December Happenings

We had two weeks of school before Christmas break.  We returned to teaching our classes and tutoring.  It was fun to see all the cute kids we work with again!

Coloring the letter U.  Romanians do not teach the alphabet in order like we do, so that is always interesting!

Mark reading to the kids.  They loved the pop-out book.

The next week we went to some of the school's Christmas celebrations.

The Alexandria girls.  The program was real short this year, less than half an hour!

After the program we handed out Christmas gifts.  The kids are always happy with whatever they receive.

With the four sisters and Vali.  It is always fun to have a picture with them and see how much they have grown.

The youngest kids at the boys school.  So adorable!

Christmas Carols

A skit

This is the first grade class.  They are a very sweet group of kids and we really enjoy working with them!

Viorel with the bag of gifts he received for Christmas.

It was fun to see our kids preform and give out some gifts.  Christmas can be a real hard time of year emotionally for some of our kids.  Keep them in your prayers!

Our Time at Home in Michigan: Family

Since our last post we have returned to Romania already from our furlough at home in Michigan.  Our month there went really fast because we were so busy, it is true that time flies when you are having fun.  Thanksgiving week we celebrated Thanksgiving and Christmas with our families since we didn't stay until Christmas time.

Hand blown glass ornaments have always been a big hit as gifts, we enjoy going to the factory to get them and also seeing where people put them in their houses to decorate.  

We always enjoy spending time with family when we come home.

We spent a few days with each of our families to make sure that we had plenty of time during our short stay home to see them.

For Thanksgiving with Rebecca's family we decided to try some new recipes, so we made garlic rosemary roasted chicken, sweet potatoes with candied walnuts and goat cheese, and roasted broccoli with parmesan and pine nuts.  They were all first time recipes and turned out great. 

I got adventurous on the pie and made bruleed maple cream pumpkin pie.  It turned out amazing and it was fun to brulee the sugar with a torch.  

Mom showed off her new table runner from Romania.

We never took a family picture and our candid shots were less than favorable, so this will have to do this year.  I will let you decide who is who :)

We had such a wonderful time home and it was great to see everyone.  We are glad to be back in Romania and to see our kids again.  With Christmas coming up we will be going to lots of programs and having lots of Christmas parties.  We'll look forward to sharing about those too.

Our Time at Home in Michigan: Friends

Each year we are blessed with the opportunity to come home to see our family, friends and supporters.  We enjoy the chance to catch up with all the people back home who mean so much to us.  The month that we are home is always a busy one and this year has been even more than normal.  Thankfully this is a different kind of busy.  Not really vacation but not really work, it is refreshing to spend quality time with people we love.

It is always amazing to see how much our friend's kids grow in a year!  We love to spend time with our little munchkins.  Here Lexi was showing me her new knitting skills.

I know that kids seem to grow up fast, but when we only see them once a year it is by leaps and bounds!  Thankfully we are able to keep in touch with Skype so they don't forget us :-)

I'm always up for some fun activity like play-dough or legos where I can build things with the kids.

Since we are here around the holidays we get to celebrate them many times over.  We had a nice early Thanksgiving with 23 people at the Jasperse's place.

In a reversal of roles the kids got to sit at the main table and all of us adults sat in the living room.

Thankfully we can fit in some hang out time in between lunches and dinners out.

How cute is that?

We've had some guests as well, Ed and Jennifer came to visit and we tried our hand at Deer Hunter on the computer.  The funniest part was when Rebecca got attacked by the wolf she was hunting.  

We enjoyed also playing some other board games, and I got to cook a meal for the first time in a couple of weeks.

Our friends and former co-workers Josh and Missy also got a chance to come and visit.  We went out to our favorite restaurant San Chez and enjoyed a wonderful meal.  Afterwards we showed them around Grand Rapids and were reminded what a nice city it is.  It was very nice to see them and to hear about what they are up to since returning home from Romania not too long ago.

During our time home we have also had the privilege of speaking at all of our supporting churches.  We enjoy sharing the highlights of our year and how God has been working in Romania.  We continue to feel very blessed by all of the support that God has provided us with.  Thank you all for making our time home great and for continuing to keep us and the kids in your prayers. 

School Time in Romania

The last few weeks we have been very busy starting a new school year here in Romania.  It is always a time we look forward to with anticipation and even a little nervousness.  We had even more butterflies than normal this year because we are doing many new things.

Before we started in Rosiori where we normally work, we visited the kids at Peris.  We were able to see them a lot in the previous months because we stayed up in Bucharest more than normal.  During the school year we don't get to see them much so we really enjoy going there when we can. 

We visited Haley's reading class to get some more ideas for the one we are starting in Rosiori.

The kids at the "Special School" don't get a very good education as the teachers there are not prepared for working with kids with special needs and behavior problems.  Reading is something that is not taught much and so many of the kids are illiterate.  We evaluated each child from grades 1-4 and will work with them twice a week.  Here Razvon is matching the upper case letter on the spoon in his hand to the lower case letter on a spoon on the table.

We played a game with some of the more advanced kids where they had to spell the word that goes with the picture.

They always love being read to, we will use many of these little story books to teach the kids sight words, which are words that they should know by sight rather than having to sound them out.

With the younger kids we started with the letter A by making up some coloring sheets and helping them to write the letter in the space with lines.

