I'm coming home, tell the world that I'm coming home

      This is weird.  There are so many thoughts and emotions going through my head as I sit here thinking about what to write in one of my last blog entries and I don't know where to start.  Or if I really want to write it all out.  But I guess I'll start with my past week like usual...


      This was moving week for the tenKellernathy's.  Andrew left on furlough last Tuesday, so the Postema's place was ready for it's next inhabitants.  It's only like a 5 min walk from our old place, but with all our heavy junk, it seems a lot farther.  On Tuesday, Kristie literally printed out a schedule for the day and handed one to each of us.  They were in the layout of the daily camp schedules and planned out out day of packing and cleaning and moving.  I messed up the schedule and had a last date with Delia, my language teacher, to catch up on the summer and say goodbye.  We took a couple loads in suitcases down that day, but started the real moving on Wednesday, when we recruited Boing to help us carry the heavy stuff and to drive Hillary up and down the road.  He was pretty much awesome and I don't think we could have done it without him.  Getting the stuff out of the old apartment was easy, considering there is an elevator to bring everything down the 4 floors.  But the Postema's bloc unfortunately does not have an elevator, and has a staircase that seems to never end, even when I'm not carrying super heavy suitcases up them.  So on what felt like the hottest day of the summer, all 4 of us were sweating like crazy as we lugged 2 van loads of stuff up the 4 stories.  Let's just say workout of the month.  Then we tried to put together Jenny's "cloud" aka loft bed, which wouldn't clear the ceiling when we tried to stand it up, and then proceeded to literally fall apart.  Sorry cloud, but you were not meant to be moved a bunch of times.  At then end of the day, it was all worth it as we sat on the amazing terasa smechera and watched the sunset as we ate pizza and milkshakes.  The rest of the week consisted of organizing, cleaning, and unpacking all the junk that Kristie and Jenny own.  


      On Thursday I went to the baby hospital for the last time.  Thankfully, most all of my babies were still there and I got to see them again.  I really had to stop my mind from thinking about it too much, but after a couple hours, I just had to leave and say some quick goodbyes.  I have loved serving there and loving on those unloved babies.  But it just breaks your heart over and over again.  On Friday after Jenny's lesson, we headed out to IKEA to get some missing items for the apartment.  It was my 1st IKEA experience and I definitely think Lynchburg needs to get one!  And you get hot dogs for 1 leu (30 cents) and free refills on drinks (which pretty much doesn't happen ever in Europe)!  Then after dealing with stupid internet issues for a couple hours, we all needed something to make us not grumpy, so we made velveeta cheese dip and butterfinger milkshakes (yep can't get either of those here) and watched Monty Python and the Holy Grail.  Let's just say we were cheered up haha.  Then Jenny and I found out about our mutual love for Golden Girls and we once again died laughing as we watched an episode or 2.  I truly am going to miss living with Jenny and Kristie... we have so many adventures and laughs and stories together.  I'm grateful that they took me in when I was homeless and it's been a blast all living together.  They are 2 amazing women of God who challenge and encourage me and have become my closest friends here in Romania.  Ok I need to stop talking about them because it literally just brought tears to my eyes knowing I have to say goodbye to them in just a few short hours.  But thankfully, the internet works here now and I know they'll always only be a skype call, vonage call, textfree call/text, or facebook message away!


      Saturday Jenny and I took our newest ABWE member, Johanna, on a tour of the important things of the city.  The cheapo 13 lei stores, of course!  We walked around Obor, Unirii, and Lipscani and ended up eating a meal platter at an outside table at Caru cu Bere, the most famous & best authentic Romanian restaurant in Bucharest!  It was a pretty awesome setting, and it was great getting to know Johanna better!  Sunday was my last time at Alfa Omega, and although it still wasn't up to normal attendance (the month of August everyone is on vacation & the city pretty much shuts down!) I'm so glad there were more people there than it's been lately.  After church, we went downstairs for communion, and then Soterius turned the spotlight on me again.  Of course I got bright red as he was talking about how I needed to listen closely to hear when God was telling me to come back to Romania, and that they would keep in touch with me, and that certain boys should keep in closer touch with me!  He pretty much told me to come back and marry someone from Alfa Omega, and then asked David (the tall one that everyone's always trying to hook me up with) to pray for me and my travels.  Oh Soterius... He asked if I wanted to say anything to the group, and all I could get out was "Thank you so much for being my church family here and I love you guys..." before I started to get choked up. Then afterwards as everyone was coming up to me and saying goodbye and leaving me their last couple words, the tears came.  It may be horrible, but I'm almost glad not everyone was at church and I didn't get to say goodbye to a lot, because saying goodbye to that smaller group was rough enough!  I really am so thankful for facebook and skype, because although it won't be the same, I can still communicate with all of them!  And of course, I'll be back!  (Probably next summer with a team from my youth group!  And I'll hopefully stay longer too!! :]) 


