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!