Romania Progress Update

Just this week we reached a big milestone in our journey to becoming missionaries in Romania. The start up fund that we needed to raise was completed, praise God! This $12,350 fund will pay for our travel to Romania, our language classes, visas, and housing set up. This is definitely an answer to prayer, and there were some specific prayers answered to complete it. One such prayer was that my company, Extol Inc, would help supporting us. Even though at first it didn't look like they would be able to, they came through with an unexpected $5,000 donation! Also thank you for your generous donations, this puts us one step closer to Romania!

We are still working on raising our monthly support and are at around 30% right now. We need to raise $3,580 per month in the form of monthly commitments. That means we have just under $2,500 to go. Wow, it seems like a lot, but we know that God has a plan for this. Our goal is to leave around April, but we can't go until we are fully funded. Thanks so much to those of you who have already committed to supporting our ministry! If you are interested in making a monthly commitment please let us (616-895-1603) or Heart 2 Heart (877-590-4051) know. Even if you don't plan to start your support until we leave it will help us to know where we're at, so please let us know as soon as you decide. Monthly support can be started any time, funds that come in before we leave will be spread out over the whole two year term which reduces the amount of commitments we need.

We are still gladly accepting one time donations, as they will reduce the amount of monthly support we need to raise. There is a new button on the upper right hand side of the blog that links to H2H's secure website, so donations can be made online. Donations can also be sent to H2H at P.O. BOX 1832 Ramona, CA 92065, make the check out to H2H International and include a separate note designating the gift for us.

Our house is still for sale and we need to sell it before we leave. We lowered the price this week and are having an open house on March 8. The spring is coming and with it hopefully the spring housing market picks up. Typically the spring market is the best of the year, so we really need to sell the house sometime this spring. Even though we hear so many bad things about the housing market we still have hope because all it takes is one person that really likes the house, location, lot, etc. Plus we know that God has a plan for this too, and he knows exactly what he's doing.

Would you please pray with us that God will provide our funding and sell our house so we can begin our ministry in Romania? Would you consider being a prayer partner or supporting our ministry with a monthly commitment? If you want to know more about what we will be doing we would love to talk to you. You can also read more in past posts and watch the "Orphans of Romania (part 1 & 2)" video on the sidebar of the blog.

Mulţumesc!!! (Thank you in Romanian)

Back To Work

Praise God, after being temporarily laid off for two weeks Mark was called back to work this week. This is definitely an answer to prayer, thank you to all of you who prayed for us during the layoff.

Besides not making enough money to pay the bills it was actually nice having the time off from work. We got ahead on our homework for our Perspectives class, and we planned for our fundraiser that I wrote about last time. It was nice to relax and catch up on sleep and not have a schedule. The time went by amazingly fast and Mark gained new insight into what it is like to stay at home during the day.

That said it is good to be back at work again knowing that we can cover our payments now. We're very thankful to God that the people at Extol are so supportive of our ministry and that they are letting Mark continue to work even though we're going to be leaving the country soon.

Our Fund Raising Dinner

Last Sunday was our big dinner at church to raise funding for our missionary journey to Romania. We prepared a traditional Romanian meal, which was a lot of work. We spent most of the day Saturday chopping up veggies and grilling chicken. Then we cooked the rest of the food on Sunday a few hours before the dinner was supposed to start. It was a real whirlwind but it was a lot of fun. Unfortunately we didn't take any pictures so I had to find pictures on the Internet that look similar to what we made. Here is the menu we had:

We started with European hearth style bread that we bought at a bakery in Allendale, The Great Bread Company. It was delicious. Bread is one of the main parts of all Romanian meals, and it is called Paine.

Next we had soup with dumplings, our favorite soup that we had at summer camp. Soup is an everyday meal in Romania. This one is called Supa De Galuste.

Next we had Sarmale, which are basically meatballs wrapped in a cabbage leaves with saur kraut and tomato sauce on top. They are one of our favorite dishes from Romania.

The last part of the meal was build your own Shawarma, basically a chicken wrap. They are unique because they have french fries inside, along with pickles, cabbage, mayo and catsup.