      Today is a weird day, and my mind woke me up at 8:30 with so many thoughts.  I just feel an anxiousness, knowing that my entire world is changing again in just a few hours.  I met up with Jess Graef and Jess Capota for my last Dristor shaorma, and we ended up sitting outside and talking for a couple hours.  Then we met up with Amy at McCafe, talked so much more, and then hit up some sales at a couple stores.  It was great having some "American girls" time and I'm really going to miss those girls!  Then the remaining ABWE team, which is now down to the Graef's, Kristie, Jenny, and Johanna and will be losing me and Jess tomorrow, gathered for my "last supper" at Gela's.  She is an amazing cook and always spoils me and feeds me every time I walk in the door of their apartment!  After dinner, Jenny and I taught the rest of the gang the Cupid Shuffle (random I know) and we learned that Gela never danced in front of her mirror growing up.  Instead she witnessed to her shampoo bottles and practiced her testimony on them!  Oh Gela... I love her. She's one of a kind!  Then I got serenaded by Kristie and Jenny's beautiful rendition of "I Will Always Love You" by Whitney Houston, which brought tears to my eyes I was laughing so hard.  We had one last performance of "City on our Knees" by Toby Mac, our song of the summer, and then Boing and Laura came over to say goodbye.  They had some sort of power issue, of course, and we ended up finishing our party by candlelight.  Then Boing took us gals down to Real, which we just found out is open 24/7!, so I could buy Viva and Milka chocolate to take home with me.  Oh and I also found a new book to read in Romanian called "Jenny" that is about a girl who is from Georgia, and the description on the back and the random pictures on the cover are so Jenny!  Random find of the century.  Anyways, I had an awesome last day in the city with people I love, and who kept me busy enough so I wouldn't be a mess!  


      I'm almost done packing, and it's 2:30 am.  Now I need to weigh everything... yay.  I'm just planning on not sleeping tonight and hoping it will help me with the jet lag.  I think I'm ready.  Both physically and emotionally.  Or as prepared as I can be I guess. I just know it's God's perfect timing.  And I know it's going to be such a transition period in my life, figuring out how much I really have changed and grown, reestablishing friendships, and figuring out what adventure God has next for me.  I know it's not going to be easy, but I know that God will be with me and guiding me every step of the way, and that He will give me the grace I need every day.  I just need to remember to draw my strength from Him and continue to trust Him with my life.  


      I don't really know what else to say.  I can't put into words how much I've loved my time here and how much I love all of my family and friends here.  Anything I try to say about how much I've learned and grown and experienced just would do it justice.  So I'm just going to leave it at that.  Someday when I can see all of these things clearer, I should write them down.  These 8 months have flown by and I'm so thankfully for every minute of it.  I still can't believe my plane leaves in like 4 hours and I will be back on the other side of the ocean.  I'm so psyched to see all of my friends and family on the other side!  It's going to be so fun catching up with everyone after being apart for so long.  But I'm dreading saying goodbye to the Graef's and Kristie and Jenny in the morning.  It's just not going to be fun and I'm going to be a mess.  Anyways, I'm babbling once again.  So goodbye Romania. Te iubesc foarte mult.  And the next blog will be from the other side of the ocean! 
      

Libertatii Tabara

      Summer  2011 camp is done!  I can’t believe it’s already over when I feel like we were waiting so long for it to finally start.  We had 2 consecutive weeks at Lunca Bradului campground up in the mountains and it was a blast!

      The 1^st week we actually had 2 separate camp programs going on at the same location at the same time.  Boing and Kristie ran the Preteens camp and Anca and Jenny had the kids camp.  And I got good at being in 2 places at once!  I was the photographer which had me running around like crazy to not miss anything, and also the nurse, set up and cleaned up the games and activities, set up and tore down the tables and benches in the dining room/chapel twice a day, and literally whatever else came up.  It was super busy, but I loved it that way and I’m so glad I could serve in so many different ways. 

