the "take-a-number" system, so they just crowd their way up to the window until the Man Behind the Glass tells them to go back downstairs to the entrance and take a number), presented all of my documentation, and waited around for a few minutes while the Man Behind the Glass sorts through a pile of license plates. No go. They aren't there. Come back next Tuesday.

Is anyone surprised by this? Because I'm not really. It's pretty much life as usual here. A couple more examples from today:

• At 1 o'clock this afternoon, I took some pictures to the 1-hour photo place to have them printed . The lady asked if I could come back and pick them up after 6 o'clock. Umm, yeah, I guess. Although that's not why I came to the 1-hour place.
• I needed to buy some envelopes to mail some gifts to the States, so I walked to the bookstore where I always buy this kind of envelope (bookstores here often carry a lot of office and school supplies). Closed for inventory until January 12. Later in the day I remembered another bookstore just a block away, so I walked over there to get my envelopes. Well, it was just a block away. Apparently it's not anymore. The windows are all covered over with paper and there are signs on the door stating where similar merchandise can be purchased (at the bookstore currently closed for inventory, of course!). Grrr...maybe I'll get my envelopes tomorrow.

And I wonder why some days it feels like I don't get anything done! Maybe because I don't.

Welcome, 2008!

I was planning to travel this week with some of the teens and young adults from church, but decided to stay home, rest, and get some work done instead. So, I spent New Year's Eve with friends here in Targu Mures. We played games for a while and then ate dinner together at midnight (which is very traditional here...many restaurants offer New Years' specials that cost over $100 per person!).



Then we watched a movie together. Well, some of us watched a movie. Others slept. :)



I went home at 2:30, but the others, being good Romanians, stayed all night. I had a great time AND got a decent amount of sleep, so it felt like a good balanced way to begin 2008.

Here's to hoping I can strike that same balance throughout the year...