The past few weeks have been filled with meetings. These have all required some travel. We began by traveling across Romania to Suceava. There we met with different Pastors and potential churches that could possibly host the Wheels For the World distribution of wheelchairs this coming summer. Sami Mitrofan was key in helping us with this process. All the meetings were helpful in deciding where to host the distribution, they all are great churches who are ready to serve the disabled community. Since only one spot could be chosen, we weighed careful how best to hold the distribution. In the end, we choose a site that was physically ready for 100 or so disabled visitors. They already have built ramps through out for they have a worship leader in a wheelchair, and recently they purchased a van from Germany to help transport anyone with a disability to church. We could not have done this without the help from Sami, a true friend of Joni and Friends ministries.
After returning to Timisoara we had two days to wash laundry and pack for our Romanian GEM team meeting.
This year the team traveled to the coast of Croatia at a Christian retreat center in the town of Crikvenia. This was a 9 hour drive from Timisoara. It was a time to plan and express team goals, as well as individual goals for reaching Romania with the Gospel. We feel extremely fortunate to be part of this great team.
As Steve drove our van back with other team members, I continued to travel down the coast with two single female missionaries, Dawn and Amy. We took three days to explore the beauty of Croatia. I highly recommend it as a travel destination! The city of Dubrovnik has a beautiful, intact fortress along the Adriatic Sea. We also drove to and hiked in a National Park where we saw many waterfalls. You can see more pictures in our picture album.
I then traveled on with Amy to Italy where I volunteered to watch the GEM Italy teams children as they met for their team's strategic planning. This was held in Sorrento which is another coastal city. It is south of Napoli on the Almafi coast.
From our balcony you could see the lights of Pompei and Mount Vesuvius.
The kids were great and I was able to get to know the Italian team better.
As I return to Timisoara, I join Steve in a busy schedule of preparation for the summer to come. While I was off to Italy, he was working away at many existing and upcoming ministry events.
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