Trip to Iasi

This week we traveled 7 hours to Iasi to visit the branch and missionaries.  It was a beautiful drive through the countryside and mountains.  The leaves have all changed and the colors were so bright.  It was a cloudy day so the pictures don't look quite as clear as they were.

They were still harvesting potatoes and cabbages.

Most of the roads are single-lane but occasionally we will find roads that are a lane and a half.  The half lane is not large enough for your car to fit in so you have to straddle the dashed line and pull over when people are passing.  There are no shoulders on any of the roads and some have a deep ditch made of cement where the shoulder should be. Sometimes people will just stop their car in the half lane. The horse carts, wagons, bicycles and pedestrians all use the half lane.  At night, it is especially difficult to drive because of the lack of street lights and the carts and wagons do not have reflectors.

Sometimes you have to share the streets with the trolley cars too.

When we arrived in Iasi, we found a huge crowd of people.  Every hotel was booked and we were not able to get a room in Iasi so we stayed in a town called Roman that was 80km away.  The police had most of the streets in Iasi blocked off so it was impossible to get to the church.  We found out later that this weekend was a type of pilgrimage where people in Romania come to Iasi to touch one of the mummified remains of one of their saints.  They believe that it will heal them.  The lines to get to the Orthodox church to see the mummy were several blocks long.  They were all carrying candles.

We ran into a small parade but we were not sure what they were celebrating.  It may have had something to do with the big event.

We ended up traveling to Bacau and visited the members there and attended their meetings.  It was too hard to get to our church in Iasi on Sunday.

Yesterday we had another baptism in Brasov.  His name is Jora and he is in his mid-forties.  He has been investigating the church for several years and finally decided to get baptized.  It is so exciting to have two baptisms in two weeks.