      The devil sure was trying to fight against what we were doing last week, but the Lord proved victorious (of course).  So many big and little things happened to distract and discourage us:  the Windham’s daughter just found out she has a large tumor and has to have surgery asap, so Kathy unexpectedly flew to the States the day after camp ended; the Postema family minus Andrew in the States have been having a hard time adjusting and Andrew is trying to keep up with them while running the whole camp; Anca had a tooth issue and had to leave to go into town to find a dentist; people weren’t feeling well and couldn’t give 100% physically; and we had some issues with some of the counselors not stepping up and being the leader they should be.  It was an exhausting and trying week for all, but God gave us the exact amount of grace, energy, strength, patience, love, and everything else we needed every day.  And in the end, many kids and teens came to know the Lord as their personal Savior, and every one of them got to know God better than they had before camp.  One of my favorite parts was the last big campfire where a bunch of preteens shared about how they had gotten saved or what they had learned about God.  And when our littlest camper who was 7 got saved and then called his mom telling her all about how he’d asked Jesus into his heart! 

      So being the camp nurse always has its stories.  Thankfully no one got injured more than a scrape or paintball wound the entire week, and the kids waited to get sick until the last day.  Poor little Raul became my friend when his stomach didn’t feel well Friday and Saturday.  Fortunately I had left the room when he puked from his top bunk bed all over the room, and the next morning we had him sitting close to the door so he got outside fast enough to spare the poor cleaning ladies another traumatic experience.  But our new story of the summer (which may beat the kid pooping on another kid’s pillow last year), is the story of a little boy, who will remain unnamed, and his mother.  On Friday morning he threw up a little bit, had a minor fever, and stayed in bed.  So we called his mom in Bucharest just to let her know what was going on and that we were monitoring him.  She then decided to call an ambulance to come get her son because “he needed oxygen” and we didn’t have the special “skills” the emergency rescue people had, even though it would take them about 2 hours to get to camp from Targu Mures.  We told her we would drive him to the hospital in Toplita, about 45 minutes away, if she really wanted him to go to the hospital.  So we called off the ambulance, got him in the car, and took him to the closest hospital to check him out.  The mother then calls and asks what kind of car they’re driving so she can call the police to tell them to pull the car over and not let them take her son to the hospital without an ambulance.  She also says that she’s getting on a plane since we were “killing her son.”   But they took  the boy to the hospital and he was put in an isolation room so the ladies that went with him couldn’t even stay with him.  The mother calls again and says that she’s currently on a train and on her way to her son.  When she got to the hospital, she saw the old doctor and told him that she wouldn’t let him “cut up her son” and she took him out and decided to take him to another doctor back in Bucharest.  Then she called Andrew and asked if they could stay at camp for the night and ride the bus back with the rest of the kids in the morning, to which he promptly said “No way.”  So with all the drama that poor kid had to endure, guess what the final diagnosis was?  A mild case of indigestion.  Yep, that’s it. 

      The weekend at Lunca between camps was super fun and only semi relaxing because it went by so quickly.  When all the kids finally got on the train Saturday afternoon, those of us that were left jumped in Hillary and searched for a good place to swim in the river.  We found “The Bridge of Death” down the road and tied a rope swing to the bottom of it.  The swing was a blast and the water was refreshing after a long week of camp.  After dinner that evening, me and Jenny started a dance/karaoke party in the dining hall.  We taught everyone the cupid shuffle and we pulled out the microphones and sang along to so many random old songs.   Everyone took a Benadryl that night and slept until the afternoon on Sunday to catch up from only getting a couple hours of rest every night during the week.  I had my own church time on a rock in the middle of the river and it was just what I needed to refresh for the upcoming week.  Then a bunch of us went on a hike up a nearby mountain and it was probably the steepest, most intense trail I’ve ever hiked.  But of course the view was totally worth it!  The Romanian mountains are gorgeous and I absolutely love being smack in the middle of God’s beautiful nature! 

