Ever since we last wrote about how hard of a time we were having with the kids we have been encouraged by so many people! We want to say thank you for your prayers, kind words, and helpful Bible verses. It would be so incredibly hard to do this kind of work alone, but thankfully we aren't. We have so many great people in our lives and even though we are separated by distance, we are close through our heavenly father.
Things have been going better in the last couple weeks. One of our biggest prayers was answered, our friend Marius got a job at Starbucks! It hasn't been the easiest for him and his supervisor was hard to work with, but he is changing locations this week so we pray that it will be better. He still needs prayers to come to Christ as do so many of the kids that we work with. Other things have been going better too like our youth group. The kids seem to be getting the idea that we can't function well as a group if they aren't respectful of us and each other. Kids are kids though, we just need to continue to have patience!
We went on a little trip to the glass factory and then stopped by the lake with our friends Steven, Haley and Audrey.
We had an early birthday dinner for Rebecca: pork chops with savory cranberry sauce and spiced baked potatoes. For dessert we had molten lava cakes.
Here is a Swiss Cake that I made for no special reason other than to enjoy an awesome dessert. I started with the chocolate cake, made marshmallow fluff for the filling and chocolate ganache for the frosting. Lets just say that it was amazing, and there was enough leftover marshmallow fluff to make peanut butter fudge (for a christmas party) for the first time in Romania!
We attended a program for Saint Nicholas day on Dec 5 and enjoyed watching our kids sing, dance, and recite poetry. This is the first of many to come very soon!
Me with my girl Mihaela after she danced so beautifully at the program. We know how parents feel watching their children in school programs, it is great.
We got to see Aurelia at a Christmas party that we went to at one of the orphanages that Steven and Haley work in. We used to work there too but now are working in a different city so we don't get to see these kids very often. In addition to having a really fun time we also got lots of hugs and kisses from the kids.
Here is Rebecca helping to open a present during a game.
We put up some decorations in our apartment, these are glass ornaments that we got at the glass factory. I made the boxes out of some cardboard we had laying around and we found these packing peanuts for snow.
The lights are up in Bucharest! This year they are more spectacular than ever with hundreds of different colored Christmas trees hanging over the main road through town.
And finally, we got our first snow of the year, and it is still going! There is snow forecast for most of this week so it should be interesting, especially with parking. Thank goodness our car has great winter tires that should allow us to get around easily and safely.
