Thursday, July 16, 2009

connections .. God style!

our God is rather crazy. in an amazing and astounding way. but for the end of this story to make sense, there are a couple important pieces that you need to know first.

two years ago, a friend connected me through email to another friend of hers who lives and works in romania. this person works with another missions organization that has a similar perspective on life and missions to the one i'm part of. although we communicated just a little bit through email, it didn't work out at that point for me to go and visit at that point. it's not too far .. about 4 hours by train. but things got busy, and i got focused on other things, and nothing ever happened.

things have been changing on my team, and i am stepping into a posture of learning what God is doing in my neighborhood, the city i live in, and even a wider perspective of what God is doing across the country. i haven't been particularly sure how to go about this, but have been praying and asking God to direct my path.

last week, i spent the week at camp with kids from our program. to arrive at this particular location, we took a train four hours south (generally). then we got on a bus for another two hours to arrive in a village. then we walked half an hour on a dirt road to arrive at the actual place we stayed. it was a marvelous location .. tucked away in the hills, with plenty of activities for the kids to do. from where we were, we couldn't see any other houses or buildings. just green trees and hills! there were houses nearby, but not visible. it was a bit tricky even to get cell phone reception. by the end of the week, everybody knew where their particular phone had a couple of bars, and spent time there once in a while to call parents or friends or send a text message.

anyway .. turns out, that the organization that i had made contact with long ago also comes to this same location with their kids during the summer. and it turns out .. someone from their organization had come to spend a few days on retreat. through a couple of conversations with different people, the connection was made that he works with them. so .. i got to make a new connection. and have the possibility of visiting come up again, with an invitation, even! at the end of a dirt road .. from a small village .. in the middle of romania. one could say that it was coincidence .. but i don't think so. only God has a sense of humor like this!