An Extraordinary Life Journey

Back To School...

2012-01-24T04:26:00.005-05:00

With the holidays over we started the new year with a big party for all of the kids who participate in our youth groups. We brought them all together at the team house and had a time of games, worship, and good food.

In this game they had to peel a lemon with gloves on and then eat it, the faces made were hilarious!

This was a popcorn toss into the mouth of the teammates.

The kids love getting together with their friends from the other orphanages. They often form great friendships at summer camp and then are always looking for opportunities to see them again. The party was a reward for consistent attendance at our youth groups.

Part of the worship team from our church alphAOmega came to lead us in worship, it was really nice having them there and they also shared some scriptures and talked about having a relationship with God.

We then started school again, back to teaching english, math, and science! The kids were a little riled up because it was the first week back, hopefully they will settle down a bit this week!

We got to spend Saturday evening with our friends (co-workers) Steven and Haley. We made a meal of tapas, which are Spanish appetizers. We got our inspiration from our favorite restaurant, San Chez Tapas Bistro in Grand Rapids.

I (Mark) made garlic mashed potato empanadas with garlic aioli sauce and sweet potato croquettes. Haley made stuffed mushrooms and bruschetta, with some olives on the side. It was a fun meal to make and to eat. Thankfully there were leftovers so on Sunday our other friends Josh and Missy were able to join in the eating pleasure. We all love to cook and try new things, and thanks to the internet we can find recipes for just about anything!

There are a few things that I wanted to ask for prayers. Thanks again so much for being in prayer constantly for us and the people we work with. We can't win this battle on our own, we need strength and sustenance from God, and we know he honors your prayers!

-Please pray for guidance and peace for us for important decisions that we are facing and as we face attacks from the evil one.

-A new boy came to one of the orphanages last week and was very violent with the other kids and disruptive to our class. Please pray for God to give him peace and a calm spirit, and to guard him against the powers of darkness.

-Pray for the students that will be taking the college entrance exam after they graduate from high school this year. We are tutoring some of them and they aren't used to studying at all - it's not just because they're not in stable homes, the majority of highschoolers are like this here. If they fail this test they can't get into college, so it's really important that they put in the time studying.

-Pray that God will raise up more people to come here, whether for a short or long time, and ask him to speak to you clearly if he is calling you.

Fall 2011 Update

2012-01-09T07:46:00.005-05:00

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

Christmas Cheer

2012-01-01T17:08:00.006-05:00

Even though Christmas was over a week ago we have still been having fun celebrating and enjoying our time with the kids and with the holiday team.

The boys from the transition house program stayed up in Bucharest for a while for their Christmas vacation. We went to the park and played soccer and then went out to check out the lights in the city. We stopped at one of the parks and had some Kürtöskalács which are also called chimney cakes. They are made of a thin dough wrapped around a rolling pin and then roasted over coals, then they get coated with cinnamon and sugar, yum!!

In the city they really go all out in their decorating for Christmas, each one of the main streets is decked out like this, and some of the main parks are really beautiful.

We celebrated Christmas with the boys too and then had a Christmas party with all of the graduates of the transition program.

We went ice skating which was really fun, we got to teach them how to do it since it was their first time. We tried to get fancy by trying to skate with one foot and spinning around.

The rest of the week we spent having Christmas parties with our kids with our holiday team.

We had such a good time at each of their apartments, we played games and had snacks and handed out Christmas presents.

We played Christmas bingo and hot potato with music, and we made ornaments out of paper.

These boys were having fun playing with their new flarp which was part of their present.

The holiday team is really fun because the kids are on vacation from school so we get to work with more of them than usual. We have special parties and have lots of fun.

And of course we enjoyed spending time with "our daughters" at their place.

Seriously, how could my heart not just melt?

We had a really blessed time and are so thankful that we were able to spend this time with our kids. We were happy to bless them with a fun time and presents and we were blessed by their energy and excitedness and love. We have had a great time getting to know the people on the team too, that is always a really special thing for us now that we are on full time staff here.

Christmas Celebrations!

2011-12-25T14:40:00.004-05:00

After coming back to Romania we got to meet our kids again at the first Christmas program of the season. We were all so excited to see eachother, they missed us a lot and we missed them too. They put on a wonderful program where they sang carols, performed a skit, recited some poems, and danced.

Our Romanian partners Sanda and Mariana put together this program and it turned out very nice. The kids enjoyed themselves very much.

This was a skit about the birth of Jesus.

Here was a dance.

And here we are with some of our friends!

Later in the week we went to the celebration at the boys school.

They put on a fun program too.

They were really happy to see us too after our long absence, thier warm hugs and smiles were so great to come back to.

After that we went to the girls school to hand out their Christmas presents.

We usually only see these girls at special times like when we hand out school kits or go to their programs or have them at summer camp.

Seeing them that little they are always excited when we come.

We celebrated Rebecca's birthday with the youth group, they sang "La Multi Ani," their version of "Happy Birthday."

We had a great week and were so warmly welcomed back to Romania. It was really great to see our friends on staff too, they came to all of the programs with us and it was fun to catch back up with them again. We were also able to catch back up on sleep after our really long trip back. Thank you to everyone who makes it possible for us to be here, through your support and prayers, we are so grateful for the opportunity to work with these kids!

Layover in Munich, Germany

2011-12-19T04:46:00.005-05:00

We're back in Romania, just in time for Christmas! We had a long trip this time, first flying to Atlanta, Georgia, and then to Munich, Germany. We had a 13 hour layover in Munich and even though we didn't sleep much on the plane and were really tired, we went out to see the city. Since we are becoming world travelers we just couldn't pass up an opportunity to see a new place!

In the main square we saw the Glockenspiel, a clock tower with figurines that dance around at noon. It is a very impressive building and the square it is in is really nice.

There were booths set up all over the place with Christmas ornaments and snacks, the smell of roasted almonds was enough to make anyone have a craving!

Christmastime is a neat time to visit different places, although it would have been a little nicer if it was snowing instead of raining. I'm sure I remember seeing something like this on Rick Steve's travel videos!

This is a museum that was once part of the ruling family of Bavaria's house.

Munich is a very nice looking city.

We enjoyed breakfast at a cafe.

One of the many impressive churches there, it looks almost exactly like the one we saw in Timisoara, Romania.

The inside of this church looks just like the one we saw in Biertan, Romania. It is really neat to see the German influences in Romania and it was cool to see the origin of the influence.

The church in Biertan had an organ in the back just like this one too.

We went to take a tour of the Nymphenburg Palace, which was the summer residence of the rulers of Bavaria. It is part of a huge complex of buildings and gardens which give a pretty good idea about the decadence and richness of these rulers.

The ballroom was a sight to behold.

We really enjoyed our short visit to Munich. We love to see new places and this stopover was an unexpected chance to go somewhere new. Now we're back in Romania after a wonderful time at home spent with our family and friends. It went really fast but we had a great time, and now we are ready for all of our Christmas celebrations here!

Great Time and Timing

2011-12-14T14:19:00.007-05:00

In the last few weeks at home in Michigan we continued to have a great time visiting family and friends. My oh my how fast time flies, our time here has come to an end. We have done so much in a little time and have been super busy, but it has been a blessing to be home.

We haven't had much snow at all which has been nice for driving. On our trip to Canada we did go through a beautiful winter wonderland where all the trees had a nice coating of snow.

We took a trip to Canada to see our Oma (grandma) who was 102 years old. We enjoyed visiting with her, but that night she fell and fractured her hip. Only a few days later she passed away and is now with her savior Jesus in Heaven. We were able to go to her funeral the following week and we marveled at the timing of it all, being home to see her one last time and then having time to go to her funeral, we can just see God's hand in it. We will miss Oma but we know that she lived a long and full life and is now in a better place.

We also got to see all of our Canadian relatives and we enjoyed visiting with them.

We went to a hockey game with some friends and enjoyed seeing our Grand Rapids Griffins win!

We continued to spend lots of time with family...

...And friends.

We have had lots of great food while we were here, many people cooked us delicious meals and we ate at some wonderful restaurants. At our friends Christmas party I (Mark) was inspired by this mango chutney to make some Naan bread. I grilled it over charcoal and it turned out great!

Our friends made orange chicken, Mongolian venison, and egg rolls, mmm.

Lexi's favorite gift was her "Christmas underwear," she kept going around and talking about it to everyone. She really wanted to come with us to Romania, she didn't want to let us leave. She told Rebecca that she is her kid, she is just too cute. We will miss everyone while we are in Romania, please keep in touch, we love talking over e-mail, Facebook, or Skype.

We are flying out Thursday and will have a long layover in Munich, Germany. We will try to see the city if we're awake enough. Please pray for safe travels. Thank you so much for your continued prayers for us and our ministry in Romania. We are looking forward to going back and seeing our kids again and we know they are excitedly waiting for us to return. We have had a really great time at home and are extremely thankful that we have such supportive family and friends. Thank you all for being a part of our lives and ministry.

Home Time

2011-11-29T12:51:00.002-05:00

We've been home in the magical mitten for two weeks already, it is crazy how fast time is flying. I guess that is what happens when you're having fun. We have been really enjoying spending time with our families and our friends. It is so good seeing everyone again and we have just been having a really blessed time.

We spent a weekend with my mom and soon to be step-dad. We played lots of games, watched some movies and ate lots of good food. My sister and brother-in-law and brother came for a day to hang out and celebrate and Christmas.

We also spent a weekend with my dad and step-mom and we celebrated Thanksgiving with them. We watched some football games, played some games, and watched some fun TV shows.

We've also been spending lots of time with our friends, pretty much every evening we've been getting together with someone different.

And of course we have been having a great time hanging out with "our" kids, they still all remember us (thankfully we talk on Skype frequently) and play with us like we had never left.

This is a common scene from way back, the kids always surround me when I get on the computer, they're hoping to play "the racing game".

We've also been sharing our story and talking about our ministry at our supporting churches, which has been going great. We have been showing a video that we made this summer of the testimony of one of our kids who has committed his life to Christ and was baptized this summer. He has a very moving story and hopefully we'll be able to share it with you in a future blog post. Besides just telling what our ministry is about in Romania, we've been really trying to encourage people to get more involved in missions. Helping people realize their potential to make an impact in God's kingdom is something that is really on our hearts.

Jesus called us, even commanded us as his followers to spread his love and his teachings to all people. You don't have to be called all the way to Romania to do that, even your own neighborhood is a mission field. Leaving our lives behind in order to serve God in Romania doesn't make us superstars who are doing what most people can't, we are just normal people following God's will for our lives. He has been providing for us all the way and we also really appreciate the support and prayers from all of you. We are very blessed to have such great and supportive family and friends and churches.

Fall Classes

2011-11-17T17:43:00.002-05:00

Well, after moving into our apartment and settling in, we thought it was about time to disrupt our schedule again for a trip back to Michigan! We are currently back in MI for a month and are visiting family, friends and speaking at 5 churches. So far we have been enjoying our time home, but we miss our kids too. We are really enjoying our schedule this year. We are teaching classes in the apartments of the kids (english and a science/geography class), teaching at the special needs school, tutoring in our apartment (math, english, biology), involved in the youth group, and the Boys Transition House has started up again so we will also be teaching there. Most of our teaching is done in the afternoon, we tutor in the evenings and are at the transition house in the morning-early afternoon one day a week. So we are pretty busy, but we really enjoy our classes and being able to spend the time with the kids. On our one free evening of the work week, usually you will find us hanging out with some of the older kids at our apartment. That is the unique and special part of working in the southern location, Rosiori. The kids live in apartments (just down the street from us) and can get permission to come and visit us. We both have kids that are special to us that are more than just kids we work with, they truly are our friends. It is such a blessing to be able to support and encourage them and also to laugh together and spend time together as friends.