To wash everything down we had ice cream, coffee, and juice.

The meal came together nicely, especially since we were planning on at least 100 people and we've never cooked for that many before. Thankfully we had help from some of our family and some friends who went to Romania with us on previous trips.

During the meal we showed pictures from our previous trips, and then Mark explained a little of what we had done there and what some of the pictures were about. Then he told the story of Elena, the girl at camp who had the greatest impact on us. You can read more abut her here: Elena. We then showed a video that tells about Heart 2 Heart and their ministry to the orphans. That video is linked in the sidebar of our blog so if you haven't seen it you should check it out. It is a powerful and emotional video that really pulls on your heart strings. After the video Rebecca told about how we came to this point in our lives where we are taking a leap of faith and following God's call. Maybe we'll write more on that one sometime. At the end Mark talked about the needs we have financially and asked people to prayerfully consider supporting us monthly, something that we ask you to do as well. If you feel lead to do so you can download the forms here, and indicate on the card that you would like to make a monthly commitment. These commitments are what we really need before we can go and start our ministry. They will sustain us while we are there and enable us to be used by God to do his work in these orphan's lives. Before people left we answered some questions and tried to clarify what we'll be doing the best that we could.

Everyone who came to the dinner seemed very interested and supportive. Around 65 people showed up, including some of our family. We had planned on at least 100 so we had tons of food left. We were initially disappointed that more people didn't come but we figured that we just have to trust that God knows what he's doing. He can make great things happen with very few people. We are praying that God used this to work in people's hearts and ignite some passion for our ministry. We are also praying that those who were there will decide to support us monthly and tell others about our ministry also.

Ultimately we are very thankful to God for helping us pull this off, and we are very thankful for everyone who helped and everyone who came. We know this is all part of His plan and he will provide for all of our needs.

Our Missionary Fund Raiser Dinner

We are really excited!  Soon we will be having a fund raiser dinner for our ministry to Romanian orphans.  We will be having a traditional Romanian meal and telling all about what we will be doing as missionaries.  We will show pictures from our previous mission trips and a video of what Heart 2 Heart does.  We'll also talk about the options for short term mission trips and hopefully find some people interested in those.

The main goal of the dinner is to raise up monthly supporters and to tell about our ministry to the Romanian orphans.  We also need prayer partners who will commit to praying for us and our ministry.  Lastly we have a little way to go on our startup fund that we need to raise before we can leave for Romania.  Everyone is invited, even if you can't offer support, you can find out how to best pray for our ministry.  If you do decide to come it would be great if you let us know, but it's not a requirement to come to the dinner.

We ask that you bathe this dinner in prayer and ask God to provide financial and prayer supporters for our ministry.  Without either of these we will not be able to succeed at reaching the orphans in Romania and bringing glory to God through them.

The dinner will be at our church, Fair Haven Ministries in Hudsonville on February 15, at 12:15 PM.

The Bad Economy Takes Its Toll

Well, this bad economy has really hit home now.  Mark's work has been pretty slow for the last few weeks and it has gotten to the point that there is no new work.  So last week Mark was notified that he would be on temporary layoff for a while, starting this week.  Quite a few others from work are laid off now too, so we're all hoping that things pick up soon.

If new work does come in Mark will be called back right away because the design is the first thing that happens on a new project.  There are some orders on the horizon but no-one knows when they'll actually come in.  

We are very thankful to God that he has provided us with abundance during the good times so we can make it through the lean times.  We have been saving a little each week for an emergency fund since we got married.  So 5 and a half years later there is a good chunk of money there that we can use to cover our expenses during this layoff.

So we ask you to pray with us that God will send some work to Extol so that Mark and the others can be called back to work.  We also ask for prayers of providence for us.  Now more than ever it would be great if our house sold, as it is the only thing we owe money on.  Would you please pray with power that God will sell our house soon?  We know that he will accomplish these things and the more prayers we offer up to him the better.  Thanks!!!

