Romania for the Holidays!

We are such a blessed generation and we are a blessed family in this generation. Thank you for your love, prayers, and support. 

Matthew 13:17 For I tell you the truth, many prophets and righteous men longed to see what you see but did not see it, and to hear what you hear but did not hear it.  

We had a fabulous time in Romania over
Christmas and New Years
Plenty of Fun, Friends, Food, Fellowship, and Great Ministry

We were in Rasnov Romania, Transylvania, which has a fortress overlooking the ancient village

The valley is surrounded by the Carpathian Mountains

Our Hosts:
Alin, Iuliana, and Ruthy Muntean
They are in the Bible Institute with us and are a great blessing!
They have an incredible ministry to Gypsy youth in Rosnov.
We lived with Iuliana's family. What a great family. They made life in another culture easy!!

Iuliana's sister, Alina, was our live-in interpreter - she was a priceless help and she and Hannah had a great time


The one thing we loved the most was the wonderful people:
They were all so friendly and interesting
Like this old lady still wearing traditional Romanian clothing

This old guy would always try to charge Daniel to enter the apartment building, just joking and having fun, even though we could not speak the same language

Dan and Daniel visited with this nice Gypsy family and they offered us some very special delicacies... Romanians get very offended if you do not eat what they offer you... Raw pig skin and sausage made from the pig organs. They just butchered the family hog and they were proud to share it with these Americans. Claudia is holding the yumminess


Another category of family favorites was the food. Iuliana's mother, Getta, is a wonderful Romanian cook. All the food we ate was entirely new to us and it was all minunat (which is Romanian for wonderful)

This is Salata De Bouef, a traditional Romanian holiday food 

This is not bread (though it looks and tastes like bread) it is filled with cinnamon swirl and is delicious!
It's name sounds like "cousin nock"

This beautiful little church was in the mountains near the village. What a post card picture


The highlight of the trip was ministry. By God's grace and power we were able to minister many times, mainly to Gypsies. Dan and Natalie both shared God's Word and the entire family was involved in many ministry opportunities.

Dan shared the Gospel to over 200 Gypsy children and he and Daniel handed out Samaritan's Purse shoe boxes.

The tiny church in the Gypsy village was locked, so we preached outside in the freezing cold, the children did not seem to mind nearly as much as Daniel and Dan

After some fun and the Gospel message they all bowed their heads and prayed for salvation. God knows their hearts. 
Jesus says we need to come to Him like a little child!

The little(er) girl was not sure of these stangers

They loved the Samaritan's Purse shoe boxes!


We loved just walking around the village of Rasnov Romania
They do not understand the concept of snow removal from roads or sidewalks except the very main roads.
This picture is after at least two weeks of no snow. We walked almost everywhere and the sidewalks were dangerous.

If you can't beat them ... join them

There are many animals living in the villages. We saw more horse-drawn wagons in Rosnov than in Toalmas

Some of the views were spectacular, like this view of the Carpathian Mountains from the church

From the fortress you could see mountains all around. There are a lot of ski slopes in Romania

This was a strange toilet. Most were not like this, but this public bathroom had these for both the guys and the ladies. You put your feet on the feet rests and figure it out from there

The village was very quaint. With a lot of old German architecture

This is the oldest church in Rosnov. It is nestled against the mountain

The house behind our apartment building was a small farm with pigs, horses, chickens, Dogs, cats, and these oaie (Romanian for sheep)

We spent much time with the youth group.
We went caroling Christmas Eve for six hours

It was a blessing to sing to so many joyful Romanians
and it was fun to try to sing the Romanian Christmas Carols

Here are some of the youth as we hiked to the fortress on New Years Day

We finished our time with the youth that day playing volleyball in the snow
Now that was "cool"


There are many castles in Romania (and Hungary), we visited two in Transylvania. Iulianna's father Denis was a wonderful blessing as he took us on many excursions.  

