It's Game Day...after all the preparations

I use the term Game Day because of my love of sports. You strategize, you put in a game plan, you practice and practice some more, you prep and finally the Game day is here. This is when you put all the strategy, planning and practice into effect.

Today, Sunday we started out at 10:00 at the Jabel Church. Marius, Ruth & I got to the church about 9:30 which was the Bible study time. We went in and sat down. The others arrived about 15-20 minutes later. We did not get a change to really go over any last minute details because the Bible study ended and transitioned right into the Sunday service. The service lasted about 1 1/2-2 hours, and US people complain when the service lasts longer the 45 minutes. The service was good, at Jabel they have a brass band made up of 10-12 players. They were wonderful and sound awesome. What was some what surprising to me was that is seemed that many of the instruments were very old but they had a great sound. The choir was next, made up of about 15-20 people (some from the brass band) and was about 1/2 the congregation for today. There was congregational singing and two more songs by the brass band. Then we were on. We sang two song (Amazing Love & Lord I lift your name on high(with the motions)), had a testimony by Melissa then preformed our wordless skit. This is were the tough and flexible part came in. Because we did not have time to do any last minute reviews, we had to adjust our props and exiting of the stage on the fly. It was interesting but worked well and I think the point of the skit (Heart Drama) came across. Then Cheri gave her testimony tying in the theme of the skit into the introduction of her testimony. We then sang another song (Amazing Grace) and it was Pastor Ed's turn for his testimony/message. The service rapped up with Marius giving a small message and having us greet people at the door on the way out.

Well that is the end of the Morning service. The next step of the day was lunch at a Jabel Church Deacon's house. What a spread, you will have to see Ruth's pictures for all that we had to eat, and boy were the desserts delicious. After dessert, Marius said "OK, 2 minutes left" which meant we had to leave to get to the next service, despite the attempt by the Romanian families, to retain one of the Errickson girls for their unwed son. Neither girl was willing to stay :-), you'll have to ask Ed & Cheri what they thought.

Next was to visit the newest church in Paduren. This is the town where Marius' mother and father live and are part of the church. And it turns out that so is his brother and his family. We did the same schedule, minus the brass band and Amy and myself gave our testimonies. Ed finished it out again with his testimony/message. Luckily, there was no meal after this service, I don't think any of us could have eaten any more food. We did have some cake after the service. This services was from 2:00pm till about 4:00pm. It was then off to Ciacova.

We arrived at Ciacova around 4:30-5:00, but the service did not start until around 6:00pm. This gave us some time to relax and breath and review some parts of our skit. The service started out with congregational singing, songs by the children's choir, songs by the teen choir and a song by a trio of Lavinia, Tabita & Alana (I think that was her name). We then started our part, and as we told the congregation it is hard to follow that good of singers with our voices. But we did it anyway. Michele gave her testimony, we did our skit and then Ruth gave her testimony. Ruth was nervous about it and almost cried, but she did a great job with it. I did not look, but there probably some moist eyes in the congregation. This service at Ciacova was special for me because we did some much at this church during the last visit and I recognized many faces from my prior trip. Some of those kids from the first trip are now teenagers and taller and some of the boys...I mean young men had facial hair. I know it has been four years, but I still had trouble believing it.

Again, this service went well God was working through us to make it run smooth and the people seemed to enjoy it. After the service, we hung out with the church people until it was time for dinner. More good food, and to top it off we had homemade ice cream from Liviu and Florica's farm (I was hoping to get some of this during this trip). I did have way to much of it, the pictures will prove this. Many of the teens from the church stayed around to help serve the food to us. After we were done, Tabita had them sit to finish up the leftovers. They were/are a good group of teens. Michele, Melissa, Amy & Ed started a four square game. The teens and Cheri & myself joined in (for me I hope to work of some of that ice cream). The game lasted about 2 hours and everyone seemed to really enjoy themselves. We finally called it a night since we had VBS in the morning.

So our next phase begins tomorrow at 11:00, the first VBS presentation. Continue to pray for us, especially me as I do the first lesson.

Until tomorrow,
Doug