Mark at one of the apartments

We also had our annual Thanksgiving feast early this year. Last Saturday we had around 70 people at the team house for Thanksgiving. All graduates and current transition house "kids" (18 and up, since this is our after high school job and life skills program) are invited as well as some other people who are part of the H2H family. We had a good time and enjoyed lots of good Thanksgiving food!

Cristi, Amy, Haley and Steven

Aurel (who just graduated this spring from our program), Rebecca, Mark, Josh, Missy

Halloween and New Apartment

2011-11-06T03:22:00.003-05:00

Who knew we'd still have fun celebrating Halloween in Romania? Halloween isn't very big here, but we're a bunch of Americans and it's still kind of fun to dress up. We went to a party with our friends from church, Amy and Cristi. It was also a birthday party for Amy.

Here we are at the party: Josh - a Jedi, Missy - a fall fairy, Me - a Jedi master, Rebecca - a Flinstone, Haley - little red ridinghood, Steven - the big bad wolf, Amy - Frankenstein's bride, and Cristi - Frankenstein.

There were lots of other people from church there too. We played some fun games and watched a nice video that Amy and Cristi made of their wedding which was just last year.

We continue to have a good time teaching our kids, our classes are going really well and we are enjoying staying in one location and working with so many more kids now.

We had worked with many of the kids only at summer camps, like this little guy here. But just those couple days of camp were enough to start building a wonderful relationship. He is probably one of the most excited and loving kids when we come to his school, he runs up and jumps in my arms every time! It is so great to be able to continue to build on these relationships. It is so great to see the joy on their faces when they see us, so rewarding!

Lately you've heard us talking a lot about our new apartment, and today you're going to be able to see it! The reason we needed an apartment is because we're now working in our southern location the whole week. It is about a two hour drive from Bucharest, and last year we only worked here two days. We only got to work with very few kids out of many, and this year we are working with the majority of them because we're here longer. Now that we are staying there more than anywhere else, we really needed our own space as opposed to sharing an apartment with some other staff like we did last year for the two days we were there.

Here's the entryway.

And the kitchen, not too big but we have it arranged so it's pretty workable now.

Across the hall is our pantry and refrigerator.

This is the living room. We spent the last two weeks putting together all the furniture (from IKEA) and mounting things on the walls. There were no light fixtures in the whole place, just lightbulbs hanging from wires. It would be a lot easier if the walls weren't solid concrete, but hey, that's why they make really big hammer drills.

This is the opposite view of the living room, showing the balcony. It is attached and adds some nice space to the living room.

Here is our bedroom. Rebecca made/ is making the curtains (they weren't quite done at this point).

Here is our bathroom. I put up the mirror and towel hooks, and we put a nice organizer in the corner which you can't see. Try and find the silhouette of George Washington, we noticed it when we were looking at the pictures with some friends!

And here is our new washing machine. The only space that would fit a washing machine is really small, so we had to get this kind, it is a top loader but the drum is the same as a front loader. The drum actually opens up so clothes can be loaded in there. It is pretty slick, and it works great.

We are really enjoying our new place, we feel like we finally have a place to call our own again after quite some time. We are so thankful to God for providing this place to us and thankful to you for all of your prayers!

Two Full Weeks

2011-10-28T04:23:00.004-04:00

Wow, these last two weeks have been so packed with things happening and God working. We've been falling behind on our blogging lately, it would be easy to blame it on all the business but it always comes back to time management, doesn't it? The good thing is that we have a mostly established schedule now, it always takes a few weeks to get everything arranged. There are still kids who don't fit into our schedule because of class time conflicts that want to learn English so we are working on figuring that out.

Youth group continues to go well, we've had around 25 kids so far, it's a lot for one apartment living room, but we make it work. Our amazing race challenges continue, this week they had to find matching pairs of socks from a big pile.

We are working on creating posters of the kid's dreams, by drawing and using magazines. We are trying to encourage them to think more about their futures and to realize that they can do a lot with their lives.

With the younger kids we have many classes, like character development and craft time.

In the spirit of fall we had the kids do colorful tracings of leaves.

Rebecca and Sanda teach a combined class about geography and biology.

Then of course we have many english classes, we are going through the alphabet and having the kids draw pictures of things that start with each letter.

They always want to write on the white boards so we thought it would be a good teaching tool if we could use it in class.

Here is a very interesting elephant!

The other business has come from our apartment search. Praise God that he has provided one for us! We moved in this week and have been working on cleaning it up and putting together all of our new furniture. We had to go on a shopping spree to furnish the apartment (ouch!) but we're thankful that God has provided for us so we were able to do it. We really like our new apartment and it is like a burden has been lifted from our shoulders. We are so thankful and want to thank you for your prayers and support! God has really provided for us and we know now that this is the place he had in store for us from the beginning. It is awesome how He works.

God also provided for us on another front. When we are home soon we will be traveling quite a bit so we need to borrow a car from someone. Up until Sunday we hadn't heard of any car being available. We were talking with some family about it and were saying that even though the time is getting near and we didn't have a car yet, we knew God would provide one for us in His timing. Right after that conversation we got an e-mail from some friends saying that they had a car we could borrow. Their mom doesn't use her car anymore and it is just being stored and she offered it to us to use. How awesome is that?! We can tangibly feel the joy that God is giving us through his providence. Truly wonderful. When you trust in God he is faithful, we have seen that in our lives time and time again!

Start Of The Year

2011-10-14T06:51:00.003-04:00

Wow, it's the middle of October already, and now we know it's fall because our beloved nice warm weather has left and the cold has come in it's place. But I guess that is to be expected in October. Eight years ago when we got married it was pretty cold already, dare I say nearly snowing that day. We celebrated our anniversary with our new couples, and amazingly Steven and Haley's is the same exact day.

Josh and Missy made us chicken parmesan and apple crisp, and I made the second dessert of cinnamon rolls.

The hours it takes to make these are worth it, they are sooo good, if I do say so myself.

We started our programming this week and worked a lot on scheduling. We started with a plan and knew that it would change a lot, but it actually didn't too much.

We are working in all of the locations in this area now, with many more kids than we worked with last year. Since we are staying the whole week we have much more opportunity. We are teaching English, math, biology and character to kids of all ages. The hope is that this will not only help them do well in school but get to know us better, and through that will be pointed to God.

At youth group we did Amazing Race games and challenges, complete with authentic looking envelopes and clue cards.

The kids had to put together a puzzle according to the picture...

...Solve a word search with each person missing one of the senses...

...And keep drinking pop until they found the one with the X in the bottom. They all had a lot of fun. It was pretty crowded in the small living room with 30 of us in total, but we're used to that from last year. We hope to be able to have an impact on these kids even though we have been forbidden by their director to talk about God. We know that God will work in spite of that and will do amazing things.

The last three weeks have been an emotional roller coaster with the apartment search. We have been so close to finding a few but each time something hasn't worked out. Right now we have a great prospect, one that is very nice and the price is right and everything seems to be in order, except that the owner lives in Italy and he didn't leave the legal papers with his brother-in-law who is in charge of the apartment. We would love to move in there but need to have some sort of contract with them, so we're trying to figure out how to do that. Please continue praying for this to be resolved. We know God will provide as he always has up to this point. It's just hard to put aside our worries and stresses after having such a hard time finding anything. We appreciate all of your support and prayers as we go through this, thanks!

Around The Blocks

2011-09-29T15:28:00.005-04:00

As we move closer to the start of our fall program we've been busy doing many different things. We put together proposals to send to the directors of the orphanages and we came up with new ideas for our classes. This year we will be spending the whole week working in our southern location which is where we've been seeing so much fruit in the young people's lives. This will be good for us because we'll be able to focus on and work with all the kids there instead of just a few like last year. It will also cut down on all the traveling to and from different places like we did last year.

Since we'll be spending most of the week there we spent much of this week looking for an apartment where we can stay. It turned out to be way harder than we thought to find something. After walking around for hours the first day and looking at the front doors of every single block building we saw, we hadn't found a single apartment for rent. The second day we finally found an announcement for a one bedroom apartment that sounded good, so we checked it out and it would be perfect for us. The problem was that the owner is in Spain and the person managing it was trying to take advantage of us because we're Americans so we must be rich! We had our Romanian director call him later and he made an offer so we are waiting to hear back if it accepted by the owner or not. Please pray for this, being the only apartment we found in three days of searching it is really important that we can rent it. We are trusting that God will provide and we would really appreciate your prayers for just that.

By the third day of searching everything started looking the same and we found ourselves going in circles and looking at the same places twice, it just took us a while to figure that out. The city isn't even that big but there are so many blocks that look nearly identical.

We found this fighter jet in one of the parks we walked through.

Another thing we did was hand out school kits to all the kids at the local orphanages, even ones we don't get to work with full time. The teachers were especially thankful for this help since supplies like crayons, notebooks, pens, and pencils are hard to come by for them.

Our partner Mariana handing off one of the kits, we gave one to every classroom.

Of course we were immediately greeted with lots of hugs and happiness from the girls we know from summer camps.

There were also some meetings with directors to go over our programs which leads to the next big prayer request. We had a problem with one of them over the summer because some of "his" kids were baptized, and he is still trying to keep us from talking about God at all. Please pray for God to lead us and give us wisdom in how to deal with this and how to be creative in how we share about him. Please pray for God to soften this man's heart so he lets us openly share about Jesus again. Please pray for the meetings with other directors that will happen soon and pray that we will have a great program that will lead these kids to Christ. Please pray for us and the rest of our staff and especially the two new couples here who will be starting language lessons soon.

Thanks so much for lifting us up in your prayers, we are so thankful that God honors the prayers of his children!

New Couples On Staff!

2011-09-20T08:51:00.004-04:00

This week has brought the much anticipated arrival of two new couples who have joined our staff. We are so excited to welcome them and have been helping prepare their new place to stay, which is with us. We are all staying at the house formerly known as the girls transition house, since we won't be having that program again this year.

We went to the orphanage yesterday to play with the kids. School has started again so they were all there, it was a much different experience than going there over the summer when so many were at home.

We were welcomed by a huge crowd of kids and had so many hugs and kisses we felt like celebrities. The kids really missed us over the summer as we were away at camps. Here are Rebecca and Haley hanging out with some of the kids.

And here is Steven, the one with the red hair, Haley's husband and one of my two new guys on staff. I hope you can understand how exciting it is to have two more guys after I've been the only one on staff for two years. Let's just say I'm really, really happy!

Here are Josh and Missy, the other new couple. We go way back with them to our long summer here in 2008. They were interns then and we got to work with them at camp.

God has truly answered our prayers by sending these great new couples here to work with us. We are looking forward to getting to know them better. God has provided for each of them as they raised their support and prepared to come here. He brought them both here at the same time which is really neat. They will be great editions to our staff. Please pray that God will bless their transition here and bless them especially as they start language lessons soon.

