Exploring And Language Lessons

We started out last week with a staff meeting where we found out our schedules and finalized the curriculum for the orphanage program. We will be working at the baby hospital on Monday and Wednesday afternoons, and our language classes will be Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday mornings. We will be able to tag along with the orphanage teams when we have time but studying for our language classes will be our top priority.

Things are looking great in terms of all of the programs this year. We all chipped in on the orphanage program which will focus on teaching the kids how they can have the qualities of heros. Both the boys and girls transition programs will start soon also, scheduling staff and finding eligible kids were the biggest hurdles which God provided for. We are excited to see what happens this year and ask for your prayers that God transforms all of these kid's lives.

Tuesday we went out to the girls transition house and did some yard work to get it ready for the new girls moving in soon. We also helped move a washing machine into one of the staff apartments near the girls house.

This is the view outside of our apartment. Much of the city is like this - never ending block houses in all directions.

This is the top of the market where we can buy fresh fruit and veggies from, as seen from our apartment.

Would you expect to see a horse drawn cart making it's way down a street in the middle of the city? This is an everyday occurrence and we've even seen people walking their cows around.

We went to Carol Park, which has a huge monument dedicated to Romania's first King.

From there we walked to the center of town where we could see the People's Palace, the second largest building in the world after the Pentagon. We toured the inside on our first trip, it is very large and ornate. It was built by the communist dictator as his personal office but now it houses the entire government.

From there we hopped on the subway and went to the university area. There are lots of classical buildings there. We were looking for a specific Romanian language book for our language lessons but had no idea where to find the bookstore. Thankfully a professor saw us looking around and helped us find it, how nice! There were several statues in the area that were wearing gas masks, we have no idea why though.

Thursday we started our language lessons so we spent most of the day and most of Friday studying around 300 new words and some basic sentence structures. Saturday after our lesson we went to the orphanage to play with the kids. They were really rambunctious and energetic and we were pretty worn out afterwards. Sunday was a nice day of rest and we enjoyed spending some time with the rest of the H2H staff. Sound like a pretty busy week? Welcome to the new normal: busy, busy. It will all be worth it when we can speak to the kids without translators, we are so looking forward to that!

School Kits And Lesson Plans

Last week was another eventful one as we expected. We started off by putting together hundreds of school kits for the kids. We made bags with notepads, pens, pencils, crayons, toothpaste, toothbrush, erasers, and a pencil sharpener. On Tuesday we went to the orphan apartments at Rosiori, a town about 2 and a half hours drive from Bucharesti where we are staying. There are several apartments spread all around where the orphans live so that the government doesn't have to count them as orphans. This was our first time there but we knew some of the kids from summer camp last year.

Andrea loved her school kit and was very excited to receive it. At camp we called her Punky Brewster because she has such a spitfire attitude. She's so cute though and loves attention.

We then went on to an actual orphanage in another nearby town. This is Corny, one of the H2H staff who grew up as an orphan that H2H worked with. Now she is a great help and is our guide around the city since she lives nearby. She is also the main worker in the baby hospital.

Miki found us right away, she was on our team at camp last year. She is a sweetheart.

There weren't very many kids we knew so we met lots of new ones. This girl really wanted her picture taken with Mark.

Krista, one of the H2H missionaries met some new girls too.

Here we are handing out the school kits. Our director Jen is handing them out and her church helped supply most of the items. The next day we went to the main orphanage in Peris to hand out school kits to the kids there. We had fun playing games with the kids as usual.

The end of the week was a little more laid back. We spent more time working on lesson plans for this school year for the kids. We also spent time with the rest of the staff getting to know them and hanging out. We went shopping again and finished off our list of things we needed. We have been so blessed to be able buy furnishings and kitchen supplies at IKEA and some of the other big stores around the city. We are very thankful that God has supplied us with everything we needed through generous gifts from supporters.

We also went exploring around our area in town. We are starting to get a good feel for our immediate area but this city is so huge that we will have a lot more to do before we know our way around. We went to the park next to our apartment, it is very large with a small lake in the middle. It is nice to have a place to walk that feels a little more like the country. We are enjoying being here and are looking forward to starting our language lessons this week Thursday. Would you please pray that God opens our minds and gives us the ability to learn quickly? We would really appreciate your prayers, thanks!

First Week In Romania

The past week has been very busy with planning and adapting. We went to IKEA and bought all the kitchen furnishings we needed, which was basically everything. We also bought a new mattress because the one here was in really bad shape and we wanted to be kind to our backs. The refrigerator was not working so we delayed moving in until it was replaced. We also spent time during the week starting to plan out the curriculum for this school year with the kids. We are doing a hero theme and trying to teach the kids how to be heros themselves.

Friday we went to the Peris orphanage to see the kids and hang out with them. We were greeted by many of them who we knew from camp and they remembered us. Many of them would say "sunt de la tabara?" meaning "you were at camp?" It was great to see them and we had a great time playing games with them.

Of course Claudiu remembered us and was mightily happy to see us and to hug us. He's on our prayer card from last year. He is usually a trouble maker and keeps his distance from people but he seems like a different kid around us.

