C'est Maldova

Matthew and I had an interesting adventure yesterday that forced trust building.

Our phone at the apartment decided not to work anymore and we hadn't set up the details of the days plan because we were planning on calling in the morning. We didn't know whether to wait at the apartment (which in hindsight was the right thing to do) or to go the meeting or go to Pauls. We walked down to Paul's apartment, but missed him, because he was riding a mini bus up to ours so that he could find out why we were not answering the phone. When he or his wife were not home, we decided to go and try and find the church office on our own. The other time we were there, it was sunday and all of us were together and talking and so I had not paid any attention to how to get there. So I had to trust Matthew and his ever present map that he has out everywhere to get us there. The map of course doesn't have the mini bus routes and the major buses were on strike. Traffic was terrible yesterday and there were protesters in the city center. We ended up making it there 45 minutes late and had everyone worried about us. We didn't really know where the office was in the building and were wondering around it until we finally found a woman who let us use her cell phone. (We had tried earlier to use the pay phones but could not figure it out. You have to buy a card and punch in numbers from the card, but the cards are in Russian so it is really hard to figure out which of the dozens of numbers on the card are the right ones. We are going to carry Paul's cell phone with us from now on.) We called paul and he called the church office and they came out and found us. we were walking right by the door when they came out. So in the end it worked out fine and Matthew got us there.

We are learning to be flexible and to let things develop and happen as they happen. Don't worry be happy. C'est la vie. (That's life!) One Moldovan told us that everyone has such a great sense of humor because there are so many things that don't work the way you would hope, that the only thing to do is to laugh. If you get mad, you would always be angry.

Thanks for your prayers. We can feel them guiding and protecting us.