This week we will be also be finding out what our fall program will be like. We know already that we will be working more in our southern location which is where we feel there is a revival coming. Please pray that God will lead us in all of our planning and that he will bless us with another fruitful year. We have already put the word out that we are looking for an apartment there, please pray that God will provide just the right one.

Two Year Update

2011-09-07T07:34:00.001-04:00

Two years ago we arrived in Bucharest, Romania, starting a new chapter in our lives on the other side of the globe. God had called us to come here and minister to the abandoned children that we had met on two previous mission trips. For six months we studied the language and after that enjoyed being able to communicate directly with the kids. The rest of the first year we spent helping at the orphanages and baby hospital. It was a year of training and learning how to reach and show Christ's love to the kids we came here for.

This year we got to try our hand at being teachers with Mark teaching English and Rebecca teaching Science. We were also involved in story time, cooking classes and in several youth groups. We use these classes not only to enhance the kids' lives but also as a way to get into the orphanages by offering something valuable to them. Through these classes we have built relationships with many of the kids. Georgiana calls Rebecca “mommy” and told her recently as they were walking through the park that if someone saw them together they would think they're a family. Andrei calls Mark “daddy” and always runs and jumps in his arms and plasters on lots of kisses.

Some of our greatest joy has come from seeing many of the teens that we work with accept Christ and begin to grow in their faith. Last year at summer camp many of them made this decision and throughout the year we have worked with them and encouraged them. Four were baptized this summer and volunteered to help lead some of the lessons at this year's camps. Two of them now want to be pastors and are excited about sharing Christ with their peers. The camps this summer were also very fruitful with several more accepting Christ. God has truly been blessing this ministry and continues to show us his faithfulness.

These two years have been quite a challenge as well, adapting to the culture, working with emotionally challenged kids, and being far away from home, just to name a few. We have been stretched beyond what we ever thought we'd be doing with our lives, but we can feel God's sustaining hands holding us up. Through the fruitful relationships and changed lives we've experienced we can tell that our work here is not finished, but just getting started. That is why we've decided to continue working here for as long as God wants us to, and only he knows how long that will be. We know that we are in the right place and doing what God has called us to do with our lives.

Thank you so much for your prayers and support, our ministry is only possible because of your faithfulness! We have appreciated your encouragement through e-mails and Skype calls and we hope that we can continue to keep in touch. God sustains us through your prayers and has truly blessed us and our ministry through you. You are as much a part of this ministry as us because we couldn't do it without your help. We pray that we can continue to be partners in prayer and support as we go forward. We have many opportunities throughout the year for you to come and experience what we’re doing.

We will be coming home on November 14 and will be home for about a month. We will be speaking in all of our supporting churches and will post more details when we know them. We are looking to borrow a car for that month so if you or someone you know would be willing to lend one to us that would be a great help. Thanks again for everything and we look forward to continuing to share our experiences with you on our blog and in person. God be with you and bless you so you can continue to be a blessing to others.

Please continue to pray:

- For God to continue to lead us in his will and for us to know what that is.
- For God to be with us and our family and friends.
- For God to work in the lives of the kids we work with and for them to be open to accepting him.
- For God to watch over and protect the ones who are growing in relationship with him.
- For God to bar the evil one from hindering our work.
- For God to give us good health and safety especially while traveling.
- For God to guide us and our organization as the fall program is planned.
- For God to bless our supporters and churches so they can continue to bless us and others.

For a printable version of the update click here: Mark & Rebecca - Two Year Update

Keeping Busy

2011-09-04T09:22:00.003-04:00

Since our vacation we've been alone most of the time because most of the other staff is in America for a wedding. We've been keeping busy here taking care of the houses, plants, dogs, and by visiting all of our areas of ministry.

We went to the baby hospital together for the first time in a long time and as usual we really enjoyed the babies.

How could you not enjoy this?

They are so cute and just long to be picked up and played with.

I bet if you weren't smiling before you are now.

We also visited our orphanages and played with the kids there.

We hadn't seen some of them since before the summer so it was great to see them again.

We also stayed at our southern location a few days, made some apartment visits, and spent some time with Alexa who is still recovering from his broken hand.

We've also been able to get together with friends which is great because we're often too busy during the school year. These weeks have been a nice mix between resting time and continuing to work with our kids here. Please continue to pray for the planning of the fall schedule as there are many unknowns. Please pray that we will be able to have a vibrant ministry this year that builds on what we've been doing so far. Thanks so much for your prayers.

July - August Newsletter

2011-08-24T10:15:00.007-04:00

This summer was a busy one as usual. Right after our mountain backpacking trip we went straight into our July day camps. We had three groups of kids come over from ten to five for two days each. They were from three different orphanages, one where the kids go to regular school, one from a boys special needs school, and one from a girls special needs school.

Coming to camp is something that these kids look forward to the whole year, they started asking us about it early this spring already.

We did lots of fun things at camp like a scavenger hunt, hide and seek, crafts, story times and skits.

Since it was so hot we did lots of water games too which were always the most anticipated part of the day.

The second part of the month we had teen boys camps where they stayed with us two days and nights. We had boys come from all of the different orphanages that we work in.

We did lots of fun things at these camps too, like swimming and kayaking in the river. There was even a small waterfall that we could jump off and kayak over, this was one of the highlights for everyone.

We also did an obstacle course through the whole yard and a scavenger hunt through the whole village.

The most important part of the camps wasn't the games or activities that we did but the bible studies. We created a ten lesson series on accepting salvation through faith in Jesus and growing in a relationship with God. We talked about how to live out a new faith and how to be an example to the world.

We taught the boys the basics about becoming a Christ follower and talked about many of the hardships and stumbling blocks that normally keep them from accepting Christ.

Each night we had a campfire where we did our bible studies and had snacks like smores and popcorn. There were also testimonies and fun stories. The last night of camp one of the boys shared his testimony and we were all moved. Five of the boys accepted Christ right then and we praise God so much for this! God really answered our prayers that the boys would be touched by him. Only through him were these camps a success and we are so excited that he is using us to make a difference here.

After all the camps we went on vacation around Romania. We saw many of the well preserved medieval towns in Transylvania and enjoyed the hospitality of the local people we stayed with.

We went with our German intern Carolin and saw many of the fortified churches that were built by the Germans who settled here in the 1200's.

And we also toured the painted churches in the north which were also built very long ago. We had a great time seeing the beauty that this country has to offer. The rest of the month we have been going to the different orphanages and the baby hospital.

Thanks so much for your prayers for this summer ministry. It turned out to be greatly successful. Now the follow up work begins, with all of the kids who heard about salvation. Please continue to pray for those that accepted Christ that they would grow in their faith and that they would be protected from the evil one's attacks. Please pray for those who didn't accept Christ yet that they would continue to be touched by God and that they would come to him. Also please pray for one of the boys who fell and broke his hand, he has had surgery and it isn’t healing well. He is having a hard time with the situation. Please continue to keep us and our ministry in your prayers. Look out for our two year update very soon.

For a printable copy of this newsletter click here: July - August Newsletter

Rebecca's vacation thoughts

2011-08-19T08:55:00.003-04:00

For the past two weeks I have been on vacation in Romania, visiting cities all over. Romania truly is a beautiful country! If you know me at all, you know at times I can be very quiet. And at times I was very quiet on vacation. Silence for me can mean many different things...but sometimes it is the way I try to process all that is going on. Vacations are supposed to be fun, relaxing times where you leave all the stresses and worries of normal life behind. I found that I was bombarded by many different things, things that make you stop and evaluate your life, your purpose, your very existence while on vacation. It was the faces of the children begging in the train stations, the thoughts of what is their future, and wondering how cold your heart has to become to not be touched by them. It was thinking about the kids I love, "my kids," and wondering about if they will ever accept the greatest love possible...wondering what their futures will be like. I was thinking about a friend from back home who is battling cancer for the second time. This is the exact kind of thinking that brought us here full-time...when we were stuck in Amsterdam for two days in 2008 on our way home from summer camp here in Romania. And I had to ask myself again, am I really following after God with all my heart? Do I sacrifice all of myself, do I love with all that I am and more? Does my life bring glory and honor to God? It is only in God that my life has any value, purpose, only in him do I find the reasons to go on and to have hope. There are so many things in this life that no matter how much you think about them, you can't make them right...only by trusting that God is in control and is doing his perfect, pleasing, and good will, can you find any balance. In the faith that he is doing something good, bigger than we can imagine behind the scenes and moving through all the chaos of life and the consequence of this sinful world. In that faith I rest, I trust, and can move forward, full of hope for the complete restoration that is to come.

So in conclusion, vacation for me apparently means wrestling with the truth and getting my heart broken again for the things that break God's heart.

Who is ready to vacation with me?

Romania Tour Week 2

2011-08-18T06:04:00.006-04:00

Our last post left off with us being in Hunedoara, Romania on our tour of Romania. After we saw the big castle there we headed off to Timisoara. We got in really late at night and then spent the next two days there. Timisoara is in the very western end of the country.

Timisoara has a beautiful center square, and there are even a few other large squares in town. The sides were lined with cafes and restaurants. We enjoyed the best Mediterranean pizza there and also the best raspberry smoothies. The revolution of 1989 started there because the communists were trying to forcefully evict a Reformed pastor and the people protested. We went to a great museum where we learned the history of the revolution. We also went to the art museum and enjoyed looking in the various old buildings. We stayed next to a mall and we saw Cars 2 which we really enjoyed. Timisoara was a great because we had a nice mix of the old town history and the modern convenience of the mall nearby.

We then flew to Iasi, which is all the way on the eastern side of Romania. We saw this palace of culture but unfortunately couldn't go to any of the museums inside because it was being restored.

From Iasi we headed over to Suceava which was our base for seeing the world renowned painted monestaries of Bucovina. We started off our tour by seeing an old fortress.

The monasteries we saw on the first day were all very nice in their own ways. One was painted inside by Romania's best painter, another was very new so the paintings inside were really vibrant. They all were in beautiful settings.

I don't think I mentioned before that we were on this vacation with our German intern, Carolin. When we decided we wanted to tour around Romania she asked if she could come because she had the same idea. We had a great time together.

The second day of the tour we went to the painted monasteries, all of which are UNESCO world heritage sites. They were painted on the outside so that people who couldn't read would be able to understand important events of the Bible. They were built around 1400-1500 and the paintings have survived outside for that long. They are so beautiful and the pictures don't even come close to capturing it.

The Voronet monastery is called the Sistine Chapel of the east because of the vibrant colors and the uniqueness of the blue color used. This is a scene of the last judgement, in the middle on the top is God the Father, then under that is Jesus, and under that the Holy spirit, each performing their tasks.

More of the paintings. I would encourage you to click on the picture so it comes up in a full sized window so you can see the detail.

This is another similarly painted monastery.

All of the monasteries are surrounded by huge walls and defensive towers. This is typically where the monks and nuns live.

After seeing the monasteries we came back to Bucharest and showed Carolin some of the sights there. We had a really fun time on our vacation and are so thankful that God was with us and watched over us. It was a great opportunity to see the country we're working in and we were able to find so much beauty here.

We were also reminded about the immense needs in this country, seeing kids and older people begging just about everywhere we went. God didn't want us to forget why we're here, to help the people in the greatest need. We had several opportunities to share the gospel with people and to help them out. God broke our hearts again for a people that is hurting and largely without hope because they don't truly know their savior.

