Debrief and Travel Day

Midpoint debrief was a week between countries to see the leadership team from back in Georgia as well as rest and process everything from the country. This was just what I needed. We all stayed at a hostel in Brasov, Romania, a cute tourist town in the mountains. We had time to recap our time in Romania; worship as a squad; learn about hard truths; rest, and my personal favorite, have fun! The highlights of my debrief was as follows: 

Playing family feud: For our squad fun night we played family feud and it was so fun! I never walk away from squad activities regretting playing games like the couch game or a round of spoons.

Worship: Worship was so refreshing. We sang a worship song in Romanian that we learned and it was such a good seal of our time serving in Europe. 

Visiting the smallest road in the world: Walking the streets of Brasov was truly beautiful, especially seeing old buildings and peculiar architecture like a street that was thinner than my wingspan. 

Sessions: I was reminded of so many truths during my sessions at debrief. Particularly a teaching on Romans 12: renewing of the mind and pride. 

Skiing: This was truly amazing. Me and 4 others went up to the mountains to snowboard and ski on our adventure day. This involved sliding down an accidental triple balck diamond and being laughed at by children as we all fell down the bunny slopes. 

Following debrief was travel to the Dominican Republic. We woke up before the sun and took a bus to the train station, stopping along the way to get our COVID tests. We stayed at the train station for a bit waiting for our logistics leader to get our train tickets while some of us played cards. The train ride was about 4 hours and landed us at the Bucharest airport. I was disappointed when I learned that real trains are not like the Polar Express or Harry Potter, but more like a long bus with seat clusters of 4 and limited room for our enormous hiking packs. We arrived at the Bucharest airport around 9 p.m. and got as much sleep as we could on the airport floor before waking up at 2 a.m. to check into our flight. 

Whether it appeared in the form of physical sickness, apathy, or sadness, Romania was spiritually hard for my squad. It felt as though our travel day showed us that the enemy would follow us even after Romania. If you are living for God, satan becomes more persistent in his attacks. The Bucharest airport informed us that we can only check in 2 hours before our flight; this meant waiting until 4 in the morning to check in. Once we entered customs, we realized that the line looked like a Fridat night, Disney World, tower of terror line (without the fast passes). The line took over an hour to get through, and we still had security and baggage check. We rushed through the airport, sprinting as fast as we could to our terminal. We got there right when they opened the gates but half the squad was still at security. By the time the gate closed four people were not on the plane and we began to panic. However, only 2 minutes before we took off they let them in the gate. After a 3 hour plane ride we arrived in Paris, and quickly found out that the Bucharest airport must have been too overwhelmed to print out our connecting flight tickets. This added a whole other layer of stress when we tried checking in to the French airport.

With much patience that may have just been jet lag and exhaustion in disguise, we got to the plane for our second flight, stopping of course to grab a french pastry on the way. I and many others slept during our entire 9 hour plane ride to New York City. When we got to the Big Apple everything went smoothly until we realized some of our tickets did not have seat numbers. After my leader figured it out, we finally were on our way to the Caribbean. Looking back I can definitely see satan doing everything in his power to prevent us from going, and even if it was just mere coincidence, we knew he was definitely cheering. Setting that aside, I see more of God walking before us and making sure we got to our new home. Logistically, we should not have gotten here the way we did, but God is good and so is the care he puts into his children.