How the Road Looks to the Quarantined

All things being equal, there is not much could be written of time since our departure to this point that would convince anyone of its worth-while.

However, I find the nonsense of that first bit (all things being equal) dumb, and all things are quite unequal here in Craiova.
I struggle with the feeling that what can be said appears so lacking it becomes worthless when said; it is unworthy of the time we have thus far spent in Romania. So, right now, many of us are stuck explaining things our experience dictates should not be explained. Rather, it befits our scenario that we say (perhaps, only) that we are more Romanian now than when we arrived; we seem to fit what we are presumably meant to. This is a great credit to our hosts. It is also remarkable, seeing as how, largely, we seem not to have left at all. I do think there are a good number of us convinced that the Romanian set simply wasn’t finished yet, thusly the Man quarantined us, so as to recompense procrastination with a furiously built nuketown…
We are not so easily fooled.

Twelve days. No update.
I should like to say that it is because the road looks a certain way — at a very certain angle — to the locked away, and it’s terribly hard to explain.
It would be exceedingly lucky and the easier to be able to say this without the doubt of reason to correct me.

That many of us ask a consistent thing of our scenario does not mean we have found an answer… “What is happening?” has never been an easy question to satisfy anyway. Many of us have answered the question with the easy reproof, “He is working in preparation.”
True enough. There is not a shred of this last fortnight that hasn’t been in some form or another, indicative of the Race as a whole. This makes for easy learning.

It has been common to walk the halls of this, now, strongly American building, and learn of another.
In the one sense, I have grown intimate with, and even hold dear, the stories of fellow missionaries here in the building. By the second definition, I have learned from most every person something I celebrate as new.

The road does look different to the number among us. We stand on balconies and can see our year’s end beyond the fog of the next day (which has enveloped also, our next week, month, and the several after that).
It comes due, eventually, the assumptions you make about how your life will proceed; we hope not to have our plans disappointed… we have already made a good many plans here. We hope more strongly in His crushing and pressing for new wine.

To frame more accurately what has happened to us in very plain speak, I will give an account of some of our events thus far, in an order of their own accord:
Glorious rain; a near day of thunder and contemplation. More rain is scheduled here in our nuketown for this week’s end.
A returning sense of taste and smell to many in the hall, the latter, to their absolute horror.
Mission work being primarily in prayer for the church and their ministers, while we conduct meetings with our hosts on the work coming in the days of our freedom.
Quiet sabbath, wherein, those coffee deprived have quickly agreed to our early-established no-speech-until-eleven suggestion. Even without a caffeine addiction, I have adored those blessed moments.
The naming of our neighborhood animals. “Flabigail” is a floppy-faced woman about town, wants nothing to do with “John,” and has had relations with at least two other dogs of which we know. Also, an orange kitten we named Simeon.
A blessed return for many to a desperate love of the truth of Christ. I don’t mean this to say that they did not love Christ when they left home, intent on being solely on mission for His purpose for eleven months. I mean this to read as a desperate love for the truth of Christ. The sanctification coming to the evermore-Christ-like by the Spirit is desperately pled for with each hour of prayer, each hour in late-night hallway impromptu worship, each revelation of this man’s or that’s purpose, each minute of quiet meditation on His name.
It is not by our pleasing desperation we receive it, but by grace alone.

We experienced, also, challenges to our relationships with self, and the solitary time to assess them. For Madison and myself, this extends to time with the other as well. The married couple awkwardly asking you leave for awhile is a bit I have grown tired of in its infancy… we will continually make concession with our plans to seek time with each other, without having to ask that of our six roommates.

Of particular importance is that we have recognized each other for the things of which we are actually made, rather than those we guilded ourselves with in reasonable suspicion before our leaving. Many of us find a growing comfort in intimacy with our fellows, and in testing our metal against theirs… we make for Acts with all diligence and haste, as the Father has equipped us.

I hope to make both much and little of these days tucked away in a mission house in Craiova. I do not list here the many conversations that fill it with contentment for me. I suppose that God will work in their absence to make clear the edification taking place by the Spirit for us…
Our little church is quite happy here.