Back At The Orphanage After Camp

After camp was over we stayed in Romania for a few more days. When we got a chance to go to the orphanage at Peris we jumped at it, and we were so thankful for H2H's flexibility. We got to the orphanage in the morning and only stayed until lunch, but we had a lot of fun in those two hours.

We saw Claudiu first, he was very happy to see us as we had bonded with him during the first week of camp.

We met cute little Elena, who hadn't come to camp because she was too young. She was all smiles and loved to play and be held.

I got to hang out with the boys from my cabin again, Claudiu, Florin, and Petrisor.

Berke was still a jokester, just having a fun time.

What can I say other than "cute!"?

It was so nice being able to see the kids we knew again. It was so different going there when we actually knew kids, compared to our last trip where we didn't know the kids so much. It was really great spending more time with them showing them that we cared enough to come back.

More On Week 4 Camp

As we talked about before, week 4 was a lot different from the other weeks, but it really was a great week. We did more advanced activities and focused on self worth as the theme of the week. We did team building games and taught the kids job skills like interviewing and resumes. More kids could speak English so it was a bit easier to communicate, and we had more translators than before. We really learned a lot about the kids throughout their stories and we were able to share our stories with them as well.

My favorite game was the spider's web. Teams had to get everyone from one side to the other by going through the holes in the web. The rules could be changed based on what the team was doing, making them have to adapt to the situation. Each hole could only be used once and if the web was touched that hole would be closed up too. The teams that did the best worked as a team to plan ahead and figure out the best way across.

Here Spencer is the last one left and is trying to climb the tree to get through the hole.

This is what happened, ouch! The tree was wet and Spencer fell down. He just had a square bruise on his back from the brick he landed on.

The teams worked on bridge building out of Popsicle sticks and tape.

We had a whole camp scavenger hunt which the kids really enjoyed, this was one of the highlights of the week.

Some kids were pretty good at the guitar.

Gina enjoyed talking to Rebecca about her life and asked us many questions about our marriage and how we interact with each other. It was fun talking about something that she doesn't get to hear about much - a healthy, Godly marriage.

Ionut and I enjoyed hanging out and talking in English. He was one of the best English speakers out of all the orphans. He also loved to break dance and was just a really nice guy.

More On Week 3 Camp

Here are some pictures from week 3 of camp. Week 3 brought the most kids and many more English speaking kids than the previous weeks. We made lots of friends and did lots of fun things. The program was basically the same as the last two weeks so by this time it was running pretty smoothly.

Nearly the whole group went on a long hike up the mountain the first day.

Small groups formed to play different games.

Rebecca bonded with Chezy right off the bat as she was a great English speaker.

Mark enjoyed Berke's company especially since we had met him on our previous trip.

Us with Chezy, she was a lot of fun and very nice.

Big News!

This is really an exciting time for us. We will soon be applying with Heart 2 Heart International Ministries to be full time missionaries to orphaned children in Romania! You probably guessed that our two trips to Romania had tremendous impacts on our lives. After our first trip we felt we needed to go back for a longer time, which happened when we went to camp. Now after camp we have increasingly heard God's call to go minister to these kids full time. We were actually praying about this before we went to camp and were hoping that we would get our answer there.

During camp we were a little confused, we really enjoyed it but it was really hard too and we doubted that we could do this full time. But we learned that we need to rely on God and not ourselves in order to be used by him. When we came back from camp we stepped up our prayers and asked many people to pray for us that we would be able to discern what God wanted us to do. We have been able to focus on the tremendous good that happened at camp when God used us to touch the lives of these kids. Our desire to go has only increased since leaving and we have felt much affirmation from our family, friends, church, and H2H staff. God has called us to be love to these kids who don't often get to experience love. We want Him to use us wherever He wants, so we are going ahead trying to be very flexible and open to his voice.

So now we will start the process. We will apply and once our application is approved we will start planning and support raising. We are thinking that we will sell just about everything we own, like our house, cars, furniture, and whatever else we can't take with us. We'll have to raise support for our ministry, which we will have more details about later. We can't thank enough those who supported us on our previous trips, it is great to have so many people behind us.

This is an incredible step of faith for us, and we are trusting that if this is God's will He will make it happen. We are surrendering our lives fully to him and are stepping out in obedience to Him. It is all for his glory, and not of ourselves, because it's all about Him.

More On Week 2 Camp

Week two was a week of great relationships. Since the kids were a little older than the last group we were able to communicate more with them and talk about some deeper things. We still did lots of fun things too, and the kids' favorite things to do were still hiking up the mountain, going swimming, and singing at the campfire.

I made a great friendship with Elena (a popular name if you hadn't guessed that already). Elena loved to talk to me and have me try to understand. It was really hard because she talked really fast, but it was lots of fun. She would sound out words and have me follow along sound for sound until I was able to pronounce the word. We also enjoyed weaving lanyards together, which is actually how we met, she showed me how to create a lanyard.