       The 2^nd and last week of camp was also with Libertatii church from Targu Mures, except with the teens this time.  We had a mix of kids from the church, guests of the church, and some from 2 different orphanage organizations, so unity was a constant struggle.  The counselors definitely had their work cut out for them trying to keep the peace in their own teams, but I think it got better as the kids got used to the idea that they were stuck together for the week and they had to work together or have a miserable week.  Once again the spiritual battle was heavy, and although a lot of things “went wrong” again, I felt it more internally this time.  Ken Rudolph, the speaker, was having a really hard time keeping the attention and connecting with the campers during chapel, even though he is a phenomenal and hilarious teacher.  The teens just seemed so hardened and our constant prayer was that God would soften and open their hearts.  And of course, He did!  The counselors could see the change in the chapels, devotionals, and conversations from the beginning to the end of the week, and many teens accepted the Lord as their Savior!  At chapel on Wednesday, all of the counselors except like 2 were missing due to various issues, and that was the chapel where Ken had the first invitation.  Literally almost all of the teens looked up to find their counselor when Ken told them to, except they were nowhere to be found.  The devil was fighting as hard as he could that night, but the Lord was victorious and after chapel we only had free time which gave the counselors the perfect opportunity to have those conversations with their campers. 

I was once again the nurse and the crazy runner arounder, but Becky was the photographer!!  I never thought I could get sick of taking pictures with my sweet camera, but I am!  I have had that heavy thing attached to me for the past 5 weeks and my shoulders can’t take it anymore!  And it was nice actually being able to enjoy what was going on and be a part of it, instead of the girl always seeing things behind the camera.  I was actually a whole lot less busy this week and during the activity times (paintball, giant ladder, archery, high ropes course, zipline, team building) I could just roam around and help and encourage people, not rush from place to place trying to get pictures of everything.  Other times, I could sneak away with my Bible and my smores poptarts (thanks Philip!) and find a quiet place in the sunshine on a rock in the middle of the river to spend time with Jesus and reenergize.  Another one of my “happiness” moments at camp was standing around the Friday night bonfire, singing worship songs in Romanian, staring up at the millions of bright stars, and hearing about how God had filled the emptiness inside these kids. Just doesn’t get much better than that!

So almost every week of camp God has laid a specific person on my heart, with whom I get to know better than the other campers and have awesome opportunities to talk about Himself with.  This week was Kati, a 16 year old girl from one of the orphanage homes.  About an hour after they arrived on Monday, we got to talking and she told me how much she loves to read her Bible and listen to Christian music, but she’s afraid of the teasing of the other kids if they found out.  She knows the Gospel, but just doesn’t fully understand it yet.  I asked her if she knew for sure she was going to heaven, and she said she probably wasn’t because she had cussed before.  I then explained how Jesus’ forgiveness works and how she could be sure from what the Bible says, and she just went on about how she couldn’t make that decision because then she would have to tell other people and they would make fun of her.  We went in circles all week talking about how she shouldn’t be ashamed to read her Bible or pray, and that her standing with God and what He thinks of her is so much more important than what the other kids think of her.  It was so hard because she’s right there, she just doesn’t fully get it, but she’s one I for sure will keep praying for.  I loved help coaching her through the high ropes course, and helping her prove to herself that she’s stronger and braver than she thinks, and with God’s help she can overcome her fears and difficulties.  At the end of the week, I wrote her a letter and gave her my English Bible.  I think it will help her to read it more because she loves learning English and she wants to be an English teacher someday.  It was so precious to see her carrying it around all day until we left, and I know she will treasure that Bible, when I have plenty more at home.  She really is a special girl, and it’s awesome to see how although she’s got a pretty tough past, God’s had His protective hand on her and has brought her to a place where she’s exposed to the Gospel and Christians a lot.  I am keeping in touch with her on facebook already, and I’m so excited to see her fall in love with God more and more and to come to the point where she puts her full trust in Him.

      Now I’m home in Bucharest for the 1^st time in 3 weeks, and for the last week of my time in Romania.  Whoa, I just realized it’s the last time I can call Bucharest home…although it will always feel like another home to me.   I’ve been so busy these past 2 months I haven’t really had time to think about it.  It’s a week of “lasts” and way too many goodbyes, but God’s giving me the grace to get through it.  I’m so excited to see all my friends and family after 8 months, but it’s not going to be fun saying goodbye to all my friends and families here either, especially not knowing when or if I can see them again.  But I know that this is His perfect timing for me to return, and He’s been preparing me for this huge change and transition phase in my life once again.