Do you hear that? Shh, listen... [inaudible whisper] Can you hear it? Listen again... [shivering murmur] "C...c..com.m.me." and "Bbbbring your fffriendssss..." Do you know what that is? It is the voice of Romania luring us into its frigid, frozen heart - Brasov.

In a few hours, we (the youth staff) will squash 14 youth into an uncomfortable economy-class seat, check all our 30 pieces of luggage, argue or "discourse" with the Egyptian personnel, and nudge into our own airline seats. All this will be followed by a temporary sigh until we land in Bucharest, Romania. Did I mention that we won't meet to go to the airport until 12:00 midnight? Yet the still and quiet voice tempts us, come and play.

From Bucharest, we again compress these vibrant young into a bus upon which we will sleep for a couple hours until we enter a camp in Brasov, Romania (geographically located very near the center of the country). When I checked the weather for Brasov mere moments ago (9:45 p.m.), I kid you not, -11 Celsius; that rounds out to approximately +12 Fahrenheit for all you non-metrics. Are you serious? Since when did the earth get that cold?! I live in Egypt man, temperatures that cold only exist in like Antarctica or something. But still the frosted breath beckons.

Supposedly we will be keeping tabs on our daily events while we wander abroad the Transylvanian mountain range. Should you like to follow along and perhaps pray for our students, the Romanians we'll be with, the country itself, or perhaps your favorite, beloved group of youth staff scurrying to preserve the lives of our blossoming teenagers, the web link is given below:

http://mccromania.blogspot.com/

We pre-thank you for your gracious supply of encouragement and prayer. We're gonna need it.

Let's rock, let's rock.