Christmas Time In Romania!

Experiencing Christmas time in Romania has been a wonderful experience for us. Caroling is a big part of Christmas here, there were carolers in our apartment building, on the streets, and we even went with the boys and girls from the transition houses. The carols we sang at church were beautiful and we really love them. Many of them have tunes that we're used to but have different words, usually more centered on Christ and that is a great thing. The Romanian originals are so melodic and we really like them.

Craciun Fericit!

There were parades all over the city at all different times and on different days. Most of them involved banging drums and blowing whistles, and dancing bears and traditionally dressed Romanians.

This is our neighborhood Orthodox Church. We walk past this every day and it is a reminder of the Christian heritage of this country. We just long to see more people here come to personal relationships with Christ, for a revival here.

Here we are dressed in some of our new clothes that we got from each other and some of the staff for Christmas. We also received some Christmas gifts from family and other supporters and we thank you so much for them!

We had a Christmas party and about 30 of the transition house graduates came. They had a great time, we ate traditional sarmale, basically cabbage rolls, and lots of other great food. We are these kid's family, as most of them would have no where else to go for special occasions like this. We did a gift exchange where gifts could be picked from under the tree or taken from someone else. Mark ended up with a brand new Romanian Bible and it is a brand new translation so we will actually be able to read and understand it. What a blessing, we really wanted a Romanian Bible!

Sunday the holiday team arrived and we spent all day Saturday preparing for their arrival. We shopped, cleaned, and fixed anything that needed it. That night we went into town to see the lights that were all around. Most of the main intersections and streets in town were decorated wonderfully.

Many parks are really decked out as well, we walked through this park and had some fresh gogosi, which are awesome doughnuts. There was an ice skating rink there and it was really packed.

Our last activity before the team came was to put a 1000 piece puzzle together. Now the team is here and we are starting our holiday team activities. We will be going to all of the orphanages and giving the kids their Christmas presents, which they have been waiting for for a long time. This is our first full team so we will be learning how this goes while we are working with them and the kids. We will probably even be doing some translation so it will be great practice since we are off from lecture for two weeks. We are also excited because our friend Amanda is on this trip! We are so happy to have her here and are hoping that this will be a wonderful experience for her as well.

Please pray that this trip has a great impact on the kids and on those who came here to serve. Also please continue to pray for our language learning as we have hit the halfway mark already! Even though it's after Christmas already we just want to wish you a Merry Christmas and also a Happy New Year!

More Christmas Activities And A Birthday

This past Thursday was the Peris kid's Christmas program. They preformed plays, sang songs and even had a dance. It was fun to watch them preform and they had so much fun doing it.

The first play, about Santa Claus.

The second play, about Christmas trees.

One of the programs we've done at the orphanage this year is the dance class. This was the debut and the kids did great!

Us with Cladiu, who made sure to sit between us for the shows.

After the program at Peris, we had our staff Christmas party. We had an awesome spread of food and dessert. We played some games and exchanged gifts.

Yumm!

Heidi, our intern (who just returned home), read her awesome rap about all the staff.

The Staff at the party, we all had such a good time.

Saturday was Rebecca's birthday. We celebrated with some of the staff at Pipera. Krista made awesome stuffed french toast.

Jen and Krista shoveling snow. We got around 10 inches over the course of the week which Jen thinks is the total amount they got last year. We spent some time shoveling and then Krista and Heidi made a snow gnome. The week ended with a wonderful church service where we sang traditional Romanian Christmas carols and heard (and mostly understood) a nice Christmas message.

Christmas Parties

Everywhere we look we see the signs of Christmas here in Romania. Lights and decorations are up all over town, stores and vendors have stocked up on holiday items, and we've heard carolers in a subway station and in our apartment building. It is a fun time and it is celebrated much the same here as it is at home. This is also a time filled with lots of hustle and bustle making it is easy to lose focus of the real reason for the season: the birth of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Since the focus of our lives is to glorify God we felt privileged to help with some Christmas parties that put the focus of the season where it should be, on Jesus.

We had a great time serving along with our H2H family. We started the party's out by telling the story of Jesus' birth. Then we had the kids guess who each of us was in the story by asking questions about the story.

We played a word scramble game and then a candy game that taught that it is better to give than to receive, although some of the kids didn't really agree with that :-) We also had a snowball fight with paper snowballs.

