We Tried To Do Missions During COVID19, Here's What Happened.

Sometime in early 2020 B.C. (Before COVID) Jonna and I booked our tickets to Romania for two months. It was the first time both of us were ever fully funded before May, so as you can imagine we were pretty pumped--obviously a sign from God that we were meant to go on this trip right? Then March happened and if you were on social media at the time you saw all the memes about there being a plague every time the century hits the number 20. On some level I was prepared, but not in any way that mattered. The stay at home order in April was when we started questioning whether or not we would even be allowed on a plane. We were trying to hear from God and make good decisions, but we felt like we were hearing nothing. We decided to wait it out as long as we could. In May, all the media outlets made it seem like we could fly internationally soon so we called the French consulate and read up on all the embassy websites. We moved our tickets to the middle of June because that seemed to be the safe thing to do.

On June 9th we flew out of the Springfield airport full of excitement and extreme apprehension. It was storming that morning and getting everything to the car at 4am was a cold and wet experience, odd for the middle of June. Going through security wouldn’t have been that bad if I hadn’t had a backpack full of granola bars, fruit snacks, and rice crispy treats. I had to take all of them out of my bags so the security people could make sure all our food was packaged (something about stopping the spread of COVID). I filled an entire bucket. I was thankful for the mask I was wearing as it covered my embarrassed face. The actual flying portion was pretty unexciting, I slept and listened to music and Jonna did, something, (I wouldn’t know because I was asleep). We got to Chicago and tried to check in but found that we couldn’t for some reason so to help desk we went.

This is the part of the story where we heard from God to go into the wilderness but got chased out by a bear. We feel strongly that sometimes God requires us to move in faith, despite the circumstances, despite everything going around, God will sometimes require various acts of surrender--and this was one of them. We moved by faith in what we heard and saw God say. We “took Isaac to the altar” so to speak. And when 6+ people spent 3 hours helping us at the help desk we had perfect peace in saying “That’s ok. Thank you so much for your help. We understand. Next flight home it is.” So we drank s'mores frappuccinos, ate weird airport chinese food, and bought some small items from a bookstore. We called our Romanian friends and told them we couldn’t get there afterall. Crying in an airport cafeteria during a pandemic is not where we thought we would ever be, but that’s what happened. We followed God out of Springfield and we followed him back home… but that’s a funny word isn’t it? Home… We really feel at home when we’re in Romania, doing missions and being in the place we feel called. So in reality it feels like we didn’t get to go home this year, but we followed God back anyway.

We’re still praying about our next steps. For now, we are officially filing papers becoming a nonprofit, becoming a missions agency for Romanians, preparing for our move, and becoming the Balkans International Missions Trip Coordinators. We are still contemplating on going home to Romania this winter, this summer, or saving the money for our move in January 2022. Thank you for all of your prayers and support.

Love,

Alyssa and Jonna from The Nations Call