Major Answered Prayer Requests

We have recently had the joy of some answered prayer requests! Rebecca is healthy again after battling a cough for over a month, it was a frustrating cough but now it is gone and we are really happy about that. Being healthy again also means that we can go to the baby hospital together again, which we did today. Our babies are growing so big and there are new ones coming in. Rebecca's little boy, Eric, was just placed into foster care which is wonderful, we pray that more will be placed so they don't have to grow up in the orphanage system.

We brought our friend Kristie to the hospital with us, she is a new missionary here who we met at our bible study. She is working with kids in churches so she wanted to help us care for the kids at the hospital. She really enjoyed it and will probably be back with us again.

Last week we made our first video of our time here so far. The kids at FairHaven Ministries, our home church, had a Romania night so we made the video to go along with that. The kids made gift bags for the orphans here and colored cards that say "Jesus loves all the children of the world" and the Romanian "Isus ii iubeste pe toti copiii din lume" We heard that the kids really enjoyed the night and that many of them recognized us since we worked with them for 2 years before we came here. As you watch the video, keep in mind that we made it for kids to understand what we're doing here in Romania and to see that these kids aren't that much different from them.

Link To Video Here

The other major answered prayer request is that the director of the orphanage that has been giving us so many problems has been removed and replaced! He crossed the line with lots of things he did but the final straw was beating up a kid badly. The teachers finally took action and notified the higher ups and he was immediately removed. The new director is very eager to work with us and is already trying to improve things at the orphanage. Praise God that the old director is finally gone and pray for our relationship with the new director. Also it would still be good to pray for the old director as he really needs Jesus in his life.

Thanks so much for your prayers and faithfulness! We know that prayer is important and it is great to see God's answers. The next big one is our language learning, we have just over 2 weeks left of lessons so we are getting excited to be done. Today our teacher told us she is going to cry when we are done because she enjoys teaching us so much. Coming from her this is a huge compliment. God has definitely been guiding us through this and we are so thankful for that.

Blossoming...

We have now been here for six weeks! In some ways it doesn't seem that long, but in other ways it seems so long since we were in MI. We've been really busy, but it has been a enjoyable busy.

One way we keep busy in going to the baby hospital on Monday and Wednesday. One of the first things that I (Rebecca) noticed, is that it is still really quite there. The babies don't cry a lot, and when they do cry, it isn't very loud. The reason for the quietness is because the babies don't expect anything to happen when they cry. The nurses are too busy to give them the love and attention that parents give. One of my favorite babies is beginning to be more interactive. He has a big smile when you come up to him and say "Buna, ce faci?" (Hello, how are you?) He also has the sweetest giggle, what an amazing sound God created! It is great to be part of making sure these babies have a chance to develop normally, by holding, playing, and loving them.

Rebecca and her unnamed budy

Another thing that is continuing to progress is our language lessons. We have completed four weeks already! This past week "the Doamna" (the polite way to address a lady, but it is how all the staff refers to our language teacher) commented that we were progressing at an excellent speed. That was exciting to hear! We are in the process of learning verbs and recognize more words everyday. Thank you to all who have been praying for this!

This hibiscus was purchased one of our first weeks here. Mark waters it diligently and now it is in bloom. With much patience, attention, and time our lives can blossom just like our flowers. It is so great to be serving a God who promises to take care of us, just as he clothes flowers in beauty and splendor.

Everything From Babies to Symphony

These last few weeks have been a flurry of activity for us and we have just been trying to keep up. It has been good though, we are being stretched but we know God is blessing us greatly. We started out the first week of October by helping get the girls transition house ready for the new girls to move in. We went to meet the new girls on their first day and really enjoyed getting to know them. We also enjoyed a wonderful Romanian lunch of fried chicken, mashed potatoes, cole slaw, and bread.

It is always good spending time with the H2H staff and it was nice to meet the new girls.