Catalina loves to put our rings together and is so fascinated with us, she loves to be hugged by both of us. She is very sweet.

Flori gave Rebecca some new earrings, well actually stickers but they did look nice.

We joined in the soccer game and had fun, although these kids are so good at soccer that they really didn't need our help, they just wanted us to play with them for fun.

School starts this week for the kids so we will be starting the more structured programs, although our language classes will be the top priority for us.

Sunday we went to church at AlphaOmega, the same one we had been to on each of our previous trips. We saw many people that we knew and met lots of new people too. It was a great day to go there because there were two baptisms of young adults who decided to identify themselves with Jesus Christ. It was neat hearing their testimonies of how they came to this point in their lives.

After church we moved into our apartment and spent the evening arranging things and unpacking. This morning we went to the market and bought food for lunch and then Corny and Mariana came over to show us around a bit. Then we took the subway over to the team house for a meeting to discuss our curriculum. Our apartment is in a great location close to the subway, market, and park. It is really easy to get around and we are already learning our area.

Please continue to pray for strength and guidance as we learn how to do things here. Please pray for guidance and wisdom for us and the team as we continue to work on programing. We will start language next week so please pray that God prepares us for that and allows us to learn well. Thanks so much for your prayers!

We're In Romania!

We made it to Romania! We left from the Grand Rapids airport on Sunday afternoon, and were sent off by some family and a few of our closest friends. It was a great sendoff and we were so glad they came to support us. Our kids Sam, Lexi, & Precious were there too, it was so great to see them. Everyone laid hands on us and prayed for our journey and then we went through security, with Sam following saying he wanted to come with us. Awww! We'll dearly miss everyone but knowing that they're so supportive is a big help.

Lexi offering her drink to Mark before we left. All of our flights went really well, were on time, and all of our luggage made it here! Thanks for the prayers, we heard that we may be the first ones to fly over on British Air and get all of our luggage right away.

Today we went to see our apartment so we can figure out what we need to buy for it. This is us in the elevator. We are on the 8th floor.

This is the living room, Mariana and Corny were at the apartment cleaning it out.

Jen brought us there and Linuta was also there. Beyond the window there is a balcony that goes along the entire length of the apartment.

This is the spare bedroom which we will probably use as an office. The bed is actually a pull out so people can come and stay with us (hint, hint).

This is our bedroom, pretty good size and lots of storage.

The kitchen is small and very retro, the stove is also very small but we'll have to adapt to it.

The rest of the kitchen with the dining table.

And finally the bathroom, can you count how many shades of blue there are in here? All in all the apartment is pretty nice, there is lots of storage space too. Next step is to buy all the stuff we need, mostly kitchen furnishings. We'll run to IKEA sometime this week to get that.

So far we are doing pretty well on energy, jet lag doesn't even seem that bad. Continued prayers for energy would be appreciated. Everything is different as we expected, so we have lots of learning to do. We won't start our language classes until late September so we'll have a couple weeks to figure out how to get around and buy things here. We'll keep the blog updated as often as we can, especially at the beginning there will be so many new things to talk about!

One Last Week

Since we got back from California we have been keeping busy seeing family and friends before we leave and working on wrapping everything up here. Everything has gone so smoothly and we have really enjoyed everyones company.

We had a potluck with our small group from church, it was really fun seeing everyone and playing with all the kids.

Sunday we had our commissioning at church. We got to tell about how we've come to this point and what we will be doing once we get to Romania. Then our pastor called people down to lay hands on us and pray for our journey. Many of our family and friends came which was great, they have been so supportive. Afterwards we had a get together and had a light lunch that we put on. The cake had red, blue, and yellow flowers, which are the colors of the Romanian flag.

We had buns, ham & turkey, cheese, coleslaw, watermellon, chips, and cake. It turned out to be a very nice meal. Over 100 people came to this event, wow! Thanks all for coming!

This is us with Rebecca's parents.

This is us with Mark's Dad & Stepmom.

This is us with Mark's Mom.

During the week we visited lots of people too. This is us with Mark's sister and brother-in-law.

These are our adopted parents, they live close to where we lived and we have been getting together with them regularly for a long time. They have been a very big part of our lives and we have really enjoyed getting to know them.

These are our friends Scott & Kayleen and kids Sam & Lexi. We have become great friends with them in the last few years too and will miss them a lot.

Same goes for our friends Jonah & Jes and their daughter Precious.

We will surely miss all of our family and friends and are hoping to stay in touch over e-mail and online chatting, especially with programs like skype. If you have skype you can search for us and our user name will come up.

This week we also sold both of our cars and tied up any loose ends that we could think of. Everything has gone great and we are really relieved to have everything taken care of. We are even finished packing now and are all ready to go. We will be at the Kent County airport at 3:00 today and will fly out at 4:50.

It has been quite a journey getting to this point, it seems a bit unreal that we're leaving in a few hours and we'll be gone for so long. God has been so faithful and we've just been amazed at how he has worked. Thank you all for your continued prayers, we know that they have helped and we continue to ask for them on a daily basis.