November - December Newsletter

In October we started the school year teaching english and science. After going through many scheduling changes at first we finally settled into a workable pattern in November. We continued to enjoy teaching, even though it is very challenging.

English lessons at the boys transition house are always fun as the boys try to pronounce words and remember the correct grammar. They really enjoy having us come and work with them and are eager to spend time with us.

Rebecca's science experiments continue to amaze the kids. In Romania it isn't common to use experiments to reinforce teaching, it is all based on memorization. These experiments draw the kids in and make it fun to learn new things.

We continued to build up some wonderful relationships with the kids. Our teaching, while it is designed to enrich the kids' lives, is really a vehicle for us to get to know the kids. Mihaela is my special little girl, she is super sweet and loves to cuddle. I love her as my own and pray that she will come to know Christ through our love and testimonies.

Georgiana is Rebecca's special little girl, and is also Mihaela's sister. She calls Rebecca mommy.

We also have classes for some of the special needs kids where we read books and do crafts. They are some of the sweetest kids we work with.

Luci shows off her leaf tracing, a craft we did with the 1-4th graders as part of a science lesson.

Our youth groups have been a highlight of our ministry this year. We have three, one in each location that we work. We are allowed to say and talk about whatever we want, so we've been able to focus on biblical teachings. Many of our kids made decisions to follow Christ over the summer and we have the privilege of discipling them now. It has been exciting watching them grow in their faith and encouraging them.

The locals in the village where the boys transition house is are always so welcoming and friendly. It is a nice change of pace being there one day a week after living in a big, busy city.

We enjoyed spending Thanksgiving with our transition house graduates, we had 65 people in total.

The Christmas celebrations at the orphanages were lots of fun, we felt like proud parents as we watched. The kids put lots of work into their programs and were so happy to see that we were there watching them.

It is always fun to see kids waving to their parents when they're performing like this, but most of these kids don't have parents who come to watch them. Knowing that there was someone in the audience watching them made them feel so special.

We enjoyed seeing the lights in Bucharest and spending time with our friends as Christmas approached. At the end of the month we flew home, experiencing many miracles to fly through London and arrive home on time. We enjoyed spending Christmas with our family and have been enjoying seeing friends. One highlight has been that our friends' son who is around 6 or 7 came up to us before bed and told us that he would be praying for us. How precious that was and our hearts were really touched.

Thank you so much for your prayers and support. We certainly wouldn't be able to minister to kids on the other side of the world without so many people praying for us and sustaining us financially. Please continue to pray for safety and wisdom and for God to bless the kids we work with. We thank God for you and wish you a happy new year!

From Bucharest To London To Home

Last week was another action packed time as we continued to celebrate the birth of our savior. That is what Christmas is all about, isn't it? We went downtown Bucharest with some of our friends and ate out at a nice place called Chocolat. After a great meal we walked to a nearby park to see the lights and sights. We love spending time with our friends so it was a really fun night.

Our housemates in Snagov: Krysten, Dorothy, Mariana, and Shannon.

And our friends from church Amy and Cristi.

The next morning we went to the Christmas celebration at one of the orphanages close by. We enjoyed all the singing and dancing acts and the newest act, the band.

Rebecca snuggles with Alina.

Mark became the impromptu Mos Craciun, or Santa Claus as we know him. It was so fun handing out presents to all the kids and seeing their faces as they got their toys. Thanks so much to everyone who donated money and toys this holiday season so that we could do this.

At our staff Christmas party we sang songs, ate great food, and unwrapped our presents from our secret person. That night Rebecca checked our flight status and found out that our flight from Bucharest to London on Thursday was canceled already. We scrambled to find out what to do, thankfully Jodi at H2H was able to find out that there was a flight scheduled on Wednesday. So we went to the airport early in the morning to try to get on that flight, and by God's grace there were some seats for us! So we flew to London a day early. We met up with our friend Jenny who had been stranded in London more than half a week already, and she helped us find a reasonable place to stay and a taxi out there. She was so glad to have some company after standing in line by herself for days on end at the airport. In case you hadn't heard, there was some "bad" weather in London which caused thousands of people to be stranded there for days.

We decided that since we had a whole day in London that we should see some sights, and our cab driver recommended Windsor Castle, where the queen usually stays on weekends. We had a wonderful time there, it is huge and beautiful and was really worth seeing. The town of Windsor was really nice too, with lots of restaurants and neat little shops.

The cathedral inside the castle walls was particularly impressive with its massive size and many stained glass windows.

Here we are with Jenny standing in front of the castle, which was outlined in neon. Oh wait, that's just a cool effect I found in my new photoshop program.

All of our travels from London went really well, thank you all so much for your prayers! Now that we're home we've been spending the weekend with Rebecca's family for Christmas. It has been nice to see everyone again. We are looking forward to seeing more friends and family as our time goes on here, we'll be here for about a month. Please continue to keep us in your prayers as we travel a lot in the coming weeks.

Christmas Celebrations!

This week we had the joy of attending the Christmas Celebrations for many of the kids we work with. Each school had its own program where the kids sang, danced, performed plays and read poetry. We sat in the audience with the feeling of proud parents, these being our kids, and we enjoyed each celebration so much.

The girls sing a song at the girls school.

Here we are with Miki and Veo, they are still our friends from summer camp in 2008!

The boys sing a song and celebrate with sparklers at the boys school. I have to admit when I saw them with lighters and burning sticks I was a little worried, but all went well and they had lots of fun.

