Wednesday, July 30th, 2008
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GUESS WHAT???????????????
our flight got delayed, so we ended up missing our connecting flight. Now we are staying in a 5 star hotel over night and leaving at 9 in the morning but for now we are in Singapore airport playing xbox and eating free food, by the way the hotel was free too. YES BOY!
see you umm maybe tomorrow.Peter and Fil.
So………………..
well we are in Budapest and its about 35 degrees. We have finished our mission work and have just drived for about 5 hours and arrived in Budapest. we will be on the plane tomorrow and looking forward to coming home, but for now its our day off before flying. 
see you all soon, Peter.
First I would like to say NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!! with a tear, Benny has left us. So because Benny has left us and I couldn’t find internet and the blog is a little behind. However I have somehow managed to work my way into someones? wireless internet, sssssshhhhh.
Well the past few days we have begun to build a church in Tes and thats when benny left. during this time we stayed in the baptist church in lugoj which was very welcoming. Between the group we have manage to completely level and concrete the new church floor, build the septic tank outside and install the churches heating (all in 2 days). Elijah, who is the pastor, was very greatful and pleased to have good company and get some work done on the church.
Then our latest work has been in Banloc, where we have been doing exactly what we did in Batar but with different people and on a smaller scale. Today in Banloc we joined up with Emanuel, Iosif, Ruben, Alisa, Andrea, Anna, and others who I have forgotten(sorry about the spelling on the names), we also gained Maria who is another nurse and two doctors, Florica and John. Today went extremely well and the team managed to put alot of smiles on peoples faces.
Tomorrow is our last day before we head back and we will be working in Dolats to continue our medical mission and evangalistic teaching. We will join some more people and do alot of good work. But for now I had better stop using someone elses internet and it is 10:30.
see you all soon, somn pufos and noroc.
Peter.
Wow the last 3 and a half weeks have gone by so fast and so slowly at the same time. Don’t know how that is possible but it is. Sadly I departed ways with the rest of the team yesterday so this will probably be my last entry on this blog. It’s up to Pete and the rest of the guys to keep you updated now. What a trip it has been! Travelled across half the country. Visited so many places and met so many different people. My highlight had to be the clinic and kids camp in Batar. I will miss those kids. And the Americans. They were pretty cool too.
Since leaving Oradea we have come back down through Timisoara and are now based in the town of Lugoj. We are travelling from there to a remote location called Tes each day and helping with the construction of the new church there. For the part that I was there for we helped put in the concrete floor and put brickwork in to line the septic tank - all of which is great fun in the newfound rain. Our arrival in Tes and helping out with the construction work has been an answer to these people’s prayers that they prayed about 8 weeks ago. We will tell you more about that story when we get back though.
So I’m sitting in the airport in Timisoara. I was supposed to leave Romania last night however due to a Lufthansa pilot strike my flight got cancelled. The really great staff here got me a seat on a Carpatair flight that will get me to Munich in time for my connecting flight to Singapore. (Does the name of this airline mean it’s a magic carpet ride?) Praise God that he has everything in control and can sort problems out so easily.
I will see you all soon. Please keep praying for the team as they have a lot of work ahead of them this week. Thank you so much for your prayers and thoughts thus far. It has been really great hearing that we have so much support from home as we have been travelling throughout Romania and doing the various jobs we have done.
See you soon,
Ben.
For those of you who didn’t see it, Kev put a comment in on one of the posts. His comment is repeated here:
How is things going at Maida Vale at present we are putting a concrete floor in the new church at Tes but we have been having some exciting times. Tonight is a sad time because Ben will be leaving us tomorrow.
Kevin.
Hi everyone. Our intention is to do another video linkup back to MVBC just after the evening service this week. I haven’t confirmed this with Joel or anyone else yet but we have planned it into our day. Hope to see you there.
I just put a few pics up of us and the kids in Batar.
http://www.photobucket.com/mvbc
So its Friday night and the week long project is now over. No more medical clinic. No more kids day camp. No more dizzy wizzys. No more kids coming and hugging you - the sad bit - but also no more kids running up to you and shouting “up! up!” in Romanian at you wanting you to pick them up and spin around and stuff - the yay bit :). Ah but we will miss them.
My own personal guess would say that over the 5 days we saw maybe 150 different kids and about 60-70 on average per day. One day we had 40, another we had over 100. The theme of the week was “The Treasure”. The treasure that is Jesus, and introducing the kids to various bible stories ranging from Jesus’ birth, to David and Goliath, to the parable of a man who found a treasure in a field. We also sang songs with them. You should hear them sing My God Is So Big in Romanian. It is so cool!!
In the clinic we would easily have seen over 500 patients. Probably more. Although today was a bit of a slow day. There was more of a rush earlier in the week.
Tonight most of the team is still in Batar attending a special service. Myself, David, Dory, and Claire all opted to go back to the misso house as we were rather exhausted - not to say the others aren’t, but perhaps we just are really tired and would prefer sleep. Yet I’m not sleeping….. hmmmm…. something wrong with that logic. All I know is after having had a warm shower for the first time in a couple of days I feel excellent. Not that I haven’t showered. It’s just there was no hot water at the times I have showered since Wednesday. For those of you who have been, think Sportsfest showers in Bunbury. Freezing!! Yay!
Tomorrow is sort of a rest and wrap up day. We will be starting the day with a celebration service just for the combined Aussie/American team. Then everyone will have the day to themselves, during which I believe us Australians will be going to visit some people that Florin knows. The Americans then sadly leave us at 1am on Sunday night.
Sunday will see us visiting a local church. It will be interesting.
This next week will see things change a little as we head down to Lugoj to start the next phase of our mission trip. Also I leave the team on Wednesday to start my early trek back to Australia. I’ll get back in Oz on Friday arvo. The rest of the team will still be here a while longer. I am sad I am leaving them early as I will miss out on a lot in that final week or so.
So love to you all. And I will see you soon.
Ciao
Ben
I just realised I never did mention that Nathan is feeling a lot better now. In fact he is back to normal.
Today I was the sick one. But after spending the day sleeping under a pew on the concrete floor of a Romanian Gypsy Church I’m feeling much better. (how many people can say they’ve done that!)
So I complain about the hot weather. And then we get a massive thunderstorm overnight followed by a day full of drizzle. This results in a LOT of mud…. and playing with kids in mud, well I think you get the picture that it was all a bit messy and dirty by the end of the day. Thankfully today was fine and a bit cooler than the recent hot days.
Iain thinks that the medical clinic has been seeing around 100 patients a day. In the kids camp we are seeing more and more kids turning up each day. I think last time I looked on Tuesday there was maybe around 50 kids. But there were heaps more today.
Ciao,
Ben