My trip to Romania on Friday seemed very long. Arriving at Malaga airport around 5 am, I checked in for my early morning flight to Barcelona. Once I got to Barcelona, I was shocked to discover that my onward flight to Romania wasn't listed on the departures board. Fortunately, I worked out that I had to catch a bus to another terminal in order to check in for my flight to Bucharest.
The biggest challenge, though, came when I arrived in Bucharest. I was supposed to catch a 5 pm bus to Constanța, but no one seemed able to tell me where this bus could be found. After half an hour of wandering around and being directed from one side of the airport to the other, I was not only running out of time, but was beginning to lose hope of finding the elusive bus. No one seemed to speak English and no one had heard of a direct bus to Constanța. Then I happened to meet a Romanian tour guide who was waiting for a group of tourists to arrive from Spain. What a relief it was to be able to speak Spanish, and this wonderful lady made phone calls and asked around for me until we finally discovered that my "bus" was actually a land rover that would drive me into the city centre and drop me at the bus station there.
In the end, I got to the bus station in time, but the bus was running late and heavy traffic caused long delays as we were driving out of the city. It was 10 pm before I finally arrived in the Black Sea coastal town of Constanța, and was met there by my hosts, a Norwegian family who had attended the LDC in Spain last year. I spent the weekend in their home, and went to church with them this morning. The Romanian church service reminded me a lot of our church back home in Alhaurin, as it was completely bilingual, and the words of the worship songs were projected in both Romanian and English.
After church and lunch, I moved to the YWAM centre in the city where the child and youth ministry school is being held. It's just a stone's throw from the Black Sea, where Romanians were enjoying a sunny afternoon at the beach. I met most of the PCYM students at dinner time, and tomorrow morning I'll begin my teaching with them on the subject of programme development. Thanks for your prayers.
