May 23, 2023, Daniel, Anne Marie, my sister-in-law Havilah, and myself boarded a plane in Boise to begin our journey to Romania. The purpose of this trip was expressly to pack up our things from the house that we had lived in and had planned on returning to when David was so shockingly arrested on May 2nd of 2022. We had moved most of our worldly possessions with us when we came to live in Romania on June 29th of 2021. I had attempted to come to Romania and pack up our things from the house several times prior to this, but each time I was blocked from going. I realize now the Lord kept me with my husband to enjoy as much time with him as possible before he would be in prison, and to be able to support and advocate for him. There were several times I was frustrated at not being able to go sooner. I know very well that stuff is just stuff, but there were things I didn’t want to loose, like letters from my dad who is in eternity now. I also didn’t want to give up my grandma’s Bible and my great-grandma’s Bible. There were several quilts that family members and dear friends had made and given to us for our wedding, and there were pictures that I do not have saved anywhere else. Some dear friends prayed with me about being able to go and collect our things.

By God’s grace, we were able to use airline points to book tickets traveling to Timișoara and leaving from Prague, Czech Republic. We have friends in Czech Republic who wanted to buy the van that we had in Romania, so that’s why we had planned to leave from Prague. My brother, Marcellus, also joined us on the trip- meeting us in San Diego, California before we headed to Europe. After more than 30 hours of traveling, we arrived in Timișoara around 10 pm. It seems long layovers and a long itinerary of travel are sometimes the cost of traveling with award flights, aka flights booked using travel points, but I am so grateful that we were able to go! Only having 4 business days in Romania, we worked through the exhaustion and jet lag.

Every person who came with me was absolutely needed to complete the huge task of moving our stuff! I am so thankful for my brother and sister-in-law, and my children. Each of them worked very hard! My brother was our primary driver, since to my embarrassment, I have never learned to drive a manual transmission very well. Our van is an automatic, but it needed to be fixed and ended up being at the mechanic for most of the time we were in Romania. Thankfully we were able to borrow a vehicle that belongs to a friend-of-a-friend. Since Havilah often gets very car sick, she mostly remained at the house and was in charge of packing everything that I had sorted to put in storage. Daniel and Anne Marie sorted through the toys, and all the children’s clothing, and helped pack boxes and load and unload the vehicle to take things to the storage container. I sorted everything to either be donated, put in storage, or bring back to the US, but I also had several legal things to take care of. With the Lord’s help, we were able to move a mountain of stuff!

The borrowed vehicle was on it’s last leg, running on 3 out of 4 cylinders, but we had a vehicle to use and were able to get where we needed to go! Praise God! Perhaps using a nearly dead vehicle was an exercise in faith since it left us stranded 3 times and we had to call for help. Each time we had car trouble, our friend Callum stopped what he was doing and came to help us. Praise the Lord for a friend who was willing to help! Twice it wouldn’t start because the battery was dead, and the last time it had a problem with the exhaust and we were coughing and choking on the diesel fumes. It sounds terrible, but really we were just so thankful to have a vehicle that we could use! Each trip to the storage container was a minimum of 3 hours round trip and usually ended up being about 5 hours or more. That old falling apart van enabled us to move a mountain of stuff!

I also knew that I needed to pay for a tax on the van in order to take it out of Romania. The tax was a little over $1000, and I had brought enough cash with me to pay for it. Before traveling, we had found a storage place in Timișoara that rents out shipping containers for people to use like storage units. Storage units are almost unheard of in Romania and this business only has two locations, one in Bucharest, the capital of Romania, and one in Timișoara, which happens to be a city near where we had lived in Romania. Well, near is a relative term. It was an hour and a half drive, but it was doable! Every other storage option we looked into were just renting space at a warehouse. That would not have worked well since it will likely be at least two years before we are able to return to Romania, and it could be longer. Yes, we do plan to return to Romania! We know without a doubt that God has called us to Romania, and we believe that He will bring that call to completion! So, by faith we did not ship all of our things back to the USA, but we put them in storage in Romania. I knew that I would need to pay for the storage container and I had planned to use my American bank card from the one working account that we have. I told my bank before traveling that I was going to Romania, and would also be traveling through Hungry, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic. They took notes of all of this and said that I shouldn’t have any trouble. Well, when I tried to use the bank card at the store, it didn’t work and I had to use cash. Once again I tried to use the bank card to pay for the storage container, but it wouldn’t work. My card never worked the entire time we were in Romania. I had gone to the bank earlier that day and was able to close my Romanian bank account. I also exchanged the cash I had brought with me. If I had not been able to close my bank account, I would not have had enough money to pay for the storage unit. Praise God! He faithfully provides for every need!!!

