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Published: June 26th 2006
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Fastest unload ever!
Me making sure the equipment doesn't roll away. We have now finished our tour in Romania but this last week has been full of calamities.
It all started about four days ago when Dina, Karoline, and I were sharing a room and were attacked by a massive swarm of mosquitos. I was trying to fall asleep when I started hearing a buzzing sound in my ear. I was really tired so I tried to ignore it and just sleep. Then after about an hour I had had enough and woke up Karoline to ask for some OFF. When Dina heard me she said she had not been able to sleep either because of the buzzing by her ear. We decided to turn on the lights and kill all the mosquitos. When we turned the lights on we saw there were at least 30 of them flying around the room. It was awful! So we all took plastic bottles and whatever we could find and started killing them. As we beat them against the wall we saw our blood splatter out of them. The contact woman came in the room (I guess our overzealous mosquitos beatings woke her up) and she lit something to make them fall asleep. Finally
after the 20 minute mosquito slaying we went to sleep. The next morning I woke up to find over 50 bites on my body. On my left arm alone there are 30 bites.
The next big thing occurred the following evening when we were scheduled to have an outdoor concert at 9 in the evening. We were really excited because last year at the same venue over 1200 people attended. It is incredibly hot here so at first we were a little happy when it got windy and there were a few clouds in the sky but then we saw storm clouds heading our way so we started to pray against rain. We didn't have the proper gear to protect our equipment from rain so we knew that if the rain came we would have to stop. During the fourth song as we were waiting to start I saw a rain drop come down and the wind really picked up. As we were dancing the music went off but we kept dancing and then the music started over, so we resumed dancing. Then half way through the rain and wind picked up and we managed to finish the dance
before our sound tech pulled the plug from all the equipment and we rigged down in record time. With all the rain and wind it was definately the most dramatic version of "Jews in Jerusalem" that we've performed. As we rigged down Elisa went and the pouring rain and tried to preach to the few people who had not sought shelter. Unfortunately the rain did not let up and we were not able to finish the concert.
The next evening we had a concert in Bucharest. The concert location was really nice but a challenging set up and the heat was incredibly. I was sweating profusely before we even started. The concert went well and I had a great conversation with a girl who I was really able to encourage in her walk and prayed for her to get a mentor. Then as we were at the end of rigging down the electricity all of a sudden went out. As I was leaving the building I found out the electricity went out because of Kaspars B. He was pulling some wire and apparently it was the wrong one because blue sparks came out. Thankfully he had gloves on but
the instrument he was using melted and he was unable to see for 20 seconds. This happened last night and this morning at 5 am he woke up in pain from his eyes and wasn't able to close them without pain. He is doing much better now but prayed would be wonderful!
Today we were scheduled for an off day before traveling to Bulgaria tomorrow. On the way to location of the place we are staying in Romania we saw there was smoke coming out of the LT (our luggage and equipment van). We have really old vehicles so we didn't think much about it until we noticed there were also flames under the LT as we started ascending a bridge. Beat (the driver of the passenger vehicle which I was in) started honking and flashing his lights to make Kaspars K pull over the LT. Kaspars K didn't respond so Beat drove up next to him and finally stopped in front of the LT. We all started waving to Kaspars K and Dina to get out of the LT but they didn't react quickly because they had thought we pulled over because of our van not because of
View from the LT
This is the view from the LT as the Caravelle is pulling it to the next city to be worked on. the LT. Once they finally got out, Kaspars K opened the luggage area then quickly closed it when he saw all of the black smoke. Kaspars B meanwhile got the fire extinguisher to use on the flames. Kaspars K took charge and shouted that we needed to get everything out of the LT. We quickly used up all the extinguisher and water from our vans and the flames were still alive. Three cars and a bus stopped for us. Between them we were able to get the fire out. During that time we all worked together (very effectively I must say) to unload the entire vehicle. It was really cool to see how well we work together as a team. No one freaked out and everyone was safe. Thankfully the LT runs on diesel and God is protecting us! We continued on the road trying to get to our destination when the LT died. It reminded me of the begining of our tour except this time it was burning hot outside and the Caravelle was pulling the LT.
God is with us though and we made it safely to our destination. On top of that the pastor who we
are staying with is a mechanic so he and Kaspars are fixing the LT. So tomorrow we should be off to Bulgaria as scheduled.
Even though we are all well we still need prayer for our continued safety. Last year it took 12 hours to cross over the Bulgarian border. We know God is going to continue doing amazing things with this team and we need prayer to maintain our focus even at the end of tour and to give it all! Thank you so much for all of your prayers thus far! God bless you and I love you all!
- please excuse any typos - I typed really fast and now it is time to eat!
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