Romania Tour Week 1

2011-08-10T04:13:00.005-04:00

We have been touring around Romania for a week now already and have been really enjoying ourselves. After we helped pack up and organize everything after summer camps we took off on a train for Brasov. Brasov is in Transylvania in the Carpathian mountains. It is a medieval town with much of the walls in place and many of the buildings too.

This is the black church, a large cathedral that is the center of town. There is a nice square too where the city hall is.

Another large church in Brasov.

We enjoyed some great food there too, we had Mexican at Bella Musica, a restaurant with great atmosphere in a wine cellar. We found lots of other great food too at the cafes, with the highlights being a cappuccino croissant and a strawberry-rhubarb bar. Around Bucharest nobody has even heard of rhubarb so this was an exciting find!

We continued our tour of the medieval towns in Sighisoara, which has this great clock tower in the center. This is also the birthplace of Vlad Tepes, aka Vlad the impaler, the inspiration for the Dracula story.

The streets are lined with colorful houses like this, making it a very fun place to explore.

We also enjoyed great food here at the international cafe, the spinach quiche and blackberry apple pie were awesome. The cafe is run by the Veritas organization which works with people of all ages helping them better their lives. Our friend Jess worked with them here a few years ago.

We made a quick stop in Medias to see the church there.

Then we traveled by bus to Nemsa, which barely shows up on a map. We stayed at a really nice guesthouse where we talked over dinner with the owner about the history of the area. This area was settled by people from Germany in the 1200's and they built churches like the ones in our pictures in all the little towns. Many of them were fortified with large walls to keep out invaders. With all the recent wars involving Germany and then communism most of the Germans have left, especially after communism fell. The villages are so much different now, with the houses being lived in by Roma people now. Being there we could just feel the history and were witnesses to how quickly it can change.

We walked nearly an hour and a half with our backpacks through the mountains to arrive at Biertan, one of the best fortified churches. We asked some people if we could go up the hill through their garden to get a good picture. Then we caught a ride with a German couple back to Sighisoara because there was no public transportation at all.

We then went on to Sibiu, the European Cultural Capital of 2007. There is another huge cathedral there and we walked all the way up to the top of the bell/clock tower to see the city. We also went to an art museum but we didn't have much time because we were feeling sick earlier that day so we were resting.

We then went on to Hunedoara to see the spectacular Castle Corvinilor. This castle was built by one of the kings of Transylvania in the 14oo's and was added onto and modified by many others.

The dining hall was the neatest area, looking just like what you'd think of from a movie.

We're having a great time so far, and we have one more week to go. We are continuing to pray that God takes care of us and leads us to the right places, which he has done so far. This is our first vacation backpacking in Europe and also the first one where nothing is really planned out. So far everything has worked out just right though and we are having a lot of fun!

Boys Camps

2011-07-30T07:28:00.005-04:00

It is so hard to believe that I am saying this: summer camp is finished! These past five weeks have flown by and we worked with so many different kids. The last two weeks we had four boys camps where we stayed at our boys transition house and had lots of fun and learned about God. We used the same lessons as we had on our backpacking trip which were about how to accept God and let him change us how he wants. We talked a lot about having a personal relationship with God and how to accept his love and forgiveness.

We also played lots of games, soccer of course being a favorite.

These kids are really good, we were pretty happy to even touch the ball and get a few blocks.

Another big hit was the obstacle course, which we made go through the whole yard.

Going through the yarn spider webs was a challenging part of the course. One of the boys did the course ten times to try and win the coveted prize: a brand new soccer ball.

We took a walk to the forest and played some games like capture the flag there.

The village wide scavenger hunt was fun too.

One of the highlights though was going to the river, there was a small waterfall and it was really deep there.

We also went kayaking on the river.

Pool and ping pong were big hits too and we had some tournaments.

Campfire times were well liked by everyone and we had some really great conversations there.

We roasted marshmallows and shared testimonies, and even told some ghost stories.

Some of the boys played around with light writing, using a long shutter speed and writing with a flashlight.

We were so proud of our three boys who were recently baptized. Each of them prepared for and lead one of the devotional lessons at their camp. They also helped answer questions for the other boys about how they changed their lives and how they were growing in their faith. They are great examples to the rest of the boys and are excited about helping others and telling them about God.

At the last camp our discussions were great and the boys had lots of questions, but we were amazed at the miracle that God did at the end. The last night at the campfire we shared some personal stories and then one of the boys shared his. It was so touching that many of the boys were in tears. We asked if anyone wanted to receive Christ in their life and five out of the nine boys said yes! They prayed out-loud after me to accept Jesus as their Lord and Savior! God was really there and he answered our prayers by working in these boys lives. Many people have poured into them over the years and we were given the privilege of being there for the harvest. We are so thankful to God that he blessed all of these camps and used us to work for him. Thanks so much for your prayers and support, we couldn't have done this without being sustained by God's power through prayer. Praise be to him who holds everything in his hands!

Day Camps Week 2

2011-07-24T03:12:00.004-04:00

We had a second week of day camps and they went really well. We started off the week with the older girls from the special school. We ran the same program as we had before - about the five senses. The highlight of each day was the water games.

Duck Duck Goose is always the hit game, we could play for a long time.

Of course we had to have fun with water balloons.

We don't work with these girls throughout the year because we don't have enough staff, so they were very excited to be with us at camp. We worked with them at camp last year too so we knew them all already. These girls need lots of prayer because there is lots of darkness and poor conditions at their orphanage.

The zip line was a big hit too, they wouldn't even do anything else while they were waiting to go, even though we had a written list and we called them when it was their turn.

Next we had the boys from the special school, even though we worked there throughout the year we got to meet some new boys.

The boys were really excited to come to camp too. Some from my english class practiced what they remembered with us. They are a really special group and we love them a lot.

We did a parade with sound makers, look at that great line.

Of course we played water games and they were a hit again. Especially in this hot weather it was so fun!

It was so great to spend more time with the kids that we've gotten to know over the past year, our ministry of teaching classes has really paid off in relationships with these kids.

These camps were lots of fun and we continued to build up our relationships with these kids. Please pray for them, especially being in the special needs schools they don't have a very bright future ahead of them. They need God's help to understand his love and they need people in their lives to show them too. That's what we're here to do and we would like to encourage you to come too and share God's love with these kids. Especially in the summer time we need lots of help and you can come for 2 to 5 weeks to minister to these kids. Ask us about it if you're interested!

Day Camps Week 1

2011-07-10T03:20:00.004-04:00

Last week we started having our day camps for the kids that live in the south of Romania. We stayed at the boys transition house and the kids came over from ten to five to learn and have fun.
We did lessons using skits based on Bible stories that highlighted one of the five senses. Then we had craft time based on those senses. The kids enjoyed this time a lot but were always asking about what games we would be doing.

The weather is finally hot, really hot! We've had mid 90's most of the time, so the water games have been a big hit. We play balloon toss, duck duck goose with a wet sponge, and spray them with the hose.

We have been coloring and making bracelets and necklaces with beads too.

With the girls we played memory with big cards.

The zip line is always a big "hit" too, you can see below that there is a mattress there for the stop.

We know many of these girls from summer camp in 2008 and they still talk about that summer and how they remember us!

No camp of ours would be complete without a scavenger hunt with plastic cows, insects, frogs, snakes, and candy. Somehow the cows manage to find their way into the most interesting places.

Parker and I found some bags with really big balloons, so we tried them out with water to make the best water balloon ever. We have been breaking them off the balcony on the kids.

These camps have been a lot of fun and the kids have been having a blast. We are so thankful to have the chance to work with them, especially those that we don't work with during the year. Please continue to pray for our camps and for the kids to have fun and learn about God. Pray for energy for us as we are doing this 6 days a week and have a few more weeks left. Please pray especially for us next week as we start teenage boys camps.

May - June Newsletter

2011-07-04T06:51:00.001-04:00

Wow, May and June flew by at a breakneck pace, it is so hard to believe that it is July already! These two months were filled with many different teams coming and going. We have different teams working here almost every month, they help us do more with the kids and provide lots of help and encouragement to us. We really enjoy getting to know more people and especially seeing people again who are returning. Part of our ministry is helping these teams to work with the kids and share God's love with them, and also ministering to the team members through devotions and sharing our own personal stories.

At the beginning of May a team came from Scotland. Many of them were returners and we also met many new people. We worked with the boys in the transition program with them and also in some of the apartments of the younger kids.

We went to the symphony and out to eat with our American/Scottish staff in between teams.

We ran several carnivals and had music classes with the team from Biola University in California. The kids love music and trying out the instruments so this was a really fun time for them.

With a team from Reno, Nevada we read bible stories to the kids in their apartments, did crafts, and played games. We also had youth groups each night where we taught about how to apply for a job, write a resume, and how to be successful at an interview.

We were very proud and moved to see four of our young people get baptized in June. They have each come from hard roads but through their interaction with us and others before us they have come to faith in God. They are all on fire and are growing quickly. God has shown us the fruit of this ministry through things like this. One of the boys said that he has come to faith because of the summer camps that he went to with our organization. We continue to disciple them and they enjoy meeting people from each team that comes.

At the end of June we started our summer camps. We went backpacking in the mountains with 14 boys and 4 other volunteers from back home. It was a great time of discipleship and growth for the boys and we all enjoyed the beauty of God's creation.

Coming here on a team is something that we would like to encourage you to think and pray about. God uses people for many different things on these trips and he also uses the trips to have an impact on those that come. Also we are very encouraged when people we know come on these trips. If you are thinking of coming or have questions please let us know: weloveorphans@gmail.com . We would also love to see some groups come from our supporting churches as it would deepen our relationships and partnerships and it is a great way of serving God and furthering his kingdom.

Thanks so much for partnering with us in support and prayer. Here are some prayer requests:
-For God to work in the lives of the kids this summer at our summer camps.
-For the planning and logistics to work well for the camps.
-For the people who are coming here to help us out, we can't do camps without lots of help.
-For strength, wisdom, and energy for us on staff.
-For the planning of the fall programming.
-Praise God for all of our family, friends, and supporters and ask him to bless them.

For a printable PDF version of this newsletter click here: May-June Newsletter

Backpacking Trip

2011-07-02T03:31:00.005-04:00

Last week we kicked off our summer camps here in Romania! The much anticipated and sought after mountain backpacking trip was the first to start. Four guys came in from the states to help us with the fourteen young men we took with us. We had some problems again getting another translator so Rebecca got to come too. Having us as a married couple there was a really good thing because the boys don't get to experience good marriage relationships that often. Ghita, our part time staff member who works with the transition graduates came to for translation help.

We started off in Busteni, in the Carpathian Mountains. We took the telecabina up the mountain to save time and then embarked from the top.

There are many neat rock formations at the peak like this one that is called the sphynx.

We stopped at the cross to have lunch and our first devotional. The weather was beautiful and clear, I saw things that I didn't see last year because it was so foggy then. We talked about salvation and Brandon, one of the team members, gave out carved crosses that he and his girlfriend Sarah made. It was the perfect spot to share the gospel.

We walked down the mountain and stayed at the mountain rescue station again. They were very generous and let us use all of their facilities and even their cellar to store all of our food.

We went on day hikes and did activities from there. We had devotions after every meal and the boys usually had lots of questions and were very interactive. We had some great discussions.

