Coming home

I know I havent blogged in a while, so I'll have to write about adventure trekking and village outreach when I get home. I fly out tomorrow at 1, so today's been a lot of packing, tears, and debrief time. I can't believe it's already time to go home. I'm having a hard time leaving, but maybe that's for a reason so I want to come back. Pray for me as I continue to say goodbye to all my friends here and for safe travel as I fly home.

Things I will miss about Moldova:
1. My friends definitely. This will be the hardest thing to leave behind.
2. The food.
3. The routieras (buses)
4. Walking everywhere
5. Village life with the kids
6. My roommate
7. Amazing moldovan candy and all the ice cream
8. Random trips around Chisinau
9. Movie and game nights with Christina and the guys
10. Romanian worship songs

Things I'm looking forward to when I get home:
1. Seeing my family
2. My bed
3. Air conditioning
4. My car
5. All my other clothes...wearing the same 10 shirts all summer gets boring haha
6......yeah that's about it. haha. All very important things..I know

I think adjusting back to life at home will be difficult. So pray that the transition would go well and that I would be able to express my time here in Moldova to everyone at home. Pray with me that God would reveal next steps to me and that I would continue to remember that His plan is best. So strange that I'll be in America tomorrow night and in my own bedroom. Weird.

Stories

I have two stories from the bus4life; one of how God worked and the other is just a Story that needs to be shared haha. So the first story... I think we were back in chisnau and it was one of the days that I was insanely busy with haircuts and it was hot and gross outside. A man walks into the bus for a haircut and sits down. He smelled not so pleasant but I was used to that by now and blamed it on the hot weather. I put the cape on him and start to comb through his hair when he apologizes for not washing his hair. Well "No big deal" I think to myself.... Until I continue to look at his hair and find a huge bug crawling in his head. It was the nastiest, biggest bug I had ever seen in any persons hair. I just stopped for a minute and didn't know if I could do this haircut... His hair was so greasy and there was a big bug in it and his skin was flaky. I seriously took a good minute deciding if I would actually do this haircut. I took a deep breath, took the bug out with the comb ( and gave it to someone else to throw it out of the bus haha I was a bit squirmy), and quickly did the haircut. He told me to cut it however so I just gave him a trim. So after I finished and was so proud of myself for actually doing the haircut, he looked at it and wanted it shorter. Then he said, oh yeah just do a number 3. Haha that would have been great to start with. So only by God's strength, I did the haircut again and hopefully he got to hear a little about Jesus in the process :)

Story number two... We were in one of the villages with the bus and 3 sisters came in together to get haircuts. I did the 2 younger sisters. Haircuts, then the oldest came and sat down. She was maybe in her early thirties with pretty, long, dark blonde hair. She wanted some layers and just a trim. Ok easy....I thought. With every cut I took she would grab the mirror and watch my every move. She was very very picky and wanted every hair to lay perfectly. The haircut took about twice as long because she would want a milimeter cut of here and the layers a little shorter there. Finally, we got it to where she was satisfied with it haha. Then, she wanted it died black, so she went to the mini market and got some box color.... As this is the best we could do. So I sectioned her hair and mixed the color and of course she wanted to watch every little thing I did. At this point I was a little frustrated and just tired from the long day. I would apply a little color then she would turn her head to try to see it on her hair which would then get black hair color everywhere and make me pause so she could look. Meanwhile, while all this is happening, one of my team members pulled away one of the sisters into a room and shared her testimony with her and told her about Jesus and she ended up accepting Christ while I was coloring her sisters hair. So whenever I begin to think for one second that hair and what I'm doing isn't really that impactful, I think back to this story. God used the haircuts to bring these sisters to the bus to hear about him. They might have never heard about Jesus if it wasn't for the haircuts and the sister being picky on her haircut and making me take longer on her color because she wouldn't sit still. So even through a little thing like a haircut, God is using it to impact his kingdom and bring glory to him. I'm so glad to be serving a God that works through the little things and uses what little I have to bring people to him.

