More adventures.

Hi friends. Sorry you haven't heard from me in a while.

I'm writing this while sitting in a room in Iași, Romania, that belongs to a guy who works for the Orthodox Church office that covers the Moldova and Bucovina areas of Romania. Tomorrow, I'll be heading to Chișinău, the capital city of the Republic of Moldova. I'll explain.

About three weeks ago, Kelly and I hopped into Ilie's (my boss) car to go to Deva, the county seat, to renew our residence permits. We had the papers necessary, we were doing it on time, and our accountant, Ibrian, had already called ahead to ask if the county police's computers were up and running (if you remember a year ago, software malfunctions prevented us from applying for residence permits on our first try). It's an hour and a half drive, so we don't go to Deva often. Just for business.

As soon as we arrived, Ibrian went to the county police station to ask if we had authorization to begin the process. He was unsure if we would be able to since we hadn't paid health insurance to the county since last March. When we tried, the insurance people told us that we weren't in the tax system, so we couldn't pay. When we asked the tax people, they asked, "Well, how can they not be in the system?" Ibrian's question for them was, "Yeah, how could they not be in the system?" He was amazed that they were so adamantly refusing to take money. "I mean, we're trying to pay them!"

I don't know.

He came out of the police station and said, "Okay guys, bad news." I figured this meant we had to return to the Jiu Valley and pay our insurance there before we could even think about applying. But I was wrong. "They told me that the law just changed, and that you can't hold a permit for volunteering purposes for more than one year now, and since all the papers we have are for you to be volunteers, they aren't helpful anymore. We have to find another way to get a permit for you."

I was disappointed, but I had almost expected something like this. An impediment in our process of prolonging residency. I mean, it's an awfully difficult and expensive process to get even a visa to enter US territory for a Romanian, so why should we expect it to be a simple process for us? Even so, at least they could have told us about the law change before we went there and prepared all the papers. A small headache.

The bigger headache was now, what do we do? Our permits were going to expire in three weeks, and we didn't have enough time to try to apply again before they did. If we were caught with expired permits, we'd be, at the least, kicked out of Romania for 6 months, and probably fined on top of that. What made this urgent was that Kelly was scheduled to go to Nicaragua and Haiti for three weeks, right as our visas were expiring, to do some IMPACT trainings. What if she was caught with an expired permit in the Bucharest airport? We were really worried for a few days until we got the facts.

Kelly's trip would actually be great. We have to be out of the country when our permits expire so that we're not violating out legal stay. After that, we're just like any old American who wants to get into Romania, who has 90 days from their entry point to either apply for longer residence or leave. The only thing then was to figure out where I should go.

Ilie and I had a meeting in Durău, in the north-east part of Romania, scheduled for this week, so I figured my best bet is going to the Republic of Moldova, just another 100 kilometers or so east. This meeting was with two guys and a woman (who used to work at VIATA, actually) to talk about building ropes courses for their camps in Durău and in Nemțișor, by a big monastery. Ilie and I stayed in the monastery in Durău the night, ate there, went with these guys to Nemțișor and ate at the monastery there, and then talked about the ins and outs of adding a ropes course to their activities. The Orthodox network of monasteries made an impression on me - it seems that within a day's drive, but maybe even as close as an hour away, there is a place with people who are willing to receive you, feed you, put you up for the night, talk, show their place's history. The Church was receiving us, and I felt taken care of.

A crazy thing is that the Nemțișor Monastery has on its grounds one of Nicolae Ceaușescu's hunting lodges still on it. It's a nice, modest building with a good terrace for viewing the terrain and comfortable rooms. But I walked in a place where the dictator used to walk. Stood on his balcony. Made fun of his lodge having bugs inside it. I never thought I'd get to do something like that.

Vlad, one of the guys we were meeting with, offered to put me up at his place while I'm in transit to Rep. Moldova. He's not much older than me, and we had a good conversation this morning about childhood development through challenge, and how the pain or shame in our lives is an agent of improvement by God's hand. Again, I've been received.

And now, I will hopefully go on to be received again by our friend Rachel, whom we met at an IMPACT training last May. She works with Word Made Flesh in Chișinău, and I'll stay with her and her husband Vitali, a Ukrainian, for the few days I'm there. Incidentally, if Vitali's nationality made you think about the unrest and confusion in Ukraine, read about the developments the Russian annex of Crimea has done to heightened concerns of a similar thing happening in the Republic of Moldova and Transnistria (http://www.europeanvoice.com/article/imported/russia-to-annex-transdnistria-/80127.aspx). This concern caused Romania's president and Rep. Moldova's president to have a talk about Moldova speeding up its process of joining the EU. Let's all pray this annexing and protesting keeps violence to a minimum, or non-existant.

There's my story. Hopefully, Kelly and I will have no problems coming back into Romania and applying for Religious Work permits through our church. We'll keep you all updated.

Pizza parties.

Last night, Jack and I hosted 20 kids from our IMPACT club for a pizza party at our home. 

For those of you who have visited Apartment Lucy, you'll know this was quite a feat.  Our apartment isn't very big, with reasonable seating for about 6 in the kitchen and 8-10 in the living room (including sitting people on the bunk beds).  But the IMPACT kids had been clamoring for a pizza and movie evening, and as the only leaders with a functioning oven, we were it.

It was really fun, actually.  At 5:30 precisely we heard the sound of laughter and footsteps coming up the stairs, and soon there were 20 pairs of shoes littering the entryway, smiling faces and talkative preteens passing olives and canned corn and sheep cheese onto the kitchen table.  We quickly assigned tasks, setting the kids to work chopping and spreading sauce onto the five pizza pans we'd procured from friends, and soon the kitchen was abuzz with laughter and conversation and queries: how should we chop these mushrooms? Where is the grater? Could you please pass the ham?

Everyone working!

 Mm... Romanian-style pizza (though we conveniently left off the eggs...)

 Kelly with Roxana, Adina, and Eliza, after the crowd had cleared.

Eventually the preparation frenzy passed, and we slipped the pizzas two-by-two into the oven.  As the smell of dough and cheese filled the apartment, we played a crazy game of Fishbowl, Jack slipping out periodically to pop new pizzas into the oven.  (We made 10 pizzas, by the way.  I used every single bowl in our apartment to hold the dough as it was rising.)  Finally we ate, smacking contentedly as we balanced paper plates on our laps (we don't have anywhere close to 20 plates) and doused our pizza in ketchup (...it's a Romanian thing).  Eventually we settled down to watch Frozen with Romanian subtitles, squeezed on to the bunkbeds and couches in our little living room, full and happy.

Some of the boys on the top bunk...

It was really fun.  Tiring and messy, but fun.  (I still haven't remade the bunkbeds in the living room -- they were such coveted locations that the sheets and pillows all got ripped off and thrown around, and I just haven't mustered the energy to start untangling yet.)  Jack and I agreed, once again, that we weren't ready to have kids quite yet -- at least not 20 of them at once, and definitely not a dozen between the ages of 11 and 13.  But despite the slightly-overwhelming-chaos of the whole evening, we really had fun.  We're learning a lot about how to be good youth leaders -- how to provide space for fun but still maintain safety and authority, how to look out for their minds and their hearts.  It's tiring, and maybe a little bit more than I bargained for -- but I'm glad for it.  And super glad that this learning curve contains so much pizza.