More Winter Fun With George

Wow, these last few weeks were super busy!  Our friend George from Romania just left our place after staying here for about two and a half weeks.  We had lots of fun with him, mostly just hanging out, but we tried to do some fun things as well.  We took George with us to our childrens ministry at church each week which he really enjoyed because he has a heart for kids.  We took him over to friends places for get togethers, and took him along to our LifeGroup meeting.  

We had fun making great food while he was here too.  He said that we made the best and most varying food that he's had at anywhere he stayed, and he's been in the states since September!  We made Indian, Thai, Mexican, Italian, and lots of great traditional food like pork tenderloin, chicken, potatoes, etc.  Rebecca and I actually eat like that all the time because we really love the variation, and we both like to cook.  We took George out to Mongolian BBQ for a wonderful make your own stir-fry, that was our special out to eat meal.

While George was here it snowed like crazy, so we took advantage of that by going out cross country skiing.  There is a place near us, Pigeon Creek Park which has lots of groomed trails, and they rent out skis for $8 for 2 hours.  We really had a blast and the scenery was so beautiful.  Even though it was George's first time and we haven't done it very many times, we went on all the trails including the difficult ones.  We found them to be the most fun because they were the hilly ones.  

That's us, cute couple, huh?

Mark in some deep snow, could have used snowshoes here.

Rebecca showing off her mad skiing skills by skiing on a bench.

George sitting on a bench full of snow, that's just a lot of snow!

It doesn't get any better than this in the winter, does it?

One last thing, we would like to ask you to pray for George.  The reason he is going around the US is that he is going to be a missionary in Montenegro, so he is raising funding.  Please pray that God will provide for him and bless his support raising and his ministry.  Thanks!

December 2009 - January 2010 Newsletter

Buna ziua de la Mark si Rebecca in Romania! (Good day from Mark & Rebecca in Romania!)  These last two months have been great and so many things have gone on that they have really flown by.  December was all about Christmas, we had parties with the kids at the orphanages, handed out gifts to them and watched their Christmas programs.  We had lots of fun playing games and spending time with the kids and they were so excited to share in the joy of Christ's birth with us.

A holiday team came to help us with all of the festivities and activities with the kids and one of our friends from home, Amanda, was on the team.  It was great having Amanda and the team here because it allowed us to go to orphanages that we don't go to the rest of the year because we don't have enough staff.  We finally got to meet up with Elena, our special girl from camp the last time we were here.  We have kept in touch with e-mails and letters and it was great to be able to reconnect with her.  She was very touched to spend time with us and was very sad when we had to leave again.

Here we are with Elena.

We met Mihaela for the first time and she instantly knew that we were married and clung to us, she's a very sweet girl who had just been dropped off at the orphanage a few days earlier.

We spent lots of time with the kids at the orphanage we normally go to, they were on break so we were free to play games and be at there longer than normal.

We made lots of crafts as we handed out clothes and gifts.

In January things returned to normal except that we are staying at the team house instead of our apartment.  Jen our team coordinator is back home in the states visiting so we are taking care of the intern couple that we have here.  We have now had four months of language classes and can understand a lot of what people say.  We are still going at quite a fast pace thanks to God's help.  We only have two more months of classes and by then we should have a great foundation for becoming fluent in Romanian.  

Prayer Requests:
-For our language learning to continue to go well and for courage to use it with people even though we'll be making mistakes.
-For the kids to accept Christ in their lives and to be transformed.
-For energy and health, we've been battling colds on and off.
-For God to fight against Satan here, he has been waging war on us by breaking down vans, causing problems with orphanage directors, and keeping the baby hospital closed.  Please pray that God remedies all of these situations.
-For our family and friends who miss us and for us to continue to stay strong here even though we're so far away.
-Praise for our abundance of faithful supporters and for the ability to keep in touch easily.

We hope you have been keeping track of what we're doing here on our blog, we try to keep it updated every week, and there's so much that we can't share in these newsletters because of space.  The address iswww.weloveorphans.blogspot.com .  Thank you for your prayer support and thanks to our financial supporters for their faithfulness.  Let us know if you have any questions about what we're doing here or just to talk, we'd love to hear from you.

In Christ,
Mark & Rebecca