Wow, its been a long time since my last update!! I'm just lazy when it comes to writing updates and things have been very busy here. Well, that might be a bit of a lie....I haven't been too busy to play around on the internet and watch movies so I guess that I could have written my blog sometime instead of doing those things! Isn't that the best excuse for anything, "I've been busy". Well anyway, things have been going great here. I finally decided that I will be staying here at least until late February sometime. If I have enough money to keeping living here and I feel that God wants me to stay here longer then I will definitely stay longer but for now I'm planning on Feb. (this is a picture of sunset over Chisinau) One of the things that God has been teaching me lately is that flexibility is one of the most important qualities for being a missionary. There are so many times that I have been stressed out about plans or details and when it comes down to it, its all in God's hands. God doesn't expect us to have it all figured out. That's his job! He just wants us to be willing to go when those plans finally do come into focus. I saw one of the most incredible examples of patience and willingness to accept God's will the other day. My supervisor here was supposed to go on a major trip to South America for a conference and had been planning a long time in anticipation for the trip. Somehow the dates got mixed up for his trip and he ended up missing his plane causing him to be unable to go at all. Throughout the whole thing, he was calm and said that the whole thing was in God's hands. I just know that if I was in that situation, I would be so upset and angry to be missing out on such a cool opportunity to travel and would definitely not be so trusting in God's will. It was quite the example for me of how we are supposed to be open to anything that comes our way and to believe that God knows better than all of us about what is best.

So many things have happened since my last entry...I don't really know where to begin. I'll try to give the briefest account of what's been going on. I've been very blessed lately to suddenly have a lot going on and to always have people to hang out with. I expressed to some around a month ago that I was starting to get bored here and that I didn't really feel like I had met many people to be close friends with. God definitely answered my prayers and I have been meeting a lot of good people here lately. Thanks for for all of you that have been praying for me!! God certainly answers prayers. (here I'm helping de-pit cherries with my friend Tanya to make compote which is basically canned juice. Its the best stuff ever, I don't understand why we don't make it in the US)

One of the best parts (at least in my opinion) of being in Moldova in the summertime is the overabundance of shesliks otherwise known as BBQs to Americans. Sheslik is the Russian word for shiskabob so at these events the main food is pork or chicken shiskabobs grilled out over an open flame. I've been very lucky to be invited to a few different picnics and have been amazed a how incredible the food turns out every time. I have to say that sheslik far beats out the usual American hamburger or hotdog grilled out at BBQs. A month or so ago my host family plus all of their friends and extended family had a big sheslik out in the forest to celebrate my host mother's birthday. It was so nice to get out of the city for a little while and to be able to see a bit of the country side. A volleyball net was set up and all of the young people played volleyball for almost the whole day. I must have been missing playing sports or something because I just couldn't stop playing even when my arms got really sore. It was definitely a memorable day.


One of the strange things that I learned about birthdays here is that they are not always celebrated. Since so many people are poor, birthdays are too much of an extravagance to celebrate every year. So for these people their birthdays are celebrated every five or ten years. I just couldn't believe that...in the States I've never heard of not celebrating someone's birthday unless of course their birthday is forgotten. Another thing is that the presents that are given are for the most part very practical. For my host mother this year, I pitched in to buy her a baking pan which was considered a very nice gift. I couldn't believe how happy she was when she received it. Sometimes its so easy for me to forget how poor some of the people I see all the time really are...some of them dress very nice but they only have a few outfits. I've heard that so many people are like that here. They put on the appearance of having money but really they only have a few nice outfits. I get tired sometimes here wearing the sames clothes since I could only bring what I could fit in my suitcases on this trip. But when it comes down to it, I have more clothes in what I brought than what most people have in their whole wardrobe. I just don't understand why I am so privileged. Sorry, I feel like I'm always preaching in these blogs about how blessed the US and I know that that is the typical thing for missionaries to say but its just been weighing on my heart so much since I got here. Its so hard for me to know what to do with all of the resources that God's given me. I feel like I'm so selfish sometimes.

My internship has been going very well....I'm so lucky to be doing different types of things and to be learning new things all the time. Right now I'm in the middle of writing a script for a two to three minute video that I'm putting together. I've never done any project like this before so its been really fun to learn some new programs and to get to be creative. I've been so blessed to be able to be an intern in this organization...it is everything that I was looking for in an internship and the experience has been so valuable so far. It really hit me the other day that I am doing exactly that I've wanted to do for such a long time. I have this note that I wrote when I was in grade school in which I said that I wanted to be a missionary when I grew up....I can't believe how long ago that was and how blessed I am to have the chance to live out this dream. Thanks again to all of you that have been so supportive!!!

So one of the most eventful things that has happened recently was that I got the chance to take a week vacation in Romania. One of my good friends, Eli, from my hometown of Grangeville has been working this summer in Romania for some missionaries so I got the chance to travel there to hang out with him and travel around Romania. It was a crazy week of traveling all over the place but I had the best time. There are so many things that happened but I'll try to keep this really short. First we went North to a town called Braşov which had a really neat old section of town. (this picture is looking over the all the beautiful buildings in Brasov) Many of the buildings were really old and from the medieval period of this time. There were a lot of beautiful churches around the town and we were able to see some Orthodox services going on.
(This big church sticking up out of the other buildings is called the Black Church...so big and beautiful) Its so incredible how much work was put into these churches...all of them had such beautiful paintings on the inside and on the ceilings. Randomly, there was a medieval fair going on the weekend that we were there so we were able to see a parade, hear some awesome music, and watch some actual jousting. I think that the coolest part of this was the jousting...it was like a medieval rodeo! It was really something to see the horses running at each other and people flying off of horses...made me feel a little bit like I was back in good ole G-ville at a rodeo. (this is at the fair )

After that Eli and I traveled to Bran to see "Dracula's Castle" which really wasn't ever owned by Dracula or anything like that...in fact the character of Dracula is just made up and the real guy who is the inspiration for Dracula was just some crazy ruler who liked to impale people back in the day.... I'm really glad that impaling isn't a common form of torture anymore, if you knew the full story behind it you would know what I'm talking about. So anyway the castle was pretty cool and luckily we didn't see any vampires or impalers. (this picture was at a meadow that we hiked up to that overlooked the town of Bran)

After that we went South to the Black Sea for some good beach time. The town that we ended up in on the sea was really cool too because it used to be a Greek city thousands of years ago so there were bits and pieces of Greek remains around and just a lot of neat churches and mosques to see. One of my favorite things that we saw was this big mosaic floor that dated from 600 or 700 BC. The beach itself was a lot of fun too. Overall the trip was a ton of fun and I'm so glad that I got the chance to see some awesome Romania culture! (this picture of the town of Constanţa was taken from this tower we climbed that was part of an Islamic mosque by the sea...this tower was so cool, I wish we had towers as parts of our churches!)

Thank you to those who have been keeping me updated on what's going on at home. I really appreciate hearing about what's been happening. Please continue to keep me in your prayers. Some of the the prayer needs that I have right now are: 1)to be able to learn more Romanian and to use it more (I learned traveling around Romania just how terrible my Romanian is and that I need to start putting more time into my lessons), 2) to be more effective in sharing my faith directly with Moldovans because I feel that working in an office that I don't get out to meet enough nonbelievers, 3) that I will be motivated to read my Bible and pray more. I have been slacking off a lot lately and I just can't seem to get into a regular pattern of devotions. If you have any prayer requests, please send them my way. I really love hearing from you all!!!