We visited a big cave and explored around in there. We checked out some areas that were off the beaten path and saw some beautiful things.

There is a monastery inside the cave and the priest let us all in for free. It is called Pestera Ialomitei and is a great cave to explore.

We also hiked to some new areas this year. We checked out Valea Horoabei, a trail that runs along a river with constant waterfalls. It was so beautiful. At the top there was a canyon with areas that we had to climb straight up ropes or steel cables or up rock walls. It was a lot of fun and a new experience to climb up the canyon.

Does it get any better than a waterfall?

The second to last night a rain storm came up and the last day was rainy. The temperature dropped like a rock, we were staying in a valley and we could see it snowing on the peak. We still went out though and had some breaks from the rain where we could enjoy the scenery.

We explored another cave/mine and went all the way to the end this time. It was fun to explore and we found some quartz crystals. We turned our lanterns out and it was complete darkness. We used it as an illustration of the darkness that surrounds us in this world and how we can be lights.

We went to Lake Bolboci and some of the boys went swimming. We then went in search of another cave, basically straight up the mountain. The cave was closed off but we got a great view of the lake.

This trip was a great opportunity for us to pour into the lives of these boys. We used examples from our lives and gave testimonies to reinforce what we were saying about God and salvation. We also taught about how to live a faithful life and how to have a relationship with God. Our prayer is that these lessons will take root in the boys' lives and that they will let God work in their lives. Would you pray with us for this? Thank you for your prayer support for this trip and for these boys!

Reno Team

2011-07-01T05:46:00.005-04:00

The Reno team came right as school year was ending for the kids. So we were able to do different things with the kids. Every afternoon we had story and craft time with three apartments of younger kids. In the evening we had a time for the older kids focusing on preparing resumes and interview skills.

Having fun during craft time

Showing off their Spider Man drawing

We got to work with many kids that we don't normally get to work with because of their school times and because we usually only spend two days at this location.

We also had a party with all three of the youth groups. We met in the park and had a minute to win it final competition. Every week all the groups had been competing in these games in addition to our time of study.

All of the kids had a fun time and we enjoyed working with the Reno team.

Biola And Baptisms

2011-06-15T01:36:00.004-04:00

Last week we finished up our time with the Biola team. We really enjoyed ministering with them, and hearing their music was very uplifting. The brass pieces that they played reminded us of the "Horns of Power" that used to play at our church at home.

They put on a concert for the kids and everyone enjoyed it. Music is a universal language that everyone can appreciate.

We got to catch up with some of the kids that we don't see very often...

...and we all had lots of fun running around and playing.

Here we are with the entire team, we are looking forward to their return in the future.

We had the tremendous joy of witnessing four of our kids get baptized on Sunday. We have been seeing so much fruit this year and this baptism was a confirmation from God that He is moving here. We looked on as proud parents to these kids and are really looking forward to continuing to help them grow in their walks with God.

They each gave their testimony before they were baptized.

The service was very nice with lots of special music and it lasted around three hours.

Each one of these young people have made big changes in their lives and now have taken a big step, especially special because they are in a place that views repentance as a bad thing. In this culture "repenters" are really looked down on because they have turned away from the "true faith" of Orthodoxy. Apparently Acts 2:38 is ignored here, it says: Peter replied, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. " Repentance means to turn away from your sins and follow God so it is hard to understand why it is viewed so negatively. Thankfully God has given them the desire to grow in their relationships with him dispite any resistance they may face.

These young people need lots of prayer, would you join us in praying for them? There were some problems when their director found out about their baptisms, he didn't want to let them go. He then barred them and all the other kids under his control from seeing us. We prayed a lot about this and God worked in amazing ways, finally changing his heart completely this week to the point where he is excited to have us working with his kids. Only God could do that! Please continue to pray for a good relationship with him and that God will use us and these kids to make a huge difference here for God's kingdom.

Our friends Cristi and Amy came to the baptism too, it was nice to see them since we have been away from Church for a while being with teams.

God has been working mightily lately. Both couples that are working on coming here full time have set their arrival dates for around the beginning of September. We are so excited. Please pray that our fall schedule will work out so that we will have time to spend with them. Please continue to pray for our summer camps which start next week! Pray for strength for us and the other staff and the people coming for shorter trips. Pray that the kids will be open and that lives will be touched for Jesus. Thanks so much for your partnership in prayer and support!

Biola Team

2011-06-09T05:20:00.003-04:00

This past week we have been working with a team of college students from Biola University in California. It is a music school and they are all in the band. We had part of the team come and stay with us in our apartment and work with us in Rosiori.

The canola fields are really beautiful. Soon the sunflowers will bloom which will be a pleasure.

We started off by having some carnivals for the kids, we had different stations including bean bag toss, bowling, face painting, musical chairs, balloon pop, bobbing for apples and wet sponge throwing at someones face.

The kids of course had a fun time, we enjoyed hearing their laughter.

We also had a party for the youth, with competitive games for each group that we formed. It was a great time and many young people came, even more than those who normally come to our youth group. It was a good way to connect with more people who we normally don't get to work with.

The rest of the week we had music classes for the kids which they absolutely loved. We also did crafts as part of these classes.

The kids wanted to try out every instrument, especially the percussion!

We had some other classes too, the cooking class decorated cupcakes. In our English classes we played Bingo.

We are having a great time working with the Biola team. Even though we were living together in very close quarters we had a lot of fun. We went on walks in the evening, ate ice cream and Saorma together, and watched UHF, Weird Al's movie. We laughed together a lot but most importantly we had a great time working with the kids together. We had lots of significant times with the older kids. We are really excited because four of them are getting baptized this Sunday, please pray for them, for strength and for God to use them to impact the people around them. Please continue to pray for God to use our ministry to have an impact on the kids here.

'A Trip to the Symphony,' or 'The Garden is Growing'

2011-05-28T06:58:00.008-04:00

Last weekend we were in between teams so we took some time to have fun and relax a little. We went to a symphony orchestra concert in Bucharest. They played some great music from a Romanian composer and also some Beethoven, it was very fun.

This outing was also one last thing we could do with our intern Dori who left later in the week. A new intern from Germany, Carolyn had just arrived earlier that week. After the concert we went out to eat at a place called Chocolate, how can you go wrong with a name like that? It was delicious, we had a smoked salmon sandwich and for dessert tiramisu and chocolate mousse.

We also had one last tea party with Dori, she made some wonderful basil-feta scones.

Later that night we went out to eat at a Lebanese restaurant, courtesy of the Canadian team's generosity. We enjoyed a wide spread of different things, similar to tapas style. We don't go out to eat much so this was a special weekend for us.

Our garden is really taking off too. This is a tomato plant, we have 18 in all.

This is a green pepper plant, there are 18 of them too.

These are cucumber plants, we have a few rows of them.

We have lots of beans too. The only thing that isn't fun about gardening is weeding, I could really do without that!

The transition house boys have come up and are staying with us again, this time they are insulating the house. Most Romanian homes are constructed with concrete and bricks with no insulation whatsoever, so they are very expensive to heat in the winter. This insulation should cut down on the heating bills considerably.

Everything is blooming here, and we do love flowers.

Things are going very well with the kids too. They are getting summer fever, asking us every time we see them about camp and what we'll be doing. Speaking of that, we will be having many different camps this summer. I will lead a backpacking trip in the mountains again. I am working on the scheduling, food, and devotions with Rebecca's help. I will also be leading four other boys camps that will be based on the backpacking trip. Rebecca will go to one girls camp while I am in the mountains and then after that she will help me with the boys camps. That is nice because we'll be together more. We'll also have a couple weeks of day camps for the younger kids who aren't coming to the other camps.

It is going to be an exciting summer. Please pray for the summer ministry and for the kids to be open to accepting Christ. Please also pray for us as we enter a very busy time starting this week. We need to rely on God for strength and wisdom and guidance, and we ask you to pray for us. Please also pray for the rest of the staff and all the other people who are coming to help us, for safe travels and a blessed time. Thanks for partnering with us in prayer, it means a lot and we know that God will honor our requests!

Great Scott!

2011-05-18T04:06:00.007-04:00

May has been going by fast already. It has rained quite a bit but we've had nice days here and there that are giving us glimpses of summer. The garden has been planted and things are growing, and the grass is growing out of control. Some of our Canadian team stayed an extra week to have a photo class with some of the kids, and they left just before an important day.

I celebrated my 30th birthday! The staff made me Indian food and we had a small party. I received a very nice wok, a camera lens pen, the new Rebecca St. James CD, and some chocolates. It was a fun day.

The next day Dori and Rebecca threw me a tea party, with bruschetta, death by chocolate scones, chocolate bread and tomato walnut salad with raspberry balsamic vinaigrette dressing. Very yummy.

Quite a spread of great food.

On my birthday another treat was that a team came from Scotland. We knew Wanda, Maggie, and Leslie already and we got to meet many new people who are great fun. We quickly made new friends. Here are Douglas and Elaine, a couple that is newly engaged, congrats! We enjoyed having them here a lot because we don't usually have another couple to hang out with. Even though this team was only here a short time we got to do a lot with them.

We went to the boys transition house for part of the day.

We went to visit the little ones apartment for English class, and Georgiana came out to greet us. She is always at Rebecca's side or on her lap and when we leave tells us that we can't, or that Rebecca has to stay and she can sleep in her bed. Their bond is very strong, lots of love!

Mitica is my buddy, his face always lights up when we come and he runs up to give big hugs.

We went to the boys school to do some wee crafts with our Scottish friends, they enjoyed meeting the kids and helping color.

The boys in the English classes received prize bags for being in class and behaving for five weeks.

Another notable moment in these weeks was that I preached a sermon at the church in Rosiori - in Romanian! I was pretty nervous and I didn't have a whole lot of time to prepare, but God gave me the words to say. I talked about how to discern God's will and used our journey to Romania as an example. It was actually pretty fun and the Pastor told me I should do it again sometime.

God has also been answering prayers in a big way lately. H2H's problem with the IRS has finally been resolved and they were totally cleared. Our friends Josh and Missy who are raising support to come here full time got accepted for monthly support from their church and are now much closer to coming. We are getting better health wise. We are so thankful to God for his providence! Please continue to pray for what I've mentioned before and these requests:

-For us to find a room in our southern town to have our youth group and for guidance on how to attract non-christian youth and how to partner with local churches for help.
-For the summer plans, finances, logistics, materials, and people coming.
-For us to be healthy throughout the whole summer.
-For God to open the hearts of the kids so that they will come to faith in Him, and for a very fruitful summer.
Thanks for your prayers and support!

March - April Newsletter

2011-05-08T16:10:00.001-04:00

March and April were fun months, and we did lots of special things with special people. There were many special highlights that will stay in our memories.

Rebecca had two weekends with girls sleeping over at the apartment. They had a lot of fun and talked about lots of important things.

These teen girls are facing lots of changes in their lives and are at a very impressionable stage. Pouring into their lives with values based on the Bible is so important in a world that is telling them to live for themselves and to go with the flow.

While Rebecca was with the girls I stayed with the boys at the transition house, which was really fun. These boys need lots of instruction to especially in spiritual matters and it was great to build deeper relationships with them.