Bran Castle: This one is "Dracula's" castle. It had many twists, turns, passageways, and a hidden stair case

See, the children did not get eaten alive

A view of the inner courtyard

A beautiful Greek-Orthodox monastery nearby

Romania was very cold...... Natalie hugged the heaters in the castle to try to stay warm

Peles Castle: This was the castle of the Romanian kings, before the Communist era. It was extremely ornate inside

The Rosnov Fortress from a distance. It was built in the 13th century and used for protection for the villagers from the Huns

We climbed the mountain three times while we were there to enjoy the fortress and the view

Here we are at the entrance which has multiple gates for protection. It was designed well

Of course we wern't there long until they put Dan in the stockade for something he did

Soon - like father like son. They were both in trouble

The girls had a great time with the boys all tied up!!!

Wonderful Hungarian Culture

Around our village (Toalmas) we experience some wonderful Hungarian culture

Everyday, especially in the morning, we can see horse drawn wagons going to and from local fields. Several local farmers still use them for farming


We see mainly modern cars but also a good number of Communist era cars like this one


Another peculiar site for us is tractors parked in a small yard or in the driveway. This is a farming community and we have heard of two reasons for the tractors in the yards in town. 1) Farm land is scarce so the farmers build their houses in town to preserve the farm land 2) Corporations can not own farm land so there are a few small farms owned and run by families but most towns own the farm land surrounding them and hire the towns people to work the land. This is a throwback to Communist times.



Two of the main crops are paprika and sunflowers. We see paprika hanging from porches drying in the fall, Hungary is famous for it, and sunflowers are their primary source of cooking oil



Amazing fields of sunflowers that seem to go on forever



Another cultural experience is the hog slaughter. When the weather gets cold enough early in the morning you may hear the scream of a hog not wanting to be made into meat for the winter. We have seen, and heard, dozens of these family events. The men do most of the work, the women are their to assist and talk, and the children and the family dog run around amongst the party atmosphere. This picture is out our back window of a Gypsy family butchering their hog on the first really cold morning this fall.



As the Fall and early Winter pass by and we hear and see more and more hogs being slaughtered we realize just how many villagers raise pigs in these little wooden pens in their back yard



On the peek of the roof of many of the homes are crosses of varying shapes. These are put there at the completion of the house to protect and bless it. They appear to be more of a good luck charm than a sign of meaningful faith as most Hungarians never enter a church.



Inside the homes are curtains of beautiful lace. Hungarian lace is a very fine and proud tradition as is beautiful needlework on table cloths and table runners.



Some more lace with beautiful needlework, for sale in shops in Budapest



Hungarians have a very long proud history full of much upheaval and turmoil which they celebrate with many amazing statues of strong figures doing incredible feats. The plaques are in Hungarian so unless we have an interpreter with us we just stare at the amazing figures.


This is us at Hősök tere (Hero's Square) where there are 29 lager-than-life statues of Hungarian heros of old. We have to be careful not to look too closely, there are many nudes.


There are many beautiful / fun statues to discover all over Budapest and even in the villages



There are over 1000 castles in Hungary which also speak to the amazing history of this country. Many of the castles are fortresses, like this one in Eger, and others we would call mansions.



This is the Elet Szava Castle which is the mansion style



These final few pictures are of the local cemetery on All Hollows Eve. On All Saints Day, Nov. 1st, there is a national Holiday celebrating a day for all the saints that have died. The night before (All Hollows Eve, Oct 31st) is believed to be the night when the veil between the living and the dead is the thinnest so they go to the graves of their dearly departed put lots of white flowers and even more candles on the graves. Of the hundreds of graves in the cemetery I only saw two without any candles on them and many had as many as 50 candles burning.



Dan met up with a group of other students from the Bible school and there in the cemetery on that cold dark Fall night and they spent time in prayer for those who religiously go through ceremonies for the dead but personally have no hope for eternity as the majority never darken the door of a church.


Here is a different cemetery during the day, since it is so cold the flowers lasted over a month