I still had a problem, how was I going to pay for the tax on the vehicle so we could drive it out of Romania? While I was praying about that, the owner of the house we had lived in sent me a message saying that he wanted a year’s worth of rent. That was shocking and somewhat upsetting considering that other people had stayed in the house while we were absent. But all of our things had been left in the house and they were all still there. Normally if a house is vacant for a year in a developing country like Romania, there will not be much left when you return! So in light of this, I paid the surprise rent bill using funds from Wise again. Anyway Matthew 5:42 tells us “Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.” I’m thankful we were able to get all of our stuff and that it was all still there, and I said to the owner of the house, “God bless you” and we were done with that business. It was simply another opportunity to bring something before the Lord and trust Him to provide!

The problem of paying the vehicle tax had not yet been solved. We had made a power of attorney before David had to surrender to prison. The first business day I was in Romania, I took that power of attorney to a legal translator and they began to work on translating it into Romanian. On Monday, May 29th, the translation was complete and we were able to pick it up. I needed it to pay the vehicle tax, but I was also hoping to use it to close David’s Romanian bank account and have enough cash to then pay the tax. Well, I took the translated power of attorney papers to the bank on Tuesday. I was told, “The person you need to talk to isn’t here today, and they are not going to be here tomorrow either, and Thursday we are closed.” I tried to explain that I was leaving Romania on Wednesday, but it made no difference. Amazingly, my husband was able to call me in Romania! He isn’t always able to call me in the USA, but by God’s grace, he called me in Romania! He told me that he had given me his Romanian bank card and that I should try to get the cash to pay the vehicle tax from an ATM. The vehicle tax had to be paid at the town hall in the village of Șiștarovăț and it had to be paid in cash. Well, by God’s grace, I went to every ATM in the nearby town of Lipova and was able to withdraw enough cash to pay the vehicle tax! PRAISE GOD!!!

Sunday, May 28th was my birthday, and it was a very special day indeed! We were once again able to fellowship and worship the Lord with our dear brothers and sisters at the little Baptist church in the village of Șiștarovăț. I was so thankful to learn that they have continued the children’s ministry! They are continuing to hold a Good News Club every Saturday for the children in the village! They have been faithfully praying for us the entire time we have been away and have lovingly encouraged us! After the church service, we enjoyed a wonderful meal which was like a feast! We had been able to bring some cakes to celebrate my birthday and it was such a sweet blessed time! I am so thankful because on my birthday last year, I was still in a lot of shock and trauma and I did not really enjoy it to the fullest. I felt like my birthday was redeemed by the love of the people from the little Elim church in Șiștarovăț! The pastor has not failed to send an encouraging message or scripture since the day David was arrested. He at once told me that this was persecution and a fulfillment of Matthew 5:11-12 in our lives, “Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.” The pastor lived through the terrible persecution of Believers during the communist regime in Romania, and he told me that when persecution comes, it usually comes with lies and false accusations. It is more convenient to falsely accuse someone than to admit that you put him in prison because he is a Bible believing, Christian, missionary, homeschooling father. The church people have also lifted us up in prayer and rejoiced to see myself and Daniel and Anne Marie. These people come from a rural Romanian village. Many of them receive the minimum wadge in Romania which is just over $400 USD monthly. Still, they took a love offering for our family and sacrificially gave a little over $300 USD. I bawled when they gave me this! I feel like they truly laid down their lives for us! I praise God for the dear brothers and sisters in Christ at the tiny church in the little village of Șiștarovăț! They may be a tiny church, but their blessing was and is HUGE!!!