The boys stayed with us for a week too which was a lot of fun. They were a little spoiled eating American food and having lots to do in the village though, they didn't want to leave! It was the week before Easter and the last night we watched the Passion of the Christ, a very moving movie. To think that Jesus went through all that for us! That is why we love him and we teach those we love about him too, so they can be saved as well.

We had many great teams with us in these months too. The mission possible team from Michigan came and we enjoyed spending time with them, since last year when they came we were so busy with our language lessons. Speaking of that, we had our one year anniversary of completing language lessons!

The Canadian team came too and we had lots of fun with the boys and girls days that they planned. We got to spend time with our friends Dan and Luella, it is always encouraging to us to have people that care about us come and work with us.

The Canadian guys helped finish our fence project at our place, the boys did a great job working on this project and felt proud of their work. The ladies made cookies and snacks for kids at the orphanage while we were working on the fence.

We also had a great intern Bekah and some great ladies Judi and Charlotte working with us, we had really good times working with them!

I gave the Nenciulesti tour to the teams that came and got to know more people in the village, especially deepening my relationship with Catarina. She always makes people feel welcome with her warm smile and hugs and words. She is such a blessing and it is neat that God is using us to be a blessing to her. Nenciulesti is a small village and is almost always an eye opener for people because the way of living seems unchanged by time. The people there are also very friendly, it is always a pleasure walking around there because people are so eager to talk.

Of course the kids are always a highlight, they are what we're here for!

These kids are happy to show off their new prize bags which they got as a reward for being in class and behaving five weeks in a row. The cool thing is that the bags were made by kids at our church, Fair Haven Ministries. It is neat to hear the kids reactions when they hear that they were made by American kids the same age.

The cards say "Jesus Loves All the Children of the World" in English and Romanian.

As always we thank you for your prayers and support! It is very encouraging to us to know that so many people care about us and what we're doing and that we are prayed for so much. Here are some specific requests for you to keep in prayer in the coming months.

-For health, we and most of our staff have been sick for the past month so we would love to be healthy as we enter our busy team time.
-For our kids, that they would remain open to God's love and to accepting Jesus
-For us and our family and friends as we are far away
-For our supporters and churches that they would be blessed to be a blessing
-For wisdom and guidance for planning the summer ministries

New! Download the PDF version that can be printed out here: Mar-Apr News 2011

Special Times

2011-04-28T09:58:00.006-04:00

For the whole last week we had the boys from the transition program staying with so that Doru, the leader of the program, could have a little time off. We had a great time with them and they had a great time here with us. We worked a lot in the yard and on the garden to get it ready for planting soon. I also had them work on a big project for us.

In the weeks prior I had designed a fence for the garden and had them prep the materials at the transition house workshop. We have wanted a fence for a long time to keep the dogs out and to protect the plants from stray soccer balls in the summer.

We dug the holes and mounted the steel posts first, measuring as we went and filling the holes with cement. This was a hard days work which resulted in a very sunburned neck for me.

The next day we mounted the boards, which was much easier work.

Dan and Norbert from the Canadian team came to help and we finished up quickly.

We then had a ribbon cutting ceremony with the whole team, the project was a huge success! I am very happy with how the fence turned out and the boys are very proud of their work. For them seeing this kind of accomplishment means a lot.

We also went to the orphanages and played Easter games. We took the opportunity to tell the true reason for Easter.

We had a big celebration with the transition house graduates and the current boys. Aurel found the special golden egg which countless other people had come so close to. There was a cash prize for finding it so I had hidden it really well.

Here we are with the entire Canadian team and many of our staff.

Rebecca and Bekah, one of our interns.

Us with our boys and Dori, our other intern.

Lastly, when I went to take the boys home some of the Canadian team came with so they could see the villiage where the boys live. We went on a walk and naturally stopped in to see our friend Catarina (middle). She invited us in and gave us each a dyed red egg. Tradition holds that when the burial cloth of Jesus was taken from the tomb it was put in a basket that had eggs in it and the blood from the cloth turned the eggs red. Then we hit our eggs together saying Isus a inviat - Adevarat a inviat. This is an easter tradition where the person who wins collects the egg that cracked and the one with the most eggs at the end wins. It is always fun to take part in the celebrations of another culture, and the people in this village are always friendly and eager to share.

Catarina is always so welcoming and told me that I don't need to address her in the formal tense anymore because we are very good friends. She said that we are her best friends. It is so neat to be able to build this kind of relationship with the people around us. It opens up doors for ministry to a whole different group of people than the kids we normally work with. Especially in Catarina's case I think again of James 1:27, which calls true religion caring for orphans and widows. By how excited and happy she is every time we visit I can see how she longs for meaningful relationships, just like our kids. God has called us here for this very purpose.

Please continue praying for strength and wisdom especially as the summer approaches. Also please pray for health, Rebecca has a bad cold and I have had a milder one on and off for the last couple weeks. Now we think we have caught a stomach bug. Please pray for energy and against the attacks of the evil one. Thanks so much!

Canadians And Boys

2011-04-21T15:11:00.007-04:00

This week we have had a great time working with the Canadian team! Last year some of them helped paint the team house and they are back again for a full program, this time the week before Easter. The timing is perfect because we have more time to work with them this week since the kids are on vacation. It is a real pleasure to work with them again and we are having lots of fun!

Sunday we had a boys day with our transition house graduates where we started off playing volleyball at Tineretului Park in Bucharest.

Then we played some soccer and went to the team house for dinner and some talks about jobs and how to be a good worker.

The next morning we went to our normal down south place and worked with some of the kids there, teaching special lessons about Easter. Most people in Romania celebrate Easter because it is a Orthodox holiday but most of them don't know what it is about at all. I asked one of my students why we celebrate and his answer was "because that's what people do."

We played fun Easter games with eggs but the focus was on Jesus - just like Christmas, Jesus is also the reason why we celebrate Easter. We celebrate because he took our sins on himself when he was crucified so that we can be saved. He was raised from the dead so that he could conquer death and give us the gift of salvation. What better reason to celebrate?

When we came back to Bucharest we took the boys who are in the transition program with us, and they are staying with us the whole week. We have a special project that they are working on which I'll talk about more in another post. They are great, we love spending time with them and pouring into their lives. They need lots of guidance and support, would you pray for them?

We took a day trip to Sinaia where the beautiful Peles Castle is and had great weather. It is always a treat to go to the mountains.

These are our friends Dan and Luella who we got to know last year.

The boys in our program, they enjoyed the day and were glad to get home and eat some homemade pizza.

Everything is blooming here and we are really enjoying the colors and beauty all around us.

Does anyone know what this is? I don't have a clue but there were lots of them growing in the woods on the mountain and they were pretty interesting.

Wishing everyone a happy Easter from Romania. Isus a inviat - adevarat a inviat! (Jesus is risen - He is risen indeed!)

Spring Thankfulness

2011-04-13T09:53:00.003-04:00

Spring has come here in Romania. Trees are budding, flowers are blooming, and the grass is green. I love spring, the renewal and the warmth that comes after winter. The new life is exciting, and full of hope. This is also how I feel about so many of our kids here. They are beginning to blossom! The beauty around me reminds me of all I have to be thankful for.

I am thankful for the kids who really think about what we say. The ones who are ready to start applying what they have learned to their lives. Kids that are excited to go to church, to read their Bible, to talk with us; they are like a breath of fresh air!

I am thankful for friendships here, old and new. We had a chance to hang out with Miriam one afternoon, we met her at summer camp 2008. The support of friends, close by and far apart, is very encouraging for us. Your prayers give us the strength to do God's work here.

I am thankful for fun times with the kids. Here Bekah, our intern, is riding one of the bikes at the Boy's Transition House. When you know the kids well enough to truly enjoying playing with them is very special. It gives you the energy to go through harder times with them.

I am thankful that this in not my work, but it is God's. He is the one who changes hearts, gives new life, and does more than we can imagine. I am thankful that every child I work with he cares about them deeply and loves them even more than I do. And I am thankful that I can leave them in his hands, for he is faithful and will complete the good work he has started. It is such a privilege that God has chosen us to do his work here!

Relationships Matter

2011-04-06T04:44:00.007-04:00

In our working with abandoned kids here in Romania there is one underlying theme to what we do. Everything that we do is aimed at building relationships with the kids. We gain their trust by being there for them when they need us, by showing them a love like they've not seen before, and by pouring ourselves into them. The longer we do this the more they become attached to us.

Just by going to our classes with the kids we are able to build up our relationships. We show them that we are there for them and that we care enough about them that we left all that we had to help them. What we teach isn't nearly as important as just being there for them. It seems like it is working.

The kids always enjoy doing something new, and looking through a microscope at things they've never seen before is really exciting.

We use fun activities like this to get them interested in the subject and to teach them things that they probably wouldn't learn at school. The great thing is that by helping them we can get to know them better, it is a win-win.

Over the weekend the girls had another sleepover to teach the girls about relationships, abstinence, and STD's. Imagine what spending a whole day and night can do for relationship building. These girls can have good role models in us that they don't have anywhere else.

In the time of the girls sleepover I stayed with the boys in our transition program. We had a great time talking, watching movies, and playing games. Staying with them for a whole weekend sure does boost relationships. I can begin to see the personalities, likes and dislikes, and other things about them. I can then minister to them better because I know them personally.

Building relationships doesn't only apply to our kids. Over the summer we got to know a woman in the village, a widow of 24 years named Catarina (on right). The last time I visited her she told me about her eldest sister who is 90 years old. This time we visited her and found her other two sisters and one of their two daughters. It was a really fun visit, though it was challenging to focus on understanding what they said when there were usually multiple conversations going on at once. I had my laptop computer with me so I showed them pictures of us, which was a real treat for them. They asked me lots of questions about America, how it is different from Romania.

They couldn't believe that most people don't have their own chickens and other animals, instead they go to the store to buy everything. Houses being built out of wood and covered with plastic siding sounded really weird to them because in Romania houses are build with cement and bricks.

They also noted that I was not Orthodox but a Baptist, which is what pretty much everyone who isn't Orthodox is called. I said that though the traditions are very different the heart of my belief is the same as theirs, that we are saved by faith in Jesus Christ through God's grace. They agreed and we had a nice conversation about God. Their faith was evident and was an encouragement to me that there are many faithful people here, even if they are the minority (which we can also say about our country).

That's what our relationships are really all about, to point people to Christ. The kids we work with and the people we know are precious to us and we long for them to know Jesus as their savior. We are so thankful for our call to do this in Romania. If you know Jesus as your savior then you are called to do the same thing, whether it is at home or abroad. We aren't super special people, we're just normal people following God's will for our lives. You can do the same!

Stories

2011-03-30T14:20:00.002-04:00

One thing we do every week is have a story and craft time with some 1st and 2nd graders. They have so much energy, but they really enjoy being read to. What do we read them? A Bible story or another story with Christian morals. It is a great opportunity for them to learn more about the best true story of all.

I am always thrilled when they remember the details of a Bible story from a prior time they have heard it.

Modern version of the good Samaritan- run over by a car, got to love the kids imagination (or realization of the driving here :)

One of our goals is to help rewrite these kid's stories. From a story of that is lacking in love to one that is full of the only true love. From a story that seems like there is little hope for the future, to a bright shinning future full with the knowledge of the source of hope.

Every day our lives are writing another page of a greater story. What is your story saying?

