Along the Bumpy Road

On Sunday we were really lucky to borrow a car from our foundation and take the drive down to Salem Church, in Oradea.  Oradea is the large city roughly one hour away from where we live. Throughout our trips here we have really loved attending Salem and have hoped to make it our home church while living here.  The only problem is transportation, so when we heard that there was a car available we jumped on the chance.  Now on our last visit in March, we were pretty shocked at how bad the road to Oradea had become.  There were many potholes which made the trip quite hazardous.  When we arrived a few weeks ago people warned us that the road was worse, but even that did not prepare us for our ride.

Early Sunday morning six of us piled into a small european car (imagine a tiny Chevy Aveo) and headed down the bumpy road.  About ten minutes in we discovered the car's fifth gear did not work, which wasn't too bad since we could not go fast due to all the potholes.  We could not believe how bad the roads were!  It felt like we were playing a video game as we tried to avoid all the potholes.  This task is especially difficult since the road only has one lane going each way so you can't really avoid the potholes without swerving into oncoming traffic.  It was crazy!  Todd was driving with me in the passenger seat and the whole time we kept pointing out all the potholes.  They were huge, some of them half the size of the car!  It was definitely an adventure getting to and from church.   The drive actually took us an hour and a half (an extra forty minutes) since we had to drive so slow due to the terrible road conditions.  

Our trip also taught us something: potholes build teamwork!  We all had to work together to keep the car from being swallowed by one of the gigantic holes.  This shows you that there's always a silver lining.