I've Been a Terrible Blogger...

Well, maybe not terrible, just not amazing, either.

Since I last posted, I've had 2 "shot days," almost two weeks of information overload, and two days of lecture on the Persecuted Church. Wow.

Shot days were weird, because normally in the afternoons when everyone is free, there are children on the playground and people wandering around. Not on shot day. Everyone is told to stay in their quad until it's time to make the walk of doom. No one knows how many or what shots they'll be getting that day. I've been lucky and had to only get one shot so far. I did get the TB skin test, but that's not really a shot...it's just a bubble on my arm. Most people had to get Typhoid shots, too, but since I had a reaction to the Typhoid shot when I was little, I scored and got the oral Typhoid preventative. This consists of 4 pills taken every other day on an empty stomach with a full glass of water an hour before eating. So basically a pre-breakfast appetizer.

We've had several sessions on Church Planting Movements (CPM) and what they look like in different parts of the world. This information is interesting, but a lot of it is hard to process and put in a mold of how it will fit in Romania, or anywhere in Central and Eastern Europe for that matter. We've also had some sessions on how to attempt to start a CPM, and that too is difficult to implement with the cultural and religious implications of where I'm going. I know though, that God is in control and makes a way for His Word to spread to all corners of the world. We get that promise from Revelation.

So the Persecuted Church. Wow. These sessions were by far my absolute favorite so far. The speaker was very dynamic. I won't say anything about the nature of the speaker's job, but it seems like an amazing job that takes very special people to do. I'm sure it's scary at times, too. I really loved listening to these sessions as they were very informative. It made me thankful for the freedom I have to be a Christian and to share my faith and to relate with whoever I want. It also helped me to understand a little bit of what some of the people I may be working with may have gone through during the time of Communism.

Well, with all that said, I'm thankful for the last couple of weeks, and I can't wait for what else the Lord has to teach me. Thanks for keeping up with me. Love you all!

August Prayer Update

Dear Prayer Partner,

Thank you so much for partnering with me in prayer as I begin this great adventure that is ahead of me. I am so grateful for people like you who love the Lord, love missions, and love me! I hope to share my life with you as best as possible in the upcoming months through these prayer updates and my blog, http://2yearsinromania.blogspot.com .

To start off, I would like to let you know a little bit about what has been going on with me in the last couple of weeks. I am currently at Orientation in Virginia at the International Learning Center. The last few months leading up to this time were spent greatly anticipating the time when I would finally be surrounded by others who share my passion for the nations. Since arriving at ILC, I have learned a lot about what will come up against me once I get to my field of service. We spent Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of the first full week of our time here in sessions dealing with Spiritual Warfare and discussing different ways that the enemy will try to attack and hinder the Gospel from being spread. These were some heavy sessions, and required a lot of patience to get through listening to everything that the presenter had to say. Most recently, we have been briefed on different services that are available to us and have had the opportunity to fellowship with others who will be going to the same region.

As far as prayer requests go, I would like to ask you this month to pray for a few things. First, though I would like to give you a brief description of what the work in Romania looks like and what my job will be. The work in Romania is primarily focused on church planting, but there has been little success reaching the younger generation. Most existing evangelical churches in Romania are dominated by older, pre-communism generation which does not appeal to the younger generation. Student volunteers are frequently used for projects geared toward reaching the young people who are not churched. The students do a good job, and now we are seeking to use them more strategically and effectively.

My job will be to bridge the gap between the church planters in Romania and North American student volunteers. I will mobilize and facilitate the volunteers and help the IMB church planters to develop and implement strategic projects in order to utilize the student volunteers effectively. This work will be focused more on urban areas with the goal of starting and multiplying small groups that will eventually become multiplying churches.

That being said, here are some things that I would ask you to pray for this ministry:

-Pray for the young people who are flocking from the villages to the cities for educational purposes. Pray that my colleagues and I would know how to best engage them with the Gospel in order to have some small groups started.

-Pray for the younger generations of Romanians not to be consumed by materialism but to remain open to the Gospel.

-For God to awaken the Evangelical churches in Romania to have a passion for Christ and for the lost and to be willing to let go of their traditions and legalism.