We helped the older kids to make gingerbread houses. They really enjoyed this activity and especially enjoyed eating the houses when they were done building them.

It is always great to see the kids smiling like this, it is wonderful to be involved in their lives and to brighten up their lives.

Later in the week we drove to Rosiori and Alexandria where there are separate schools for boys and girls. We watched the boys Christmas program and later handed out gift bags to them for Christmas.

At Alexandria the girls were really excited and overjoyed to receive presents from us. It is a big deal for them to have presents because they have so few possessions of their own.

One more thing that happened that had nothing to do with Christmas was that Mark had an accident with the computer. While plugging the computer in it slipped out of his had and the screen hit the corner of the coffee table. Ouch. Mark ordered a new screen and will try to replace it on his own, because to have it repaired by Apple would cost the same as the entire computer. Thankfully we're still able to use the computer, we just can't see very much.

Preparing for Christmas

This past week the kids at Periş decorated the club room for Christmas. We made snowflakes, snowman mobiles, and ornaments. Later that week they decorated an artificial tree. They kids really enjoyed making these crafts and were very excited. This time of year is busy, but a fun time to be working with the kids.

Making snowflakes

Mark and I with Lorenzo and Catalina

Excitement (and crafts) in the air

This past week we also decorated our apartment for Christmas. We went to Carrefour and bought a small artificial tree and decorated it. We also put on display the glass ornaments and table cloth we bought in Sinaia.

Our apartment

Yet in this time of business, shopping and activities sometimes we forget what we are celebrating, or lack the joy we should have. Do the gifts really matter? Do we really need all homemade goodies? Or is what we need some excitement like the kids have. Not excitement for presents, toys, and candy, but excitement in remembering our Savior's coming to earth. This Christmas we are telling (again) the true Christmas story to the kids. Will you join us in praying for these kid's hearts, that they will be able to know who Christ really is and have eternal joy? It is the best gift of all!

October - November 2009 Newsletter

Since last week was Thanksgiving we are starting this newsletter with some of the things that we are thankful for.  One year ago we had just put our house up for sale and started fund raising so that we could come to Romania as missionaries. Praise God that even in the down economy He miraculously sold our house and raised up many faithful people to support our ministry here. We are so thankful for our supportive family and great friends who continue to pray for us and stay in contact with us.  We are very thankful for our financial and prayer supporters and want to let them know how much they mean to us. We could not be doing this without their support. We are thankful for the call God placed in our lives to minister in Romania. We thank God for giving us a great family here in the staff of H2H and our friends from our church here. We have been blessed with a smooth transition and have been learning the language quickly. Our faith and bond with the Lord has been tremendously strengthened over this last year as we learned many lessons about patience and looking to God as our sole provider. His guidance is precious to us and we thank Him so much for all these things.   Of course what we are most thankful for is the sacrifice that Jesus Christ made for us on the cross. He has given us the gift of eternal life and has called us to a life of service to Him. It is still amazing to think of how much He loves us and that He longs to call us His children.

We celebrated Thanksgiving here by having most of the graduates of the H2H Transition Programs over for dinner. We had a wonderful feast and after dinner there were several skits and songs. It was a really fun time and it was great to see so many young adults that have changed lives because of the work that H2H did/does with them.  Nearly 60 people came, everyone did a wonderful job preparing everything for this huge get together.

We enjoyed working at the baby hospital twice a week, spending time with these kids is so precious.  The hospitals closed in early November due to fear of the new flu, but we should be able to go back this week, praise God.  We have missed the babies when we couldn't see them because we care for them so much.  

We went to the orphanage several times, playing games, hanging out, and helping with lessons and crafts.  There are several kids who always run to us and are really excited to see us when we go there.  Others are still exited to find out that we're married and they ask lots of questions. We can't wait until we can talk to them and understand them fully.  This is our motivation for learning the language quickly., w

We also did many fun things that helped us take a break from studying and working all the time.  We went to the Peles castle with the transition house girls, we went out to eat at a really nice Indian restaurant, and we went to the Symphony for our 6 year anniversary.  We have been having a great time getting to know the H2H staff and they are like a family to us, which has helped tremendously in our transition here.  We also met Miriam on the subway, we knew her from summer camp last year so we had her over for dinner and had a great time.

