Supporting Our Ministry...You Can Make A Difference!

We are very excited about following God's call to Romania to minister to abandoned orphans there. Our goal is to start our ministry around April, and in order to do that we need to raise funding to support our ministry. Our start up fund that will pay for things like airfare, language classes, visas, and housing set up is coming along wonderfully, praise God! Thank you so much to those of you who have contributed to this, we are so thankful that you have chosen to be our partners in this ministry.

We also need to raise monthly support commitments that will sustain our ministry while we are there. Would you please pray about this and ask God how He would like you to participate in this area? To those of you who have already committed we thank you very much!

Below is our letter explaining what our ministry will be about and why we are following this call. There is also a card that you can print out and send in so that your support will be tax deductible. If God leads you to a monthy committment you can set it up by using this card. Thank you so much for partnering with us in this ministry, God will use your support to change the lives of many hopeless and abandoned kids.

You can click on the pictures to bring up the full sized copies.

One more thing to ask, would you please pray that God raises up people to support us monthly? We know he will but the more people that pray for this the better. Thanks!

An Eventful Week!

This week has been a flurry of activity and it has been a really fun time. It all started last Friday night when we got a message from one of the Romanians we worked with at summer camp. George has been in the states for a while and he decided to come to Michigan, so he asked us if he could stay with us. So Sunday night we went and picked him up from the train station in Holland. Then Monday afternoon we went to the airport to lend my car to one of the Heart 2 Heart missionaries who's visiting family and friends in the area. Monday night we started taking a class called Perspectives on the world Christian movement. We are going to be learning about global missions each Monday night for the next few months.

Wednesday was another busy day. Rebecca took George to Grand Haven and they walked on the pier. It was really beautiful and they got some great pictures. Wednesday night we took George to KICK, the kids program we volunteer in every Wednesday night at church. Only half of our group of kindergarden & first graders was there but oh were they hyper. They thought that their names sounded really funny in Romanian and George enjoyed helping with the crafts and games.

Usually we walk underneath the arches that are up to Rebecca's waist here. There must be at least 3 feet of ice and snow built up on the pier.

Here is our Romanian friend George enjoying the beautiful day.

This ice is just cool (no pun intended)!

Tomorrow we will have a getogether with Angela the H2H missionary and our Romania missions team. Then we will hang out with Angela until she has to go visit other friends. Talk about an action packed week!

Oma's 100th Birthday Celebration

We spent the week of Christmas 2008 in Brampton, Canada celebrating our Oma's 100th birthday. December 24 was the big day so there was a big open house for lots of friends and family. All of Oma's 8 children came out to visit, which was great because one uncle lives all the way in Saskatchewan. Below is a picture of us with Oma on her birthday.

Besides the fact that she's 100 years old, the amazing thing is how sharp she still is. She remembers little details of things that happened in peoples lives years ago. She still lives on her own in an apartment and for the most part takes care of herself on her 0wn.

Oma's favorite pastime is knitting, and she is still incredibly fast. We have many slippers and blankets from her and they are all really nice.

This is a picture of the whole family with their spouses. Rebecca's parents are on the far right.

We spent the rest of the week hanging out at Oma's apartment visiting with family. For exercise we walked around the entire apartment complex, which was fun because there are several buildings connected by underground tunnels. We played hide and go seek once which was really fun. We had a great week and were sad when the vacation was over.

Top 10 Happenings Of 2008

Happy New Year! 2008 was a year of big happenings in our lives so we decided to put together a top 10 list. I added a link to previous posts if there were any so you can read about the event. These are in order of occurrence because it was too hard to rank them by significance.

1. My sister Sandi got married to Jay and we were in the wedding.

2. We finished our basement with the help of family & friends.

3. Our friends Dave & Holly & their son Jaden lived with us for a while.

4. We went to Romania to help with summer camp for orphans for 5 weeks.

5. We celebrated our 5 year wedding anniversary.

6. We put our house up for sale.

7. We were accepted to be full time missionaries to orphans in Romania.

8. We went to California to vacation, go to a wedding, and plan for Romania.

9. We joined techies everywhere by starting a blog, getting on Facebook, and buying a Macbook.

10. We went to Canada over Christmas to celebrate Rebecca's Oma's 100th birthday.


Links:
1. http://weloveorphans.blogspot.com/2008/05/sandi-jays-wedding.html

2. http://weloveorphans.blogspot.com/2008/06/wrapping-things-up.html

3. See above.

4. http://weloveorphans.blogspot.com/2008/06/our-upcoming-romania-mission-trip.html (+ 26 other posts!)

5. http://weloveorphans.blogspot.com/2008/10/very-memorable-5-year-anniversary.html

6. http://weloveorphans.blogspot.com/2008/09/missionary-application-selling-our.html

7. http://weloveorphans.blogspot.com/2008/11/it-is-official-we-are-going-to-romania.html

8. http://weloveorphans.blogspot.com/2008/11/our-trip-to-california-part-1.html & http://weloveorphans.blogspot.com/2008/11/our-trip-to-california-part-2.html

9. None really.

10. http://weloveorphans.blogspot.com/2009/01/omas-100th-birthday-celebration.html