Short story: We had a wonderful trip to Gherla, Romania this weekend. Our meetings went well, Mike preached a great sermon and many hearts were touched. We thank God for his protection along the road and his presence with us.
Long story: Saturday morning we left Debrecen a little earlier than we needed to so that we would have plenty of time to be a little early for a meeting we had planned in Oradea, Romania on our way to Gherla. Vince McCarty, Open Bible Global Missions Director, had asked us to meet Pastor Teo to pay him in Romanian money for some work he had done for Open Bible Missions. We had planned about half an hour extra time so we would be sure to make the meeting.
When we reached the Romanian border crossing, though, there was a longer line than usual. We expected this since it is vacation season and a lot of Romanians who work in other countries like to make a trip home. But after we gave our passports to the border guards and parked our car, we waited and waited. We finally found out that the computers were down on the Romanian side and the Hungarian officials were running all the passports from their computers! Our usual ten-minute wait turned out to be an hour and 15 minutes! Nancy tried calling Pastor Teo, but had the wrong phone number.
After we finally got our passports back, we went straight to the planned meeting place, hoping Pastor Teo was still waiting even though we were 45 minutes late. Thankfully, and to his credit, he was. We chatted a while and then went to the closest ATM with him to withdraw his payment. But the machine was out of cash! None of us had time to go to another ATM, so we made plans to meet on our way back from Gherla on the next day.
We were scheduled for another business meeting in Gherla and did not want to be late for that one, so we got right back on the road. Just out of town, though, the traffic slowed and was stop and go for over 30 kilometers. After about 10 minutes of this, we decided we could either get frustrated or just laugh and write a blog about the whole thing! We thought there must have been an accident ahead of us, but it turned out that there was some sort of event in a town we passed through and the police had been stopping traffic to let crowds of pedestrians cross the busy road. After we passed that town, the speed returned to normal, but traffic was still heavy due to it being a holiday weekend.
We only made one quick stop on the way and made it to Gherla in time for our second business meeting of the day which went very well. We met our new interpreter at that meeting. She told us she was a bit nervous since it had been at least 15 years since she interpreted, but she did very well.
On the way to church the next morning, we saw an ATM and were able to draw out the funds needed to give to Pastor Teo. When we walked into church, we were pleasantly surprised to see our Swiss friends Heinz and Rosmarie were there! They were back in town to finish packing for their move back to Switzerland. We were very warmly greeted by all of our friends in the church and were pleased to see so many new faces. We enjoyed the presence of the Lord in the worship service and Mike preached a sermon that was, according to several people who talked with us afterward, exactly what was needed by the church.
After the service we were taken out to lunch by Heinz and Rosmarie, but could not stay long because we had to meet Pastor Teo again. Even though the traffic was again heavy, we were able to meet Pastor Teo along the way and finally complete our business with him.
When we got to the border crossing, though, we were again met with long lines of cars waiting to get through. Hungary is taking very seriously their responsibility to protect their border and the European Union border, so they have stepped up security. We were glad we had no more meetings scheduled that we needed to hurry to because this crossing took 40 minutes instead of the usual 10. We are going to have to change our travel plans next time we make this trip to figure in extra time at the border.
God is so good and worked out everything along the way over the weekend. It is wonderful to be able to trust in Him even when things are not as we planned.