As we move forward would you please join us in praying for these things:

-Language learning - we have been going fast thanks to God's help, but it continues to get harder.

-Strength and health for us, the rest of the staff, and the babies and kids at the orphanages.

-Peace for us and our family and friends as we've been gone for 3 months now.

-For God to continue to lead us in His will and for us to hear Him and follow.

-For a revival in this country, not just with the orphans but for everyone.

Thanks again so much for your prayers and support.  You really mean a lot to us!

In Christ Alone,

Mark & Rebecca

Ziua Recunostintei - Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving week is always a time of reflecting on our blessings and giving thanks to God for what He has done for us. This year our hearts are especially overflowing with thankfulness and we wanted to share with you what we are thankful for. One year ago we had just put our house up for sale and started fund raising so that we could come to Romania as missionaries. Praise God that even in the down economy He miraculously sold our house and raised up many faithful people to support our ministry here. We are so thankful for our supportive family and great friends who continue to pray for us and stay in contact with us.

We are very thankful for our financial and prayer supporters and want to let them know how much they mean to us. We could not be doing this without their support. We are thankful for the call God placed in our lives to minister in Romania. We thank God for giving us a great family here in the staff of H2H and our friends from our church here. We have been blessed with a smooth transition and have been learning the language quickly. Our faith and bond with the Lord has been tremendously strengthened over this last year as we learned many lessons about patience and looking to God as our sole provider. His guidance is precious to us and we thank Him so much for all these things.

We celebrated Thanksgiving here by having most of the graduates of the H2H Transition Programs over for dinner. We had a wonderful feast and after dinner there were several skits and songs. It was a really fun time and it was great to see so many young adults that have changed lives because of the work that H2H did with them.

Nearly 60 people came, everyone did a wonderful job preparing everything for this huge get together.

Of course what we are most thankful for is the sacrifice that Jesus Christ made for us on the cross. He has given us the gift of eternal life and has called us to a life of service to Him. It is still amazing to think of how much He loves us and that He longs to call us His children.

After reading this I hope that your heart is overflowing with thankfulness to God. We have all been greatly blessed and we usually take it for granted. We would love to hear what you are thankful for, please comment so that we can share in share in rejoicing with you.

Romanian Experiences

Since our trip to Sinaia we have continued to keep busy each week. It was time for us to apply for our long term visas. Thank goodness we have Costel here who is the Romanian president of H2H. He was working on our visas before we even knew it. First we had to have a doctor give us a clean bill of health so we went and had a very thorough exam. He asked us if we were sick and he listened to our breathing, then declared us officially healthy. The day we were supposed to apply there was a problem with the department's fax machine and they changed their schedule so we had to go back a couple days late. After waiting in line for two and a half hours we finally made it to the window, slightly afraid that they would hassle us for applying late. Praise God that they didn't even say anything about it, so we should be on track to get our visas on time.

On Saturday we went out to eat to an Indian Restaurant for a date night. It was a very nice place and we really enjoyed it. The food was wonderful, top notch quality and it tasted so good. This is one perk of living in the biggest city in Romania, there are lots of different restaurants here.

Mark had Lamb Vindaloo, a very rich curried lamb dish. We had Nan bread and rice with our meal also. Mark had ginger lemonade to drink which had quite a spicy bite to it, very tasty.

Rebecca had mango chicken which was amazing. She also had a mango lassi to drink, which is a yogurt smoothy drink.

The next week started out with Rebecca getting a manicure from Andrea, one of the transition house girls. The girls are doing a program to learn how so that they can earn certificates from the school. This should help them find jobs since this job is in growing demand in Romania. They need live models to practice on so Rebecca and Jen went in, and after three and a half hours and several band-aids they had beautiful nails.

We went to the orphanage twice since the baby hospital is still closed. We had fun with the kids, Rebecca got her hair styled and Mark played soccer. It is always a joy to see the kids and to see how they react when we come there.

We also helped with the class that H2H is doing with the kids, the theme is heros and the qualities they have. We are trying to teach the kids that they can have these traits in their lives also and that they can be heros too.

We continue to study the language and this fills up our time when we are not doing all these other things. It has been going well and we are able to understand a lot more of what people are saying. We still have four months of class so there is still much to learn but we are thankfull that God is blessing us so far.