“Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment.”

- Damon Runyon

Here's the bldg. Salem Church has built. It has dorms we're staying in.

Hello from Romania. We arrived safely after about 27 hours of traveling. We slept the first night about 10 to 11 hours. It wasn't enough. The young missionaries have been doing a little training here in country and tonight (Sun.) will run their first Vacation Bible School (VBS) event in two park locations in the city. We have two teams to do VBS, and starting tomorrow morning each team will run VBS twice daily in two different locations. One will be done in the morning, and one in the evening because parents generally will not let their kids out during the afternoon because of heat advisories. This evening we'll see if all their training pays off.

As for myself, I have been busy running errands, doing administrative activities and trying to be helpful wherever I can. I am in the fortunate position of being part of what's going on, but not being directly responsible for any young people. Today I got to do one of my favorite things while in a foreign land, and that is going to the store.

The market, which is family-run stands, is closed today because it's Sunday, but the large department store is open. It’s always fun to see how these things run a little bit differently in different places. Here you have to rent your shopping cart for 50 lei (maybe 29 cents). You put the coin into a device with a coin slot which is attached to the cart itself and then it’s released from its chain. The store is huge, maybe the size of a Super Target and it sells everything from a drill press to women's underwear to food. I had gone in first, without a cart, to scope out where everything was, or so I thought. When I was ready I went to the Information desk (like customer service) and got some change because I didn't have any Romanian coins. I got my cart, looking just like I belonged there, I'm certain. After all, someone mistook me for a Romanian yesterday. I went and gathered up my items, including six big loaves of bread, for our daily PBJs. I got some red paper for one of the VBS projects.

Then I went looking for some personal items. Sunblock: Patience had hers confiscated because she put it into her carry-on luggage, mints, Kleenex. Why can’t I find Kleenex? I decided to ask a woman I saw wearing a store smock. I asked her first if she spoke any English. No such luck. So I acted out blowing my nose and she caught on right away and took me to the correct aisle. An aisle which I had already been down, of course, but the Kleenex weren’t packaged the same as at home and 90% of them aren’t the Kleenex brand.

Its great fun looking at all of the different products and packaging and I could spend a lot of time in here. I also came across an espresso stand so a bought a cup of espresso for less than 50 cents. It was interesting. It came from some kind of automated machine, not an espresso machine. It tasted ok for someone who hadn’t had any coffee in two days.

When I got to the check out I unloaded my items onto the belt, but the woman didn’t start ringing them up. She looked at me and said ‘you must have card’. I motioned to my stuff as if I wanted to leave it there and she indicated that was fine. Back at the information desk I gave them my passport. They made a copy of it and input some info from it into a computer. What in the world is this all about? They gave me a sheet of paper with my name (spelled wrong) and some other information and I gave that to the checkout lady and she rang my stuff up. Then I was stopped by security on the way out so they could match my purchases to my receipts. I know I look pretty suspicious. But at least I got my 50 lei back when I returned my cart.

It’s interesting how they track foreigners. They got my passport info when I exchanged currency earlier, and now they know what I did with some of that money. This is supposedly a ‘free’ country. Well, at least it’s no longer communist.

Night Writer note: The Reverend Mother is one of the adult leaders of the Global Expeditions-Teen Mania youth mission trip to Romania. As such she had to report to the GE campus a couple of days ahead of the young missionaries for special training, though she wasn't sure what this was to entail. Apparently she's found out, and files this report:

Our team consists of about 10 people. Two Project Directors, four Team Leaders and about six Missionary Advisor Candidates. The actual Missionary Advisors (MAs) will be chosen during the training by the Project Directors. Our leader is a runner and in very good condition. I estimate him to be about 40. He made us do a light jog to the ropes course, about 1/5 of a mile. I'm no runner, but at least I didn't keel over or anything, even though it's very hot.

The first exercise required us to lift a tire from the ground off of an eight foot pole using nothing but ourselves. The tire and our bodies could never touch the pole. The facilitator of this little piece of torture would also give us random limitations, such as some of our group were blind or missing limbs, or couldn't speak. It was frustrating, but we did it. We decided as a group that what we needed to take from that activity was teamwork and communication.

The next exercise required us to escape from a roped off area between four trees. The rope was about waist high and was 'electric' and below the rope was invisible razor wire so it was pretty deadly. If any parts of our bodies touched the 'electric wire' that part was gone. We lost some legs and arms and one guy lost his back. That must have hurt. Then a few of us, including me, ended up blind for some reason that I can no longer recall. We were at the mercy of the facilitator.

Ultimately we made a "step" on the inside of the enclosure and got the first person out, then that person became a "step" on the outside and many of us were able to 'walk' over with a great deal of assistance from our team mates. I was 'blind' when I went over. The biggest challenges were getting our 300 lb team member out and getting the last person out. We did have the use of a four-foot long 2x4 and got her out using that. Two guys held it above the wire across a corner and she managed to hoist herself onto it and then they shifted it over far enough for her to hop down on the outside. It was much more difficult than it sounds, because at no time could anything touch the wire.


Here is most of our group, Sunday night after dinner.
(Kevin - Angelo is the dark-haired guy fourth from the left. Thanks, NW.)

The last activity required us all to scale a ten-foot wall using only our bodies and again some people 'lost' the use of limbs at the discretion of the facilitator. We didn't manage to get everyone over within the time-frame allotted, but we did get Dan, the big guy, over, which was nothing short of miraculous. We got over by climbing up two of our team members who stood against the wall and then others hoisted us each up till we could gain enough purchase to stand up on their shoulders and then reach up to the people above us so they could pull us up. Once you got up onto the guy's shoulders and reached up you really didn't have to do much but just allow yourself to be pulled up and over. The first person however, had to get themselves up there with no one to pull him. Obviously, that was one of the more athletic guys in our group.

After each activity we would discuss what we had done, how we could do it better, and the things that we needed to take away from the process to use when we get on the field. I guess I can see the application to the team work we will be involved in while taking sixty 11 - 13 year olds to a foreign country. Btw, this is the first time GE has taken people this young abroad. I'm trying to gear myself up for a lot of work. The missionaries are arriving today and when they get here its going to get very hectic!

The Night Writer family, plus Uncle Ben, went to the Stearns County Boy Scout camp recently to minister at their evening service for the 6 to 11 year olds. The Mall Diva, Tiger Lilly and Ben lead the group in some action songs and I delivered a short message which included fire, but no brimstone. At one point during the message I actually got applause! The best response to any message I’ve ever preached, however, was afterward when one father was overheard saying to his son “See, that wasn’t so bad, was it?” High praise indeed!

During our stay with the scouts we had great opportunities to shoot BB guns and arrows, eat camp food and sit around the campfire. No scary stories, though — they don’t want Cub Scouts having nightmares. We’re planning on going back again!


Pointy-end goes in bullseye?


Our aim is true.


"Trigger" Lilly


Singing and juggling: "'Orange' you glad you love Jesus..."


Object lesson: how hard is it to keep the Commandments? The blindfolded scouts had to try and catch Ben.


Fire, no brimstone: flash paper shows what happens to our sin when God forgives us. Poof, it's gone!