We also went to the baby hospital a few times and we will be going there twice a week from now on. We really enjoyed loving the babies there and the nurses gave us some very nice compliments on how we were with the babies. Not to brag at all, we just were very encouraged by their comments. We now really look forward to the days we get to go to the baby hospital.

We continue to adjust to the city life and find that our apartment has plenty of space for us. We enjoy being within walking distance to everything.

Using our gas stove has been working out fine, we haven't burned anything yet. We were having a craving for brownies so Rebecca had to figure out how to use the oven with no temperature reading. Notice also how slanted the stove is, the gas line is hard piped into it so it can't be propped up either.

She also had to figure out how to get the door to stay shut, and she came up with a great solution.

The brownies turned out wonderful and tasted so good. They used up quite a bit of our precious peanut butter and chocolate chip stash but they were so worth it.

We also enjoyed our six year anniversary and we celebrated by going on a date to the symphony. We had to use some of our newly acquired Romanian to buy the tickets and that went really well. The building is very nice inside and out, as you can see from the pictures.

It was fun dressing up and going out and the concert was really good. It lasted two hours and we enjoyed the special pianist and the violin soloist. This is something we might do more often because in addition to being very fun it was very inexpensive.

This is the inside of the dome, which is very ornate like the rest of the place.

The rest of our time has been spent studying the language. We have so much to learn and it feels overwhelming sometimes but we know that God will help us through this just as he promised. This continues to be a big prayer request for us - that we would be able to learn this language so we can be effective at ministering to the kids here. Please continue to pray for strength and endurance for all the busyness and studying. Also please pray for the kids here, that the babies would be blessed and would develop well, that the kids in the orphanage will come to know Christ and be transformed, and that the transition boys and girls will be given hope for a future.

Exploring And Language Lessons

We started out last week with a staff meeting where we found out our schedules and finalized the curriculum for the orphanage program. We will be working at the baby hospital on Monday and Wednesday afternoons, and our language classes will be Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday mornings. We will be able to tag along with the orphanage teams when we have time but studying for our language classes will be our top priority.

Things are looking great in terms of all of the programs this year. We all chipped in on the orphanage program which will focus on teaching the kids how they can have the qualities of heros. Both the boys and girls transition programs will start soon also, scheduling staff and finding eligible kids were the biggest hurdles which God provided for. We are excited to see what happens this year and ask for your prayers that God transforms all of these kid's lives.

Tuesday we went out to the girls transition house and did some yard work to get it ready for the new girls moving in soon. We also helped move a washing machine into one of the staff apartments near the girls house.

This is the view outside of our apartment. Much of the city is like this - never ending block houses in all directions.

This is the top of the market where we can buy fresh fruit and veggies from, as seen from our apartment.

Would you expect to see a horse drawn cart making it's way down a street in the middle of the city? This is an everyday occurrence and we've even seen people walking their cows around.

We went to Carol Park, which has a huge monument dedicated to Romania's first King.

From there we walked to the center of town where we could see the People's Palace, the second largest building in the world after the Pentagon. We toured the inside on our first trip, it is very large and ornate. It was built by the communist dictator as his personal office but now it houses the entire government.

From there we hopped on the subway and went to the university area. There are lots of classical buildings there. We were looking for a specific Romanian language book for our language lessons but had no idea where to find the bookstore. Thankfully a professor saw us looking around and helped us find it, how nice! There were several statues in the area that were wearing gas masks, we have no idea why though.

Thursday we started our language lessons so we spent most of the day and most of Friday studying around 300 new words and some basic sentence structures. Saturday after our lesson we went to the orphanage to play with the kids. They were really rambunctious and energetic and we were pretty worn out afterwards. Sunday was a nice day of rest and we enjoyed spending some time with the rest of the H2H staff. Sound like a pretty busy week? Welcome to the new normal: busy, busy. It will all be worth it when we can speak to the kids without translators, we are so looking forward to that!