Day 10- Transfagarasan and the Road Home

Today was a travel day to prepare for boarding the airplane in the early hours tomorrow night.  We traveled from Sighisoara to Sibiu, where we will fly out of, taking a detour to see Transfagarasan.  Transfagarasan is a paved mountain road crossing the southern section of the Carpathian Mountains of Romania and is the 2nd highest paved road in the country (6,700 ft.). This road is closed November to June due to snow.   At the top is Lake Balea.  It was featured on the show Top Gear and is now a very popular destination.  At the top is vendors selling food and you guessed it, souvenirs.  There was such a long traffic jam to get to the top as parking is limited that we parked and hiked up the mountain side.  Our driver today waited through traffic to meet us at the top when we were ready to leave.  

After stopping at a restaurant near Transfagarason for some delicious fried trout, we headed to our overnight near the airport.  An interesting place to stay, our “hotel” was actually a new apartment complex...our group was able to reserve some new unrented apartments in this building.  As it was in the 90’s today we were all excited to experience some air conditioning!

Soon we will be headed back to the States.  It will take a long time to process all that God has done in our lives and in the people who we’ve gotten to meet the past 2 weeks.  Here are some things from our debrief last night that we are already starting to notice about this experience:

What impacted you? 

-bonding of this team and bonding with Sabin, Rollie, Nate, and Deborah 

-leaving the friends we’ve made here

-watching each person work with the kids and use their gifts

-getting to know a new young adult that doesn’t normally attend The Table

-being trailblazers for Cornwall, building a foundation for future trips, already looking forward to the next mission trip

-expanding views and perspectives of the world and the impact that poverty has in different places

-unity in the body of Christ globally

-seeing faith in others in the team come alive in a new way

-being on mission trips before but not having such a connection with their team

How was your view of God stretched?

-seeing what life is like for a non-US Christians

- seeing how hungry people were to learn more about God

-that we don’t always know how God will use the small things that we do, sometimes we see and sometimes we don’t

-God’s faithfulness in answered prayer

-People with nothing continue to praise and worship God

-seeing Sabin’s example of lifting up the name of God to hurting, sick, impoverished people without knowing the outcome

Thanks for following along with this blog.  We hope it’s helped you learn more about Romanian culture and our experience serving this church!