Musings from Graceland

THE FIRST FULL REPORT

This was posted on B's team blog from Romania:


Training Camp:

We haven't showered, we all have poison ivy, our pee is blue, our leaders spit water on us, slap our feet, pole dance, throw mud at us, and scratch our chins.
No, but really. We didn't shower for the first two days of training camp. We stood in poison ivy during one of the team building activities (but none of us ended up with it! So don't worry.). The water in the port-o-potties was blue. One of the other team building activities was to teach us how to communicate with other cultures, and this involved them spitting water, slapping our feet, and scratching our chins (And at one point accidentally saying, "Come here, baby!" in a tribal voice). We had a dance competition between all the teams (AND ROMANIA WAS VICTORIOUS) and Bryan had to dance off between another team and used one of the tent poles as a prop (which won it for us). And lastly, we had to army crawl through a mud pit and let our inner five year old come out by throwing mud at each other afterwards.

Obviously, Team Romania has had no problem with bonding and getting to know each other. We've become like a family and relate exactly like siblings in all ways.
Training camp was amazing!

Our Travels:

We were lucky enough not to be one of the teams that had to leave camp EXTREMELY early (2 in the morning). We didn't have to leave camp until 10 in the morning. Once we left we had a lovely twoish hour bus ride (which was Sarah Arants first bus ride EVER) to get to the airport. Once we got there trying to find the ticket counter was...well...an experience. Lets just say we made a circle around the main terminal in order to find where to check in. After we checked in the rest of our travels went SUPER well. Much better than all of us expected. Our only problem was with Sarah West who injured her arm at training camp, they were suspicious of her brace going through security but that was all. We had a very quick flight from Atlanta to Charlotte, then a quick layover for about two hours until we left for Munich, Germany, which was an eight hour flight. Most of us did not sleep very well at all on the flight, except for Jessie who ended up with a first class ticket after Kelsey switched with her because she didn't want to be seperated from the team but Jessie deserved it. The service on the flight was AMAZING and we all watched movies most of the time. We weren't all sitting together but were grouped in two's or three's, so we all got a chance to meet other people on the flight. Once we got into Munich we went through security one last time and waited a short hour until our final flight into Cluj, Romania, which was only an hour and a half. We had an exciting two hour van ride into the village that we are staying in right outside Bistrita.

Our Time so far in Romania:

We are all very jet lagged (there is a 7 hour time difference after all). We all slept till about 1pm or later today. THANKFULLY our awesome leaders decided to give us a day off once we got here in order to recover and it is/was needed. There is not enough room for all of us to stay in one house so they have us split up between two different houses, that are not even a minute walk apart from each other. The food is EXCELLENT (and is causing us all to have to step out of our comfort zones). The people who we are staying with are super nice and welcoming and most speak some English which is an awesome surprise and a blessing. The kids are super cute and love to play and have fun.

This is all just the start to an AMAZING few weeks which includes playing futball (also known in the states as soccer), playing and loving on local kids, getting to hang out and work with kids at an orphanage, and teaching an English class. We are all so excited to see what God is going to do in us and how He is going to use us to minister to the people here.

Love,
Stinky, Itchy, Team Romania (Sarah A, Haley, Ian aka Onion, Emily, Betsy aka Shakira, Kelsey, Bryan aka Brydon, Jessie aka SMJ or Soccer Mom Jessie, and last but not least our broken leader Sarah W.)