Fall 2011 Update

This past fall was a busy time of change and excitement. We started out by welcoming two new couples to our staff: Steven & Haley and Josh & Missy. They are both friends from previous trips here in Romania and we are very excited that they are working full time with us now. We stay with them in Bucharest on the weekends and enjoy spending time with them, it is nice having more couples on our staff now. Our schedule changed a lot too, we started working the whole week in our southern location, RDV. Last year we only worked there two days a week, but there were so many more kids to work with there.

There are three orphanages in RDV with a total of around 300 kids of all ages. We have a youth group there, teach classes and tutor for the college entrance exam. Rebecca teaches biology which is tied in with her Romanian partner’s geography class. She also tutors biology for the college exam. I teach english to the older kids while my partner teaches to the younger ones. I also tutor english and math for the college exam. We also work at the boys transition house doing the same things and also teaching the boys to cook. Our goal with all this is two fold, one to provide education to these kids that will enrich their lives and help them succeed in life, and two, to build relationships so we can point them to Christ our savior. We really enjoy our time with the kids and love them a lot!

Since we are spending the whole week there we had to find an apartment, which wasn’t an easy task. RDV isn’t a very big city, around 30,000 people, but many high school students come there from the surrounding small villages to go to school. They then rent and stay in apartments. After lots of looking God provided us with a very nice, newly renovated apartment that we really like. We had to run to Ikea in Bucharest to furnish it, but it at least came with some appliances. It is also very close to where the kids live so we can easily go to their places and they can come over to our place too. We are so thankful for this and are really happy with how it turned out.

Just after we finished setting up our apartment we left for our yearly vacation at home. We had a truly wonderful time seeing our family and friends and supporters. We celebrated Thanksgiving and Christmas and had many joyous get togethers. We enjoyed speaking at five churches of which four are supporters. We felt very loved and cared for by everyone and want to say thanks for your prayers, support, friendship, love and encouragement. While home we said goodbye to Grandma Adema and friend Adam as they went to be with their savior. Even though it was bitter sweet we were glad that we were home so that we could be there for them at the end. Our time home went fast of course, but we will look forward to returning home again this year around Christmas.

When we got back to Romania we had a very warm welcome by the kids we love so much, we had missed each other. We got to watch our kid’s Christmas programs which we really enjoyed. We also spent some time with the boys in the transition program and had Christmas and New Year’s parties with the transition house graduates.

At that time the holiday team came from the states and Canada and we started working with them. We went to RDV and had Christmas parties with games, presents, and snacks at all of the kid’s places. We also came to Bucharest and worked with the kids in the orphanages around there. We had a great time bonding with the team as well, they were a real blessing to us.

Even though it wasn’t always easy this fall turned out really great in so many ways. Thanks again for all of your support and prayers, please keep them coming!

Please continue to pray:

- For God to continue to be with us, leading us in His will.

- For God to protect us from the spiritual warfare that is going on right now, the evil one knows that our work is glorifying God and he is working overtime to try to thwart us and our team.

- For God’s provision in all things, especially for our and H2H’s support.

- For God to continue to bless us, our team, our family, friends, churches, supporters, and our kids.

- For God to send more workers into the mission field, whether that is at home or abroad.

In His Love, Mark & Rebecca Essenburg - Serving in Romania with H2H International

Click here to download our PDF version of the newsletter: Mark & Rebecca Fall 2011 Update