Our Weekend

2011-03-23T08:26:00.005-04:00

This past weekend we both had the opportunity to go beyond our normal ministry. Mark spent time at the Boys Transition House because we had a sleepover with some of the girls. Nine girls spent the night at our apartment. We used this time to talk about relationships, STD's and abstinence, and to grow closer with the girls. Several of the girls shared their stories of how the came to be in the orphanage, and how much better it is than their previous home life.

The welcome sign (bine ati venit = welcome)

The girls

Painting nails

Hanging out with Bekah, our intern

Mark spent the weekend with the boys at BTH, hanging out, watching them work and just spending the quality time with them that they crave.

Welding

House construction

Helping a neighbor

We both enjoyed our weekend, which is good because we will be doing this again in over a week. Continue to pray for these kids, to make wise choices, but most of all to make the decision that will change their life forever, to know Jesus Christ as their personal savior!

Mission Possible

2011-03-16T07:38:00.003-04:00

Last week we had the Mission Possible team here from west Michigan. We enjoyed working with them even though they were only here a short time.

We played bingo with kids in an English class, the cards were written in Romanian were called out in English. The kids had to help their team member with their cards too since they didn't know Romanian.

We had a play day at one orphanage on Saturday, the weather was great and the kids were excited.

We played games, ran around, and talked with the kids for a few hours.

The Mission Possible team comes to Romania with Heart 2 Heart every year. Interestingly we might not even be here now if it weren't for them. A group from our church went with them in 2005 and then in 2007 those same people took another group from our church which we were a part of. Through that God called us to work here full time. It is amazing to see how He works through all things to accomplish His will.

Celebration time in March

2011-03-09T06:23:00.007-05:00

This past week we had some extra hands with us at times. We have a new intern and it is the beginning of team time! We also celebrated the beginning of spring (March 1st) and Women's/Mother's Day (March 8).

One of the youth groups

Using a microscope for the 1st time!

We spent some extra time with the team at one of the orphanages, here Mark is with some of the newer boys there

Playing games

The boys from the transition house, under Sanda's supervision, cooked a meal for the team. They were very excited to have extra visitors!

Georgiana and Cristina, two of the sisters from one of the english classes

One Tuesday (the 8th) we went to the boy's school celebration. Here one class is telling a story about mothers.

Reciting poems

Mitica

Gabi- It is always funny to see the boys dressed up as females, but that is what happens when most classes are all boys!

We have enjoyed our time with the team so far and look forward to spending more time with them this week. We actually know most of them from before, and have visited some of them when we were home (they are from Jenison area).

January - February Update

2011-03-01T03:08:00.007-05:00

January and February were completely different months spent in completely different countries. In January we were home celebrating Christmas and visiting our family and friends. We had a wonderful time and really enjoyed spending the holidays with them.

We enjoyed catching up with everyone, spending as much time with them as we could in our short time home. It is great being able to Skype while we're in Romania but seeing our family in person was just great. Nothing can replace the genuine quality time spent together.

We spent lots of time with friends, often seeing someone for lunch and dinner. We ate out at our favorite restaurants and many people cooked us wonderful meals. Even though we were busy we felt recharged from this time and it was great to see so many of our closest friends and family.

At the end of January we returned to Romania and hit the ground running. We quickly got back into the swing of things, again working in our normal locations and being reunited with our kids. They were very excited to see us again, they missed us a lot. While we were gone they asked the other staff often where we were and when we were coming back. We got lots of kisses and hugs and were able to feel the love of these kids who are so eager to have someone who loves them in their lives. We realize what a privilege it is that God has placed us here to be those people to them.

Many great things happened in February, our youth group at one location grew to 34 teens, many of whom are making decisions to follow Christ, with a few even wanting to be baptized. This is also something to pray about, as this group meets in our small apartment which is extremely crowded with that many people. Please pray that God would provide a place that we can have this group and possibly even be able to do more things with these youth.

Please also continue to pray for:
-Health, wisdom, energy and safety for us and the rest of our staff.
-Continued direction for our english and science classes.
-For the kids that we work with that they would be open to us and to Christ.
-For God to provide people to come this summer to help us run summer camps.
-For safety and providence for those traveling here on short term trips in the next months.
-For generous support for our organization, H2H, as funding is very lean right now.
-For us as a couple to have time for eachother in the midst of the business.

Thanks so much for your support and prayers. We are constantly reminded of the great people back home who are praying us through this challenging but rewarding ministry. Know that you are a big part of what is happening here - God's kingdom is moving forward!

What's It All About Anyway?

2011-02-22T05:22:00.004-05:00

Here in Romania we lead very busy lives, we travel around working in three different locations with around one hundred different kids. Rebecca teaches science classes and I teach english classes to kids at all levels, from first grade to post high school. It can be stressful at times and it is easy to get caught up in all the business, planning, and logistics. So why are we here? What is our goal in working with these kids?

Part of the goal is to enrich the lives of kids who don't have much of a chance of succeeding in life. They aren't given the tools or training to do well and they already have a stigma of being abandoned. English classes are one way we can help, teaching them how to communicate in a language that has become the business language of the world.

Teaching science helps the kids to have an interest in their surroundings and gets them excited about learning. Schools don't do experiments here so they are always so excited about what Rebecca shows them.

They also love doing crafts. It is good to help them to learn that they can accomplish something by themselves. They learn to take pride in their work.

All this is good but there is something more to what we're doing. Even though it is important, if we just focus on what we're accomplishing in our classes we're missing the point.

We are here to pour love into these kids' lives and to build relationships with them. Only through that can we give them something that will truly change and shape their lives - the love of Jesus Christ. He said in Matthew 19:14 "Let the children come to me. Don't stop them! For the kingdom of Heaven belongs to such as these."

When we love these kids, which we do as our own children, we are building relationships with them that will point them toward their savior. And what a rewarding "work" this is! To hold these kids in our arms is such a wonderful feeling, knowing that they love us and have put their trust in us which isn't an easy thing to do for an abandoned child.

We have the privilege of discipling some of the older kids, our youth groups are continuing to thrive, Monday night we had 34 in our small apartment in RDV! In recent weeks some have decided to be baptized which is so exciting. Others have accepted Christ recently, praise God! This is what it's all about, loving these kids and leading them to the Lord. Thanks for your continued prayers, God has been encouraging us here very much lately. Please continue to pray for these kids and our ministry, also for strength, health, and wisdom for us and the rest of our staff. Thanks for being our partner in Christ!

Love

2011-02-14T07:19:00.004-05:00

Since today is Valentine's Day, I figured I should talk about love. If you haven't noticed yet, Mark and I love our job and the kids we work with. It is such a privilege to do God's work here, to be his hands and feet. God is constantly growing our love for him and his children.

Here two of our transition boys are washing our van, a task they gladly completed.

"Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in the truth." 1 John 3:18

This is a picture from youth group. It is so great that this year we are able to talk freely about God's love! It is such a great opportunity for the kids to have fun, learn about themselves, and most importantly learn about their heavenly father who loves them.

"And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love." 1 Corinthians 13:13

This is Cristi, and he really liked our former interns, Krysten, she reminded him of his sister. He wrote her a note telling her he missed her, and that he wants her to come back to Romania. How great it is to be able to have relationships with these kids!

"The goal of this command is love, which comes from a pure heart, and a good conscience and a sincere faith." 1 Timothy 1:5

This is one of the cooking classes, they love cooking/baking, and especially the eating part :)

"Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins." 1 Peter 4:8

We have had so many beautiful sunny days lately, truly a gift from God! I have learned to love deeper than I thought possible, our kids teach us so much. We are truly blessed to love them, and be loved by them.

"This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers." 1 John 3:16

Back In Romania

2011-02-06T04:08:00.003-05:00

After our Christmas vacation in the states we made it back to Romania without any problems and have been trying to get back into the swing of things ever since. While we were gone the kids asked the other staff quite often where we were and when we were coming back. They missed us a lot and we missed them too, so it has been great seeing them again.

There have been some beautiful mornings where hoar frost covered everything.

More hoar frost; it happens when it is really cold and foggy so ice crystals form on everything.

The boys at the transition house were really excited to see us, we had a great time with them. We caught up on what we did and what they did and we got back into our english and science lessons. Tuesday we celebrated Cezar's birthday with a cake and some picture taking time.

Our friend Tom came with us and we had a great time not only with the boys at the transition program but also with those at our youth group in Rosiori.

Tom and Mark took a walk with Cezar while the other boys were making his birthday cake. We stopped by one of our friends in the village, Catarina. She has a nice size house but can only afford to heat this one room. I couldn't stand up straight and forgot about that once and hit my head. Catarina, even though very poor, still offered us some home made bread and was so overjoyed that we came to visit. I'll have to go back soon to give her this picture because she loves getting pictures of us to display in her house.

We had lots of fun in our youth groups, the opening game was to find a 5 lei bill that was hidden in the room somewhere. We then talked about being lost and read the parables of the lost sheep, coin, and son. At one of our locations while we talked about this one of the girls asked how to accept Jesus, so at the end of the time we prayed together as a group, and nearly all of the young adults their prayed along! Praise God for this and please pray for these kids that they realize what this means for them and they start to grow as children of God.

Mariana used an electronic game to teach the alphabet to the young kids.

Their reward for being good was some play time on their toys.

The kids always enjoy coloring so we include it in our activities as much as we can.

We ended the week with a surprise birthday party for Jenny. It was a 70's themed party and we played twister and listened to 70's music.

Dori trying out the chocolate fountain.

God continues to confirm to us that this is where He wants us. The kids love us so much and we love them back and our relationships are producing fruit already. It is so encouraging to know that God is with us and is using us. Please continue to pray for strength and wisdom as we minister here and continue to pray for all those we are ministering to.

Fun Times At Home

2011-01-28T10:18:00.005-05:00

We finished our time home this week, a whole month has gone by and now that it's over it seems like it went fast. That always seems to be the case with vacations, but at least this time while we were in it we didn't feel rushed or overwhelmed, we enjoyed it very much. We got to see most of our family and friends, sometimes having two or three different get-togethers in a day. Our last week we spent lots of time with our friends who we hung out the most with at home, the Jasperse and beyond clan.

I went ice fishing with Scott, Jonah, and Kevin, it was one of the colder days of our time at home and we weren't terribly successful at catching anything. It was at least fun to hang out despite our freezing toes, fingers, and noses.

We celebrated our last Christmas of the season and Precious enjoyed getting her Sesame Street song book.

Sam and Lexi were excited about their two dollar bills from grandma and grandpa.

Sam and I continue to be best friends, he likes to wrestle and play the racing game on the computer.

Lexi calls Rebecca "my Becka" and still loves to run into her arms.

We had a big brunch before us guys went fishing and the girls played games.

Jonah shows off his new toy.

Jess and Precious show off their new aprons.

Kayleen and her brother Kevin showing their new gifts.

Christine and Scott A try to look normal to make up for Scott J acting like himself.

We had so much fun seeing our friends and playing with our kids, we'll miss them but thankfully there's skype to help us not miss out on everything that's going on.

I couldn't resist putting this picture up of Lexi in her new princess outfit.

Thank you everyone for helping us have such a great time home. We love you all and we will look forward to seeing you again when we come back on our next one year visit this fall.

More Christmas At Home

2011-01-17T09:03:00.002-05:00

We had our third Christmas celebration with Mark's mom. We spent the weekend at her place and played games, watched movies and relaxed.

