So last Thursday I set off on the trail to Romania.
Well, the trail to Madrid to fly to Romania any way. It was an exciting time of packing, planning and waiting all day until it was time to catch the train to my night bus in Malaga.
Upon catching my night bus I fought back the uneasy feeling in my stomach, the knots that made it feel as if I'd throw up or scream. It wasn't easy and it certainly kept me from sleeping.
So I got to Madrid and walked off the bus and headed towards the Metro where I headed to the Air Port.
I got the air port hassle free and sat down to wait for my 'check in gate' to open.
As I waited I noticed two girls about my age having trouble with their luggage. I got up and helped them over to their check in desk and asked about what they were doing.
They informed me that they were study abroad students and they'd just spent the past five months in Spain. It was their first time traveling alone and they were a bit nervous.
Seeing as I've had some experience with traveling all by my lonesome (as I was about to do then) I gave them a bit of advice and was able to help calm their nerves.
Three hours later I noticed my check in desk was open and I headed over to check it out. Handing the woman my ticket she typed in my information and looked over my passport then noted that I was not buying tickets but trying to check in. Sending me over to another desk I was ready to check in. Beaming with excitement I stepped up and handed the woman my information with a chipper "Good Morning."
She smiled back took my tickets and began to type in all of my information, then I noticed something unexpected- a frown.
With her brows still furrowed she looked up at me and said, "Ma'am, you're not booked for this flight."
As you can imagine I was taken aback, I asked her to look over the confirmation number again and she did only to find that they were not booked.
She politely asked me to wait while she called for her superior.
When the short bald man walked over he typed in my information again and called their information line, he then spotted the problem.
"The website you've booked your tickets through canceled your flight." He informed me. He went on to tell me how that if you don't confirm or mess up a number of your credit card then you only have three days to change it before they cancel the tickets.
I was immediately transported to a few days after I bought my tickets when I received an email asking for my passport number and credit card number, seeing as the email address had nothing to do with the company I bought my tickets through I assumed it was spam. Just to make sure I emailed the airline but they never responded, I then felt assured it was spam.
Now I found I was quite wrong.
The superior from the airline gave me 'i'm so sorry' smile before directing me to the ticket counting saying that I could purchase another ticket to bucharest and see if they'd comp my flight to Timisoara when I got there.
"How much are the tickets I asked?"
"Around 300 euro." He informed me.
I felt crushed. 300 euro? I barely had that much to buy my tickets home, I couldn't just spend that kind of money on the fly. I sighed, about to burst into tears and called my leader at G42.
He told me to pray about it before I came home. So I stood there, shaking at the metro ticket counter talking to God as bought my ticket back to the bus station.
"God," I said. "I feel like such a failure, I should be heading towards my gate right now. But I'm gonna get on the metro and your going to have to speak to me about where I'm supposed to go. When those doors open at each stop I need to know BLATANTLY if I'm supposed to get off there."
So I got on the metro and made the entire circle around Madrid, each time I stopped I asked God; "Is this it?". Each time I felt nothing.
When I got back to the bus station to see if they'd change my tickets from the 16th of May to the 7th later that day I asked God if this was just a big NO to Romania. If I was just stupid and missed the signs before now that said 'don't go'. So I asked God again. "If I'm supposed to go to Romania just give me a sign, am I supposed to go?"
When I cleared the top of the escalators ALL of the ticket windows read "GO TO ROMANIA" Accept the last two which said "Tour Romania" (but I don't have that type of money).
That morning when I got off the bus before I had my big disappointment didn't have any signs on them at all. Only the closed signs, but now they were full of bright attention grabbing signs all reading GO TO ROMANIA.
I really felt like that was my sign(s).
After sending a quick email to contact in Romania from an internet cafe I set off back to Malaga.
Tired, deflated and completely dejected. I had a sign from God but I still felt like a failure, like I was letting every one down.
I sat on the bus and counted down the hours thinking 'now I would be in Bucharest going through immigration' and 'Now I'd be on my flight to Timisoara'. (Just as a side note, don't EVER let your self have a pity party like that it makes a 7 and a half our bus ride seem like a 20 hour bus ride.)
Finally I got back to Malaga. After missing the last train to my city Fuengirola by a few seconds I ran into a woman I'd met in Madrid that morning. Her name was Emma and she was spit fire of a woman, dressed in red from head to toe and sporting a very fun Spanish accent while speaking perfect English.
She remembered me and quickly made sure I got a seat by her on the bus to Fuengirola, I was quite thankful for that too.
As we rode down some younger guys came on board and over heard Emma use my name. They began shouting at me and saying rude things.
Thankfully Emma was very protective. "Don't worry about them she said, just stick with me until your friends arrive to pick you up."
I nodded glad to have some one watching my back.
When the bus arrive back in Fuengirola Emma got off quickly to meet her own friend who was picking her up, the rude guys followed me off the bus closely. When I caught up with Emma her friend came around from behind the car. He was a six foot seven former wrestler, he took me the hands and kissed both of my cheeks (as is custom here in Spain). Thankfully the guys saw this and took off.
Emma smiled, she knew that would happen. They waited for a while with me until the creepy guys were long out of site and then Emma said her good byes to me. Come to find out she was a Christian and she said she'd be praying for me to get to Romania safely.
When I got home, tired and stripped raw of any nerves I checked my email to see if my contact had received my letter.
It turned out she had some problems of her own at the orphanage.
When she'd left that afternoon some contractors were finishing up the kitchen and bathroom remodeling jobs. But in the bathroom they thought they'd hit a pipe when nailing something up. They headed into the room where I would have been staying and took down the wall to see, come to find out when they put the shower and septic tank in the first time the contractors then had nailed the dry wall into the pipes. Since then they'd been flooding their wall with out knowing it every time they turned on the water.
The whole down stairs of the orphanage was torn apart, the kids are having to stay with other people and my contact wouldn't have been able to help me work with the government orphanage because of her own being a wreck.
So through a long day of toil and hardship I learned that God has perfect timing.
He knew the study abroad girls needed some encouragement so He sent me all the way to Madrid to help them with their luggage.
He knew that Emma needed some one to talk to on the bus so He sent me all the way back to Malaga to ride with her.
He knew I needed protection from the creepers so He sent a 6'7" former wrestler to pick up Emma.
He knew that the orphanage wasn't going to work out this week, so He didn't let me get to Romania only to be disappointed.
I still feel that I'm supposed to go to Romania, I just need to find the right timing.
No comments:
Post a Comment