So here I sit in my apartment in Bucharest Romania once again wide awake at 3:00 AM.  So what is a girl to do?  I suppose update my blog which I have neglected since January.  I won’t go into the intricate details to update everyone what has been going on the past 8 months.  But I will say that I am now HOME in Romania.  15 months of traveling the US, speaking in churches, kids camps, youth groups, Sunday school classes, women’s events and one on one meetings the funds have been raised to return to Romania. 

The bizarre thing is that it almost feels as though I never left.  My language is a bit rusty but I do manage to still communicate fairly well…. with the exception of the receptionist at one of the Bucharest hospitals where I went to visit a friend.  I asked a simple question… Unde este ______ (my friends name).  simple and clear – immediately she turns to her colleague (and probably not realizing that I understand Romanian) tells her that she must deal with me cause she can’t understand a single thing I say.  Wow so much for customer service.  Her colleague then attempts to talk to me in English which is worse than my Romanian.  So the conversation goes on with her speaking broken english and me speaking broken romanian…. only to find out my friend is in the hospital next door.   oops!  Off we go to try this again.  We do eventually find him.

Next challenge is to just jump right in behind the wheel of my STL vehicle and get over the fear of driving in Bucharest.  Oh how I have missed my Toyota RAV4.  Seriously no words can even describe how bad the driving is.  Well I do fine but I just can’t drive like I do in America.  Yesterday (sunday) morning was a test in my patience behind the wheel.  One thing that I observed since being gone is that construction projects have increased 10 fold.  Roads are closed everywhere.  My simple routes (unfortunately all the ones I only know) to church met me with road barricades and no detour signs.  Yea that would be too easy.  There are no simple blocks here in Bucharest.  Roads are windy turns, one ways, dead ends and well the best way to describe it (I heard this once) – take a handful of raw spaghetti noodles and drop them on the ground and you have the roads in Bucharest – they are that complicated.  Well I start to get a bit nervous wondering where I was going as I was trying to go by instinct and lots of prayer cause nothing was looking familiar (all those former communist cement bloc apartments look alike)  and then I stumble upon Piata Ramana and yea I know where I am and find my way to the church – only half and hour late  (I left a half hour early).  

My life this next week will consist of intense language lessons, unpacking my stuff, and misc. office stuff.  I know exciting exciting….most want to hear about the outreaches and the programs but before I can get to that there are other duties to be tackled.  

So this begins my second term as an Assemblies of God Missionary to the children and women in Romania.  I look forward to posting more stories and adventures to be had these next several years.  Camera is buried somewhere in my piles of luggage so in time there will be pictures.