-Pray for God to call students out from the United States to go share the Good News with their other young people in Romania.

I feel that the Lord has given me this task because He plans to fulfill His purpose through it. I know that I am not able to do this task on my own, and that’s why I need God’s help. This being said, pray for me:

-Pray that I would be receptive to all of the training I am receiving at ILC.

-Pray that I would know who to seek out for expert advice as to how to mobilize students to come join the work in Romania.

-“Pray also for me, that whenever I open my mouth, words may be given me so that I will fearlessly make known the mystery of the gospel,…” Ephesians 6:19

I would also like to ask that you take some time to pray for my family:

-My parents are on the mission field in Guatemala, and my brother Tim and sister-in-law Elisa live in Irving, Texas. It will be a new experience for my family to be in different continents and hemispheres these upcoming months.

-Tim and Elisa are expecting their first child, a girl, in September. Please pray that Elisa’s

pregnancy would continue to be healthy and that the baby will be healthy, too.

-Pray that I would be able to focus on what I’ll be learning during Orientation when the time comes that my first niece is born.

Thank you again for committing to partner with me in prayer as I strive to live in obedience to the call that God has placed on my life. I can’t wait to share my adventure with each and every one of you.

La revedere! (That means goodbye in Romanian!!)

Thanks for praying!

-Angela

God is still Faithful....

Friends, one of my concerns heading to orientation has been the requirements about fitness that they have here. Though I played soccer off and on through the years until the end of my Sophomore year in high-school, I am not the most athletic person in the world. In fact, by playing soccer off and on I mean I was the official bench-warmer.

So, since then I have not really kept a habit of exercising on a regular basis, and this is bad. Very bad. I have worked out in the fitness center at DBU off and on through the college years, but never consistently or habitually.

Here, there is a requirement to have 4 hours minimum of aerobic activity each week. For some people that's not a problem...For me it is. So all week I had been thinking in my mind that one of these evenings I would start walking. They told us the other day that if we walk from some flag poles to the gate and back it is two miles.

This evening at the dinner table, I was talking to a sweet girl that is in my small group and in the same living area as me. She mentioned that she was going to walk and I told her I would join her. Y'all...God could not have been more Faithful. We both confessed to each other that neither of us had exercised habitually in the last few years and just talked about it. It really was a blessing because we were able to walk at the same pace and didn't run out of things to talk about. For two whole miles.

It took us almost an hour to do the whole thing and get back to our quad, and as we walked back we looked at the lightning in the distance hoping that we would get back before the storm hits. We made it back and it's still not raining.

Please join me in thanking God for putting someone that walks at my pace to walk with. We made a goal to walk every day at least the two miles. We might even try running eventually, but we're going to try to work up past the two miles before that and get up our endurance. Please continue to pray that we would be diligent in attaining this goal of walking the two miles consistently every day and that the Lord would give us the discipline to build up the endurance to handle more.

Thanks, friends!

Tomorrow is the day...

Well, tomorrow is the day I head off to training in Virginia. I'm so excited about this phase in the process because it is where I get to finally be around the people I met back in April that shared my passion. There was nothing like that week being so excited with everyone around me, everyone with their heart tendered toward a different place on the planet all for the same cause. The Lord is SO faithful and I know He will continue to be during these next couple of months.

...On a side note, this weekend I attended a Beth Moore simulcast while I was here in North Carolina visiting with my Aunt and her family. My Aunt, Cousin and I went to the simulcast and the Lord totally came through. There are very few people whose teaching I have sat under over these past years who have truly helped me grow. And even though I have sat under Beth's teaching through books and TV and certainly not in person, I know she is a true lover of the Word and strives to teach it accurately.

The Word this weekend was about allowing the Word of God to fall on the good soil of our hearts and to treasure it...She pulled this primarily from Luke 8, the Parable of the Sower, and several other passages throughout Scripture. I know that it was just what I needed heading into this next phase of my life, to be encouraged to continue to love the Word, hide it in my Heart, and press toward the 100-fold Harvest. The Lord knew what I needed, as always....

Enough rambling for now. I must get back to packing.