Mom E and Herb

Sandi and Jay

Kevin

We also shared about our mission in Romania at church and asked people to join us there this summer. We had more interest than we expected and some people are already filling out applications with H2H! Praise God!

We also spent a few days in Canada visiting Oma (Grandma) who is 102 years old! Her mind is very sharp and we enjoyed visiting with her, although she currently has bronchitis. We are very thankful to get to visit with her again and share what we do in Romania with her.

Oma looking at our pictures

Us with Oma

My mom, Oma and Me

We have been enjoying our time home with friends and family. But we also have been thinking about the kids we love so much in Romania, we can't wait to see them again!

Christmas At Home

2011-01-07T09:44:00.005-05:00

It's good to be home to spend time with our family and friends. God provided for us to make it home in time for Christmas even with flying through the messy situation at Heathrow Airport in London. We went to church on Christmas eve, Christmas day, and Sunday, and enjoyed each unique service.

Our first Christmas celebration was with Rebecca's family.

The second Christmas celebration was with Mark's family.

We still have a couple more Christmas celebrations coming up, since we've done only one each weekend so far. Spending a whole weekend with each part of our family has given us lots of time to spend together. It has been very fun and it is so great to spend time in person.

Our weekdays have been spent visiting friends, most days we see someone for lunch and someone else for dinner. This has kept us really busy but it's great fun seeing everyone again. We are so thankful that we have a longer time at home so we can see so many of our friends.

Here we are with our friend Amanda who has been to Romania twice already. You can see Grand Rapids far off in the background.

We've been able to see our favorite little kids quite a bit too which is a big blessing. They are growing fast but thanks to Skype they still remember us very well. We love playing with them!

We've been able to make it to many great restaurants and are thankful for so many of our friends' generosity. Our number one requirement was to go to San Chez Tapas Bistro, our favorite restaurant. Tapas are small Spanish dishes that are shared by everyone at the table. This allows you to taste many different foods that are all extraordinary!

Two of our favorite foods at San Chez: Blue Cheese Fritters and Potato Empanadas.

We also have eaten Thai, Chineese, Turkish, Mexican, and American food. We are thankful for the variety of food here, something we don't have much of in Romania.

We have also been very blessed by a new partnership between us and Caledonia CRC. God has been providing for us since we decided to go to Romania and it is evident that He still wants us there. He has been very faithful in providing all that we need and this added partnership provides for our longer term needs. We are so thankful and want to ask that you join us in praising God for his unfailing faithfulness. Also we want to say thanks to you for all your support and prayers! We are reminded of what a wonderful support net we have here, and we know we couldn't minister in a foreign country without that.

November - December Newsletter

2010-12-30T11:12:00.000-05:00

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

2010-12-26T18:45:00.005-05:00

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!

2010-12-19T10:27:00.004-05:00

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

2010-12-11T10:26:00.002-05:00

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

2010-12-01T07:18:00.003-05:00

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.

Thanksgiving and English Lessons

2010-11-24T06:20:00.004-05:00

This past Saturday we had our H2H Thanksgiving celebration. There were 62 people there, past graduates, current guys from the transition house, staff, and a few friends. It is a time of great food, being thankful and a time of fun together.

Mark's Cranberry Jello Salad

Waiting for food line to be clear

Mark hanging out with the guys

Rebecca at the girls and Costel table

Us with Cristi and Amy

Mark's english lesson at the boy's transition house

Reviewing the verb: to eat

Mark and Marius

Us with Cili and his Thanksgiving Turkey Drawing

The following video is a short excerpt of an english lesson that Mark taught. Here the boys (Cezar, Adi, Razvan, Catalin and Aurel) are going over questions relating to the verb to eat.

It's been very interesting teaching english, it has forced me to delve deep into our grammar to find out why we talk the way we do. When we talk we don't even think about the why and how of our language, but to someone who's learning it as a second language it is a lot different. English and Romanian don't have a whole lot in common grammatically as the sentence structure is mixed around. Who knows when to use the verb infinitive vs. the verb gerund? How about the difference between the simple and progressive present tenses?

It's a big challenge to teach english to kids at all different levels. In the classes with the younger kids we are going over the alphabet, four letters per week. We have the kids color a sheet with the new letters and pictures of something that starts with that letter. With the older kids we are starting with the most basic present tense verbs and will work our way through the different tenses eventually. The hardest part is getting the kids to remember what they learned already since we only have classes once a week and they don't have time allotted to study. That's okay though, because through the classes we are getting to know them and that's our overall goal. Our prayer is that they come to know Jesus through our actions and testimonies, and along the way hopefully they'll learn some english too.

Bathed In Prayer

2010-11-17T04:53:00.003-05:00

It is hard to believe that November is already half over! I guess time does fly when you are having fun! Not that ministry is without kids with bad behaviors, problems with attendance and room availability and bad days. But working with these kids brings joy to our hearts, especially seeing the kids taking real interest in seeking after God.

We ask for continued prayers for the kids to open during our times at youth group.

Prayer that the kids who have started to read their Bible will understand and come to a full knowledge of God their savior.

That we would not be distracted by the busy bodies of the young kids, but be able to focus on building relationships with these kids.

That we would not be distracted by the troubles thrown in our way, but that we'd keep our focus on Jesus and truly be his hands and feet.

Prayer that the faith promise offering at Caledonia CRC this Sunday would help enable us and H2H to serve these kids in every way we wish.

That our friends Josh and Missy who are raising support to come here would be blessed and their church would support them.

That H2H would be overwhelmed by prayer support and the financial support they are in a great need of.

That the boys in the transition house will continue to be appreciative of the program and have the endurance to stay and receive all the benefits of it.

That every child we work with will be eager to learn and kept safe when we are not with them.

That we will continue to have favor with the directors and that our ministry will be able to continue unhindered.

Thank you so much for your prayers, they are the fuel God uses for our ministry here.

September - October Newsletter

2010-11-09T07:40:00.001-05:00

September brought many changes for us as we started our second year here in Romania. Being done with language lessons we were ready to start our full time ministry. We were put into teaching teams: Rebecca with Sanda and Mark with Mariana and an intern, either Shannon or Krysten. We started September by coming up with class outlines, syllabuses, and classroom management plans. We also managed to go to the baby hospital a few times to see our cuties.

How precious these babies are, we love loving them.

We are always thankful for the time we get to spend with the babies, they are so fun.

We also went to different orphanages to play with the kids there and continue building on our relationships with them.

We saw our girl Elena again and were very happy to find out that we would be working where she lives every week. We know many of the kids there from camps that we've been and we wanted to work more with them.

We moved from our apartment in the city to a house in the country, and it was a big adjustment. The girls transition program is usually in this house but this year we didn't have enough girls for the program. We moved there with the interns and Mariana in order to take care of the house. It has been nice there, quiet and not in the hustle and bustle of the city, but at the same time it is farther away from everything.

We have a yard and garden again which is nice because that is something we really enjoyed back home.

At the beginning of October we started teaching classes at the orphanages. Rebecca started her science classes. She teaches through hands on experiments, something that isn't common here at all. The kids are always so excited to see what she has to show them.

Rebecca teaches at three different orphanages and the classes have been going really well. Translating her lessons into Romanian is very hard because of all the science terminology.

Mark started teaching english classes at the orphanages. For the little ones we are learning the alphabet with pictures and for the older ones we are learning conversational english.

Being teachers is something neither of us thought we would ever do. Now that we are though we are enjoying it very much. Of course the overall purpose of the classes is to build relationships with the kids, and that has been going very well.

At the end of these two months we are beginning to get settled into everything that has gone on. We are looking forward to many more great months as we continue to share our hearts with the kids we work with.

It's hard to believe but Christmas is right around the corner. Last year many of you asked how you could send us a Christmas gift, so we wanted to tell you in advance. If you send H2H a check made out to Mark and Rebecca Essenburg it will be put in our account that we have access to here in Romania. The gift won't be tax deductable, but if you make it out to H2H and get the tax deduction it will go into our general expenses account which we don't have access to.

Also, one of our friends makes handmade soaps and is donating a portion of the sales to our ministry. They would make good Christmas presents, the ones labeled Essenburg Fundraiser are here: http://www.etsy.com/shop/AmarahEve.

As we go forward please pray for us and our ministry. Please pray that God gives us strength, endurance, and wisdom so that we can be effective at reaching these kids for Christ. Please pray for the kids, for protection and for open hearts and minds. We have several youth groups where we are seeing changes in kids lives, please continue to pray for all of them. Please pray for health for all of us that are working with the kids and for the babies and kids too.

Thanks so much for your prayers and support, we appreciate you all so much!

Another Good Week

2010-11-07T13:25:00.002-05:00

Last week we felt that God was with us in our ministry and blessed us with a very enjoyable week. We are getting used to our schedule and more importantly, the kids and workers are also following through on their part. We enjoyed teaching the kids and they responded positively. We thank God for his blessings and continue to pray for his guidance and protection.

Shannon, Razvon, Adi, Catalin, Mariana, Mark, Cezar and Aurel during english class at the boys transition house.

Cooking pancakes at BTH

Catalin flipping his first pancake

Sanda showing the kids at Peris the proper techniques

Rebecca teaching science

Leaf artwork, Rebecca and Oli

Mark and Cili

Rebecca and Georgiana at english class

The english class is taught by Mark and Mariana's team, but the kids always ask where are Sanda and Rebecca. This week Sanda and I were done early enough at the boys school that we had time to spend with these young kids that we otherwise do not get to work with. When it was time to leave, Georgiana told me that I couldn't leave. I asked her where I was going to sleep and she told me with her, in her bed. Then I asked what about Mark. She then told me that he can sleep with me and she'll sleep with one of her sisters (she has four). This kids are so sweet and respectful, eager to be loved.

Mark and Mihaela

Fall Fun

2010-10-31T03:36:00.003-04:00

What a wonderful week. Everything went so well with our kids this week. They were excited to be with us in our classes and the schedule worked out well for the first time so far. We're getting to know the nearly 100 kids from at least 5 different orphanages better and are building some great relationships. It feels so great to have kids run into our arms when we arrive to the orphanages, we know we're becoming people in their lives that they can trust and love.

Rebecca with Adrian, who likes to pretend he's car.

Listening to a story ready by Shannon and Mariana at the boys school.

We also enjoyed some beautiful fall weather. Rebecca and Dorothy raked up leaves and walnuts into a massive pile. Of course jumping in and playing around followed.

We also planted wheat in the garden which I tilled up last week. The hope is that the wheat will grow a bit before the ground freezes in order to overwinter the garden. Then in the spring after it grows to full maturity it will get tilled in to improve the clay.

Mila came and joined us playing in the leaf pile.

We grew a few pumpkins in the garden and it was time to carve one for Halloween.

Next year we're planning on growing more so that we can each have one.

After our fun with carving the pumpkin we cut it up, skinned it, and boiled it for about an hour. Thanksgiving is coming up and that means we need some pumpkin pie. Unfortunately canned pumpkin isn't available so we have to make our own. Just this one pumpkin made enough for 11 pies, so there will at least be enough for our Thanksgiving feast with the transition house graduates.

Thanks for your prayers for us and the kids here. We are starting to get into the swing of things and God is blessing our ministry. Please continue to pray for strength and wisdom and against attacks from the enemy.