Elena had lots of friends and we all hung out together sometimes. One very memorable time was when we were sitting at a picnic table together with Florenta, one of the translators. They tried to teach me a song in Romanian, and I sung some songs in English. I had them ask me questions like how was America different, what do I like to do, and what was it like where I live.

Elena's sister Christina and I also got close after I learned that she spoke very good English. She is in the blue in the pictures. She was shy about speaking but once she asked me a question in English, I was so surprised. I asked her a lot about herself and we got to know each other. She even acted as a translator for me sometimes and she was very good at it. I encouraged her to continue speaking English so that she could become a H2H translator some day.

Elena and Christina had a brother named Aurel who was also very nice. They were such a great family. I later learned that their father was a police man and was killed, and their mother is either not well or not alive either. So they are living in the orphanage with no one to be their parents. Thankfully their relatives are keeping their home for them so that they can go there after they get out of the orphanage around the age of 18. Most of the kids don't even have that to look forward to.

This is a typical scene after taking a picture, the kids always wanted to see the pictures on the camera.

Everyone enjoyed being with Ionut, a cute little guy who was just so cuddly. He always wanted to be picked up and if you said not now he would say puhleease! Rebecca grew very close to Kristin during the week and it was great watching their friendship increase.

Some of the kids leading songs by the campfire.

Mark & Christi hanging out.

More On Week 1 Camp

Week one was so fun and yet so challenging. This was the youngest group and boy did they have a lot of energy. We were on team portocaliu, which is orange, and we had quite a group. We spent a lot of time chasing our kids around because they were always running all over when they were supposed to be doing the activities with our team. By the end of the week we just let the kids run free because we didn't have the energy left to chase them around. It was still lots of fun though.

We bonded a lot with our team of volunteers too, Kristin, Lindsey, and George.

Mark stayed in a cabin with Petrisor, Bogdan, Claudiu, Marin, & Florin during the week. He had the craziest cabin of all and on the first night the boys wouldn't go to bed. After lots of staff coming in to try to help we finally got to sleep at 1:30AM. Then the boys got up at 6:30 so Mark had to keep them busy by running around hay bails to get some of that energy out. The rest of the week was much better and we told Bible stories and scary stories before bed. The boys wanted a really scary story the last night so they got it! The best part was at the scariest point they all yelled "Ghatta!" which means "enough". Yet they still wanted to hear the end. Mark's story telling lead to widespread fame because when some people from Bucharest came the third week they were asking about the stories.

Rebecca helping with crafts.

Some kids trying their first smores ever. They really liked them!

The whole camp - all the volunteers are wearing green.

Thanks Fairhaven!

On Sunday we were able to share a little about our time at camp with our church and it was great. Early last week we were asked to if we would be willing to talk about our trip and show some pictures. We had been wanting to do this so we were very excited. At each service we went up in front of church with a microphone, and Pastor Doug (our pastor of missions and multiplication) asked us some questions. Our pictures were being shown up on the big screens so that people could see what we did in addition to hearing. First we talked about what we did at camp. Then we talked about the most significant/impacting thing that happened at camp, so we told about our relationship with Elena. Third we told about some of the ongoing needs in Romania which are prayer, funding, and most of all people to go there and love the kids. Last we told a couple prayer requests. The congregation clapped for us a when we started and ended and we could tell that people were very interested in what we did. Many people that we didn't know came up afterward to us to talk about it and to show their support. We just felt so good because of the positive reaction. We just want to thank everyone at Fairhaven for their prayers and their support!

We are hoping that our church can partner with Heart 2 Heart to help minister to the orphans there, and our biggest hope is that many people will be inspired to go. There are short term trips happening all the time, and they are listed on the website: www.heart2heartint.org These trips are good for going there the first time because you are exposed to all the different sides of the ministry and you learn a lot about the Romanian culture. Longer term trips like what we just did are great to build solid relationships with kids. We are so thankful that we had the opportunity to go and we're praying that more people step up to the plate.

Letter From Elena!

I am so excited right now! We just received a letter from Elena, who I wrote about here: http://weloveorphans.blogspot.com/2008/08/elena-b-our-daughter-in-christ.html Elena is so special to us and getting a letter from her just made us so happy. It was a very sweet letter, in it she says how glad she was to meet us and thanks us for everything we did with her. She thanked us for talking to her, eating at her table, racing, giving her a necklace, letting her carry my backpack on the hike, and more. All those things meant so much to her and it's great that we can all cherish those times we had together.

We really do love Elena very much, and she returns that love. It is amazing to be able to pour out Gods love and it is also amazing to receive it. Elena also wished us good health and all of our desires to come true. I hope this one does: to see her again soon. We really want to be there for her to hug her and support her and be able to love her. She is really tugging on our hearts, it's amazing how God works, isn't it?!?