Gardners on Mission to Eastern Europe: Romania Day 3

We elected to rest and sleep in preparation for the Lord's Day in lieu of blogging last night. Sorry.
We are all well and had a good day of work and touring of Oradea so I have many pictures to upload.
We'll try to give a more comprehensive update between services today.

Randy

Taking a short break between church services today. It's been a long, but blessed day so far. But, before I start on today, let me return to yesterday and give you a report of what we did on Saturday.

We started the day just like the day before with DOORS! Yes, more doors. All of the doors on the 2nd floor had to be scraped and prepared for new caulk and pain, so there were about 65 total that we were asked to help finish. We finished our pile of doors by 11 yesterday!! Much joy and celebration all around, especially from Dustin who has many blisters to show for his days of labor thus far. :) We quickly went up to our rooms for showers and de-dusting! I had a very pleasant shower for the first time since our arrival here. Thanks to the Lord for nice, even water temperature and no scalding today. :P

Gov't Building and Clock Tower

After lunch, we were to meet Mihai (Micah in English) and Emma in the lobby downstairs. Mihai was our driver, Emma our translator. We wanted to do some sightseeing of Oradea and a little "shopping". We first went to the government building of the city and climbed 265 stairs to the tip top of the clock tower. How do I know there were 265 stairs? Daniel counted ALL THE WAY DOWN! The sound of him counting stairs echoed all the way up and down the narrow chamber. The view from the top can ONLY be described as BREATHTAKING! We had a 360 degree view of the entire city. WOW!!! We were all in awe of what we saw. Terra Cotta rooftops as far as we could see. The most intriguing thing about the view to me, (and Ivonne) was the fact that the church steeples towered above the rest of the city. So easy to see God all around Oradea. It was a neat experience.

Orthodox church
"of the moon"

After the climb down and some WATER to quench our thirsty selves, we headed out of the building to the streets. We got to see a Romanian wedding in progress. The tradition here is to decorate the bride/groom car with flowers and white streamers. Everyone in the wedding party or even attendees follow their car and flash their lights and honk their horns LOUDLY and constantly. We saw at least 5 such events yesterday afternoon alone. The wedding we actually almost participated in was at an Orthodox church known as the Church with the moon. There was literally a large moon inside the church building. They required money to photograph inside the church so we opted NOT to support the orthodox religion in that way. The inside was ornate and full of "saints" all around, but an interesting view nonetheless.

We also visited the Black Eagle Hotel complete with stained glass entry. It's an old hotel in the city center with outdoor cafes dotting the interior walkway that was actually outside. That doesn't make much sense, but that's the way it was, truly! The biggest highlight for the boys was the stop we made at Emma's favorite ice cream bar. It was delightful. We all had an ice cream cone (Belgian chocolate for me!!!) and went about our way walking the "Centre". Fantastic time was had by all!!!

Our last stop was to the mall where Kelsie, Ivonne and I enjoyed perusing the shoe stores, the guys visited the media and sports stores. It really doesn't matter the language....girls like their shoes and boys like their electronics!!!

Mihai took us to his favorite pizzeria for dinner. We had 3 large pizzas for the whole group and they were very different from American pizza, but very good! All of us ate our fill and came home with full bellies!!! We opted to rest last night and retire early. It's been a jam-packed few days for us with little sleep, different foods, loud traffic noise by which to sleep, and strange surroundings. We needed a night to relax a bit and it was indeed a good evening.

Some specific prayer needs for my prayer warriors:

Emma and Mona-our new friends here need discipleship and mentoring. Pray that Ivonne and I can continue to minister to them and follow God's leading in what other ways He wants us to participate in their lives.
We sing TONIGHT again (Sunday) at Emanuel. I'll be playing piano.....new piano, strange piano...you get the idea!
Dustin and Daniel--patience through yet another LONG Romanian church service! :)
Our outreach tomorrow as we visit a hospice center

That's all for the Saturday wrap-up! Love and hugs to all!

Kim

Notables from Randy:

Door efficiency was much higher today. We are nearly "experts". One exception of course. See the picture to the right as a follow-up from yesterday's discussion - my, my, my ...
So many landmarks and exterior architecture suffered under the communist regime. Renovation abounds, however, albeit slowly and with limited resources. The rich heritage of the people can still be seen and was devoured by my American eyes.
Sweet success today with my ATM card. It actually does work at some machines. Who knew? And Kim used the Visa card also. That's a long story but we're managing to use now. Thanks for the prayers on that front. It was an early source of frustration for us last week.