Bus4Life

So tried to write a blog about the Bus4Life a few times and the last time I wrote the whole thing and the internet went out and erased it all. And my computer has stopped working so I have to blog from my iPod.So I'll keep it short haha. I had such a great time on the bus! We had an amazing team. I'm so thankful for the relationships built on the team and that we worked good together!
I did 124 haircuts in the 10 days that we were on the bus. So needless to say I am a bit exhausted. I'm glad to have the weekend to rest. On Tuesday I will leave for an adventure trecking outreach for 2 weeks.
If there's one thing I've learned since I've been here its that God's so undpredictable. And I love it. While we were on the bus for life, we planned to go to 3 villages. While in the 1st village, the mayor had switched in the 2nd village and said that he didn't want us to go to his village. So we had to opportunity to go to a different village about a half hour away and I'm so glad that we were able to be there! God knows what's best for us. Always. He always has our best interest in mind even if it doesn't seem like it in the moment. I think about Kenya. I thought for sure that was where I wanted to be. I was crushed when I couldn't go. But look what God was saving me for! He knew that I needed to be in Moldova and that I would like it even better! So even though I think I know whats best for me sometimes, He knows way better. His plans are far better than any I could ever have. And I'm so glad :)

Awkward Moments

I'll never forget summer camp either my senior or junior year of high school. If we were sincere, Derry had us stand up in front of everyone and say that we had counted the cost and no matter what it took we would follow and seek after Christ. And I thought it was so strange that after I had done that, Derry asked me this question..."Even if it's awkward?" Well sure, even if it's awkward. 3 years later I've stayed true to that statement I made in front of the youth group and it's brought me to Moldova. Awkward moments pretty much define my life here. I now know why God brought that question to Derry's mind for me. haha.

The language barrier is awkward sometimes, most times. When I'm trying to figure out what people are saying to me in Romanian, there are so many awkward times where I either 1) have no idea what they are saying 2) have to act out stuff to figure out what we're talking about 3) or stand there awkwardly and hope that someone would come translate for me. haha. And when all else fails, smile and nod. In all seriousness, I feel like my Romanian is getting better every day. There will be more words I recognize or I can usually figure out what the sentence is generally about. Church services have become a little easier. And I mostly know my numbers! Very important in shopping. :)

I leave for the bus4life on Tuesday. As far as I know, I'm the only American on the team. One of the girls speaks good English and her husband does too so that's comforting that I wont be completely alone. I think it will be good for me though...hopefully I'll learn more Romanian!! Some of the challenge into missions people (moldovans who take a year to do missions) will be on the bus so I'm excited to get to know them! The weather is getting very warm here. 91 degrees today and they keep telling me that this is nothing compared to July so we'll see haha.

Thanks for praying. I'm doing really well here. I'm not homesick at all. haha. sorry Mom and Dad. But no, I love it here and have a family here at OM. I've grown close to my roommate and it's nice to have one American here with me that I can relate to. Continue to pray that God would use me to my full potential and that his will for me here would be accomplished. Pray that God would reveal to me what He has for me after July. Longer commitment here? Work in a salon back home? I don't know. I have no plans and am just praying that in His time God would reveal my next steps to me. So glad to be doing this WITH Him.

Cherries

In Moldova there are cherrie trees EVERYWHERE! And they're amazing. A lot of people sell them at markets but you can just as easily go out and pick them. Christina and I decided to go pick some cherries outside the mission center this afternoon. Here's some pics :)

Busy Weekend

Last night, Christina and I decided to venture out to the middle of the city to see what we could find. haha. We went to an underground shop place where there are tons of venders and different little shops underneath the street. So that was neat. We checked out another big shopping place. It was kind of like a flea market mixed with walmart. We walked around forever, then got a little turned around and had to call one of the girls at the mission center. A lady must have heard us speaking English because she came over and told us about 10 places she reccomended us to eat and where we can go to see things. She talked forever haha but she was so helpful! We took one of her reccomendations and went to a little restaurant. We successfully, mostly, ordered some food on our own and had a nice dinner. So needless to say we felt very accompished after we made it back to the mission center. haha. I think we've mostly figured out the routieras, where to get on them and which ones to take.

Everyone here is busy getting ready for Love Moldova A, which starts on Monday I think. There are a few people that will arrive today and the rest on saturday and sunday. The mission center is going to be madness with tons of people here. I've spent most of my day today putting together like 80 books for Love Moldova. I will go on the Bus4Life on Monday, I believe. I'm a little nervous as always just because I dont know what to expect, but I think it will be a good ministry and I will do lots of haircuts. I'm getting frustrated that I don't know the lanugage because I so badly want to talk to everyone. It's difficult to communicate, even in the office when they just need me to do something. But I have to remember I've only been here 2 weeks and can't possibly know the language yet. I'm learning a few new things every day, but I can't understand very well. Pray that this wouldn't be a discouragement to me, but that it would push me harder to try to learn as much as I can. I've done 57 haircuts since I've been here! Crazy crazy. Sometimes I feel insignificant here, and wonder if I'm actually making any difference being here or not. But God's used me to impact 57 people's lives so far. That's awesome. Even if it's just a little thing like a haircut. I'm excited for what he has in store and am so thankful for where he's brought me.

Pictures

Click here to see some updated pics