Well, first of all there are the 2 women with whom I will be going to Moldova: Claudia and Dana.
Dana is originally from Romania and she is about 21 years old - a young woman with a heart for mission. She was in Moldova earlier this year for the Challenge into Missions program - a 3-month training program. She loved it there so much that she signed on with OM to return on a 2-year Global Action program. That's where I fit in as I am also on Global Action. Dana is teaching me Romanian during this time of preparation at OM Hungary Missionary Training School. Tonight we conjugated the verb 'to be' and I learned to count to zece (ten, 10) in Romanian. Thanks, Dana!
Claudia is also going to Moldova with us. She is older than Dana but not as old as I am. She is from Switzerland and speaks Swiss German, so when she and Alma speak German I try to follow the conversation. Claudia is one of my roommates and she may also become my walking buddy.
Alma is the OM staff person from Germany who has come to live with us and help us out with any of the details of living, phoning, mailing and generally getting along in an unfamiliar place. This morning she shared her story of God's grace in her life and it was interesting to hear of the 10 years she spent working in Albania right after it opened up. She currently works in the OM home office in Germany and occasionally helps with other events such as this. Alma plays the saxophone and in the evenings it is nice to hear familiar songs and hymns played on the smooth tones of the sax.
Such smooth tones are a welcome relief from some of the more strident sounds around here. Specifically, the sound of dogs barking is a continual annoyance, night and day. It seems everyone in the neighbourhood has at least one dog and the Hungarian dogs have set up some sort of communication system in this hilly neighbourhood. If one dog barks, his voice invites all the other dogs to respond and at any given time you can hear endless barking - sometimes harmonized (not) by the wailing of a cat or the crowing of a rooster. This goes on into the night every single night. That and the mosquitoes makes it difficult to leave our window open when we sleep. The weather has been so beautiful that it is nice to enjoy the fresh air, barking dogs or not. The photo is a view from the balcony of our bedroom.
Today we had a couple of very good teaching sessions from a guy named Terry who has been working with OM Hungary for many years. He was teaching about Law and Grace, and about legalism in the church. It was very a very good teaching and I really enjoyed it. God is teaching me things on a very personal level as well and I am glad they chose the focus of the first week to be spiritual formation.
I'll introduce the rest of the group as I go along. We are all looking forward to our group trip into Budapest on Saturday to see the sights.
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