Unplanned lunch stop brings blessings

By Denny Nutter
Received by Tuesday, April 21, 2009 at 2:24 p.m. Pacific

Monday, April 20

The Lord has certainly blessed us with wonderful weather on this trip. Many of the places we performed or ate at would have been most difficult with inclement weather.

What an awesome day our trip planners arranged for on Monday. A sack breakfast was loaded on one of the buses as we departed Botosani. We stopped for breakfast at the Suceava Fortress built at the end of the 14th century and later modified several times by Alexand cel Bun (1400-1432) and Stephen the Great of Moldova (1457-1504). The group had a great time exploring the ancient fortress and singing in front of the ancient chapel.

The next stop was at the Monastery at Voronet also built in the 1400’s. It was covered in artwork tracing Old Testament history, the life of Christ and the final judgment. A local nun gave the history of the Monastery and described what the paintings depicted. Alin translated for her. When the nun’s tour was over we sang “Soldiers of the Captain” while other tourists looked on and applauded when we were done.

A very moving experience took place when we stopped for lunch at one of our SDA churches on the eastern slope (a different spot than originally planned). After a wonderful lunch and fellowship we slipped into the sanctuary to sing for the ladies who had worked so hard to prepare our meal.

One of the local church members who had enjoyed practicing his English during lunch insisted that we sing “Amazing Grace” before we sang anything else. There were not many dry eyes amongst us as the song came to a conclusion. He then went on to explain that this week had been very hard on their church family because the head elder had passed away. His widow was one of the ladies that had prepared the food and was moved to tears many times during the song. We then knew why God had directed us there and cried and hugged some more as we sang “We Have This Hope” with perhaps more meaning than we have ever felt before.

The remainder of the day we enjoyed the gorgeous scenic views from both sides of the alpine mountain range of Northern Romania. High on the ridge we stopped for photo opportunities and souvenir shopping at Hotel Dracula. The evening was spent descending the western slope to our destination of Targu Mures.