On Wednesday, May 31, we had packed up the last of the things to go into storage and had suitcases packed with the stuff that we planned to bring back to the US. I went down to the town hall with our friend Callum and he translated so that I could pay the vehicle tax. We got in our van and headed to the storage for one last trip. After we put the last things into the storage container, we took off for the Czech Republic. We went only about 2 miles and our van overheated and spewed water everywhere. We pulled over and took a look under the hood. It looked like there was a possible blown hose since there was water spewing everywhere. So, we once again called Callum to come and rescue us. He called the mechanic, who tried to get a tow truck for us, and then Callum started the hour and a half drive to where we had broke down. During this time I began to message people back home to please pray for us! All of us who were on the trip prayed together and my brother shared James 1:2-4 with us. “Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.” Then I was reminded of an old song called “No Doubt” which seemed to fit our situation perfectly and really is appropriate for everything that we have been through since May 2, 2022. I’ll post the lyrics so you too can be encouraged. The lyrics are by John Elefante, Robert Hartman, Ronny Cates:

There are times when you fell like you can’t go on
There are times when you fell like giving in
And there are times when you feel like you can’t try anymore
There are times of trouble in believing
This test of your faith will last
As long as it takes to pass
Till you have no more doubt you’ll endure
And you faith will emerge true and pure

No doubt it’ll be alright
With God it’ll all work together for good
No doubt in the end it will be understood
No doubt it’ll all work out
With faith He can move any mountain for us
No doubt in the power of Jesus
And after all is done we find out
All we really need to have is no doubt

There’s a time to take a reckless leap of faith
There’s a time to be cautious and wait
And there’s a way of learning from the past
That this time of trouble won’t last
And sometimes we want to think we know
The ways He will choose to make us grow
But it’s never the way of our choosing
And we can’t always see what He’s using

No doubt it’ll be alright
With God it’ll all work together for good
No doubt in the end it will be understood
No doubt it’ll all work out
With faith He can move any mountain for us
No doubt in the power of Jesus
And after all is done we find out
All we really need to have is no doubt

There will be winters in the seasons of our soul
With a cold and bitter wind that chills our lives
But our faith can be building a fire
That will warm us till spring time arrives

No doubt it’ll be alright
With God it’ll all work together for good
No doubt in the end it will be understood
No doubt it’ll all work out
With faith He can move any mountain for us
No doubt in the power of Jesus
And after all is done we find out
All we really need to have is no doubt

After Callum arrived and there was still no tow truck, we took another look at the engine and discovered that it wasn’t actually leaking coolant, but the fan to cool the engine wasn’t running. The engine has a safety feature that when it begins to overheat, it spews some water out of the coolant reservoir so that the engine doesn’t get wrecked. We decided that it would be best to drive our van to the mechanic we know and trust in Arad. Finding a trustworthy mechanic is difficult the world over, but when you are a group of Americans in a developing country, it’s especially hard! So we drove the van to Arad, which was about an hour away. We were careful not to let the engine idle and we arrived at the mechanic without further incident. Since the village of Șiștarovăț was an hour away and we wanted to get on the road as soon as possible, we decided to stay at a hotel in Arad. It was around 8 pm once we arrived at the mechanic and then checked into the hotel. I was relieved the mechanic shop was in an area of Arad that I was familiar with and was, in fact, within walking distance of our favorite pizza restaurant! Being in a familiar area was like a little hug from God during a stressful time. The mechanic worked very hard to correct the problem with the engine fan. At first, he was looking for a replacement to the broken part, but he gave up on finding a replacement because that particular van is very rare in Romania, so he ended up making his own part and got the fan working again. He knew that we had wanted to drive to Czech Republic the day before and that we were on a time constraint because we had airplane tickets to return to the US, so he was working hard to get the van able to make the trip without incident. The next morning, I tried to exchange the Romanian cash I had back to USD, but all the banks and money exchanges were closed. It was National Children’s Day in Romania. By around noon, the van was finally ready to go. The mechanic did not charge us anything since he had been the one to fix all the other problems with the van. What a blessing to find an honest mechanic who guarantees his work!

It was Thursday and we were a day later than I had hoped to get to the Czech Republic. We only made two stops on the way there, by God’s grace we arrived at our friend’s house before it was completely dark! Unfortunately, the office that is like the DMV in Czech Republic is closed on Fridays. We asked someone who regularly buys and sells vehicles what all was needed to transfer the ownership of the van. They said that the only thing necessary was a signed contract between the buyer and the seller. We trust that the information we were given was correct and that my friends will have no trouble registering the van in Czech Republic!

I will finish sharing about our arrival in California and our visit with David in the next blog post. This one is probably already too long. Thank you for continuing to pray for us!!! God bless you!