We knew they have always loved to color, so why not combine it with learning their letters?

We also made up some letter searches where they had to find and color in the A's.

With the older boys we continued our art class and started right off the bat with a painting project.

We made salt dough ornaments and had the boys pick a shape and paint it.  We had a hard time convincing them that they weren't good to eat!

We started up youth group again and have been enjoying our time with the young people that we work with.  We always start with a game, in this case it was charades with a twist.  The first person has to act out their word for the second, then the second to the third, and the fourth has to guess.  It is like telephone and is very funny! 

After the games we do a lesson and are focusing on how maximize your life by following God's principles.  We enjoy sharing about what faith in God looks like and the teens have lots of good questions. 

We had the honor of attending the baptism of two young men who were in the transition program a couple of years ago.  Besides being very proud of them we praise God for the reminder that he is the one who works in people's lives and he makes the seeds grow.  We may plant and water but we never know when the seeds will sprout and become real for someone.  Thankfully sometimes he invites us to take part in the harvest too.

After the baptism we went out to lunch in the historic section of Bucharest with our friend and newest staff member Talitha.  It kind of reminded us of Paris, there is a reason it used to be called little Paris.  We enjoyed a nice meal at the French Bakery and a nice time of fellowship.

Please continue to be in prayer for all of the kids here who we work with and especially those that we don't.  Please also pray for safe travels and a blessed time as we travel home for our month long furlough on Monday.  Thanks!

France Vacation

Well it is hard to believe that our 10 year anniversary vacation in France is done already!  We had a great time and would like to share with you what we did there.

We started out in Paris and stayed right in the center of town in a small studio apartment.  It was a great location close to lots of attractions and the main subway lines.  We got off to a rough start when the person we were renting the place from didn't show up and we couldn't get into the building.  Thankfully some people across the street helped us and we figured out that the person sent an e-mail an hour before we were supposed to meet with the information on how to get in.  

Paris is a wonderful city with so many well known sights to see.  The Notre Dame cathedral was the closest one to us and also the point where we got on our two day bus tour of the city.  The open top bus was a great way to see the sights and we really enjoyed it.

We enjoyed seeing the Eiffel tower nearly every day as it is so impressive and beautiful. To avoid the long line for the elevator we walked up to the first landing to get a nice view of the city.

Then there is the Arc de Triumph, which is much larger than the one we have here in Bucharest.

Just about each night we went out to take night pictures of our favorite sights.

They don't call Paris the city of lights for nothing!

We took a day trip to the palace at Versailles which was built by King Louis XIV.  It was awesome and practically too big to take a picture of the whole thing.  The palace was filled with ornate rooms and golden decorations, and there was a really large garden in the back.

We also visited some of the museums in Paris.  First we enjoyed seeing all of the impressionist paintings at the Orsay like one of our favorites, Poppies by Monet.  The next day we went to the Louvre which is one of the worlds largest and most visited museums.  There we saw the Mona Lisa, Venus of Milo and many more famous works of art.

We also really enjoyed the ancient Mesopotamian and Egyptian collections at the Louvre.

We enjoyed many great meals not only in Paris but on the whole trip.  We had lots of French and seafood but took a break from that with this Thai meal which was amazing.  Rebecca had King Prawns in Tamarind Sauce and I had Red Curry Beef with Coconut Milk.

We also found this gluten free bakery which was so wonderful, we went there for lunch and got a few pastries to go.  We just wish we had their recipes!

After Paris we took a train to the Loire Valley where there are many chateaux (castles) which were built by French kings and aristocrats.  We rented a car so we could see as many as possible.

In two days we saw 17 chateaux, most we just drove by or stopped to take pictures but we went inside and toured some of the more well known ones.

This was the most spectacular garden at Villandry.  The tour of the chateau was worth it just for the view of the gardens from the roof.  The neat thing about these gardens is that it is a mixture of flowers and vegetables that make up all of the exquisite colors and patterns.

We tried out as many French pastries and chocolates as we could, and they didn't disappoint!

We then drove west to the area of Brittany and stopped in Carnac to see some of the prehistoric remains there.  There are over 3000 large stones, called megaliths, that are aligned in rows or placed on top of each other to make a sort of tomb like this one.  They are older than stonehenge and were really neat to see, especially one that had ancient markings carved on it.

We visited many towns and enjoyed the old city centers in each one.  

We then went all the way to the west coast of France and enjoyed some beautiful weather and scenery.

Point Pen Hir was one of the most dramatic coastlines we saw with the islands and aqua blue water it just all seemed so surreal. 

We traveled to the Pink Granite Coast to see the unique colored stones and rock formations.

On our anniversary we went to Le Mont St Michel, a stunning abbey built on a small hill that becomes an island when the tide comes in.

We traveled through some really unique coastal towns with pretty harbors.

Since we were so near to the ocean we enjoyed an abundance of seafood and it was wonderful.

On the last leg of the trip we went to Normandy to see the D-Day beaches and ruins.

Many of these gun bunkers remain there as a reminder of what happened in that dark time.

This was such a great trip and we really thank God that we were able to do this.  He really blessed our time with good weather and a fabulous time.  Now that we are back in Romania we are back to planning our fall program.  Thanks for your prayers up to now and please keep them coming!