Me with Alin, my buddy from summer camp this year.

We got a surprise invite to another orphanages' celebration so we rushed there, leaving our cooking dinner on the stove to see our kids. Thank goodness we did because it was so fun, especially seeing our precious little girls singing and dancing. When they saw us in the audience their faces lit up, knowing that someone they love came to watch them! At some point someone overheard Georgiana asking her supervisor if she could go sit with her mommy, and she came over to sit on Rebecca's lap. How precious they are indeed.

Our team with a couple boys and the director of one of the orphanages. She is so excited to have us working with our kids and she is always encouraging us to work as much as we can with them.

We were going to have a big get together with all of the older kids that have been coming to our youth groups in three different locations. The kids were so excited to see eachother again after they made friends from other orphanages at summer camp. Unfortunately we had some car issues that prevented us from transporting the kids from the Bucharest area so we had to call it off. It was a hard decision but we had to keep the safety of the kids as our top priority. The kids were disappointed but took it well, knowing that we'll reschedule some other time. Most of our part of the team was still in the south in the apartment H2H has there, so I went to pick them up. Some kids came over to hang out as is the usual custom when we're there, we had a fun time talking.

Rebecca with Elena, who kept telling us how much she would miss us while we're on vacation. We pray that all of our kids will have a great Christmas vacation filled with the grace and mercy of Christ.

When we got back to Bucharest we had a surprise birthday party for Rebecca, with the best pizza available (Dominos Pizza - recently in Romania) and a great chocolate dessert with ice cream.

As part of our birthday tradition in the H2H family Rebecca got to wear the birthday crown. The party was a fun way to end a hard day.

We've had some beautiful weather with just enough snow to be pretty and still have decent roads.

Driving back we enjoyed all of the millions of lights in Bucharest, it is really decked out!

Please pray for safety and traveling mercies as we fly out on Thursday - through London where there are major weather issues. We are supposed to arrive home at 6:45 PM Thursday evening on flight BA 5379. We are looking forward to our time home and to seeing our family and friends. Please pray that everything goes well.

One of those weeks

This past week was a bit more difficult than usual. We had freezing rain on Wednesday (Dec 1) and this prohibited us from going to our ministry locations. Thursday we had finally put in our application for our visa renewal. After waiting in line for over three hours, we finished one minute before the office closed! God was watching over us.

Ice on the grass

Little monkeys from the preschool

On Saturday we went down to Rosiori early to see the girls in Alexandria. We ended up having car problems and were stuck on the side of the road (thankfully it happened right near a small parking lot) for a couple hours. God again was watching over us, while we were there a friend drove past with her brother-in-law who is a mechanic. He diagnosed the problem (an air intake hose that wouldn't stay connected) but was unable to fix it. When Doru arrived (he works with the boys transition program), he was able to use rags and tied it together and we made it to our destination.

Rebecca and Adriana

Mark and Stela

When we arrived at the apartment in Rosiori we soon had a problem with the water heater (which also provides heat for the apartment). So we did not have any hot water or heat. Hopefully this will be resolved soon, but again, we were thankful that we brought the space heater that we had just bought.

Teaching about the weather

The boys looking to see if they succeeded in making a tornado

Then we returned to Snagov and did not have water for two days because of the repairs the city was making. But thankfully there is a well outside and we could bring water in the house. On Wednesday Mark brought in the van to fix the part and get it inspected (required biennially), so Mark got the pleasure of driving the Damas. And then on the way to Voluntari, they ran out of gas because the gauge does not work. Thankfully they were on a side street very near a gas station.

Mark driving the Damas

Some of the kids from one of the youth groups

So overall, it was a hard week, but the hand of God was clearly in everything. Our teaching times went well, we were able to accomplish what we needed, and God gave us the strength to get through it all. Please pray that Satan's attacks will be stopped and H2H will be protected. We feel that God is with us, but we also feel like the devil would really like to take us down. But we are thankful to know who is on our side, and who is the ultimate victor. Please also pray for safety, we have a lot of driving to do this next week for all the Christmas programs. Snow is in the forecast, so please be praying for extra safety on the road. We really appreciate and need all your prayers.

Science

Recipe for a science lesson:

1. Cut a red cabbage into small pieces.

2. Boil red cabbage and let sit for 30 mins.

3. Drain juice and keep it in a sealed container.

4. Find household items and place them in test tubes.

5. Add cabbage juice to test tubes.

6. Teach about acids and bases. In this experiment a strong acid will turn red and a strong base will be yellow. Explain the pH scale.

7. Ask which items are acids/bases and have the students rank the items on the pH scale.

It has been interesting to me to find out what things the kids know and what things they have never heard of before (most often they haven't heard of the scientific terms).

Here the kids are amazed at my "magic" magnets. One of the kids asked me "where did you learn this magic?" The young kids are really excited with anything I teach.

Ionut with his science book. Often I have the kids color a picture (this is showing suspensions -water and oil- and solutions- water and vinegar) to help them learn the science concept.

Teaching science in Romanian has been a very stretching task. I have to look up all the science words and often I do not easily find the correct word. (Any one know how to say fault line (referring to earthquake activity) in Romanian?) Another challenge is the kids also have not heard these words before, so combined with my accent, some of the kids do not understand anything I say. Thankfully Sanda is with me to help explain and use easier words for the kids to understand. The joy of working with these kids and their enthusiasm makes it all worth it! I hope to inspire them to have the same awe and wonder of the earth and our Creator that I have.