Dear praying friends,
We are back from vacation! Elissa, Caleb, Joshua, and I spent 10 days on the road - much of the time in Transylvania (a province in Romania.) Who knew that I would ever be able to say that I was there? It was two fairly long days of driving - and with gas at over $8.00 a gallon in Europe, that was not insignificant! It gave us the flexibility to check out some of the smaller towns we wanted to see, though - so was worth it!
We were able to see some very old medieval citadels and some of the fortified churches of Romania - going back to the time when what we now call Romania was the eastern edge of the Holy Roman Empire, and the king of Hungary had invited Germans to come and settle to help provide defense against the invading Mongol and Ottoman empires. Churches (often still with German on the inside paintings of the church!) were at the center of town and were fortified as a place for people to find refuge during attacks. One church had walls that were 12 meters high and 5 meters thick, and had more than 200 chambers in the walls for people from the village to stay when the town was attacked. In the more than 50 times the town was attacked between the 13th and 17th centuries, the church fortification was only overcome once. More history I never knew!!