Our Missionary Fund Raiser Dinner

We are really excited!  Soon we will be having a fund raiser dinner for our ministry to Romanian orphans.  We will be having a traditional Romanian meal and telling all about what we will be doing as missionaries.  We will show pictures from our previous mission trips and a video of what Heart 2 Heart does.  We'll also talk about the options for short term mission trips and hopefully find some people interested in those.

The main goal of the dinner is to raise up monthly supporters and to tell about our ministry to the Romanian orphans.  We also need prayer partners who will commit to praying for us and our ministry.  Lastly we have a little way to go on our startup fund that we need to raise before we can leave for Romania.  Everyone is invited, even if you can't offer support, you can find out how to best pray for our ministry.  If you do decide to come it would be great if you let us know, but it's not a requirement to come to the dinner.

We ask that you bathe this dinner in prayer and ask God to provide financial and prayer supporters for our ministry.  Without either of these we will not be able to succeed at reaching the orphans in Romania and bringing glory to God through them.

The dinner will be at our church, Fair Haven Ministries in Hudsonville on February 15, at 12:15 PM.

The Bad Economy Takes Its Toll

Well, this bad economy has really hit home now.  Mark's work has been pretty slow for the last few weeks and it has gotten to the point that there is no new work.  So last week Mark was notified that he would be on temporary layoff for a while, starting this week.  Quite a few others from work are laid off now too, so we're all hoping that things pick up soon.

If new work does come in Mark will be called back right away because the design is the first thing that happens on a new project.  There are some orders on the horizon but no-one knows when they'll actually come in.  

We are very thankful to God that he has provided us with abundance during the good times so we can make it through the lean times.  We have been saving a little each week for an emergency fund since we got married.  So 5 and a half years later there is a good chunk of money there that we can use to cover our expenses during this layoff.

So we ask you to pray with us that God will send some work to Extol so that Mark and the others can be called back to work.  We also ask for prayers of providence for us.  Now more than ever it would be great if our house sold, as it is the only thing we owe money on.  Would you please pray with power that God will sell our house soon?  We know that he will accomplish these things and the more prayers we offer up to him the better.  Thanks!!!

More Winter Fun With George

Wow, these last few weeks were super busy!  Our friend George from Romania just left our place after staying here for about two and a half weeks.  We had lots of fun with him, mostly just hanging out, but we tried to do some fun things as well.  We took George with us to our childrens ministry at church each week which he really enjoyed because he has a heart for kids.  We took him over to friends places for get togethers, and took him along to our LifeGroup meeting.  

We had fun making great food while he was here too.  He said that we made the best and most varying food that he's had at anywhere he stayed, and he's been in the states since September!  We made Indian, Thai, Mexican, Italian, and lots of great traditional food like pork tenderloin, chicken, potatoes, etc.  Rebecca and I actually eat like that all the time because we really love the variation, and we both like to cook.  We took George out to Mongolian BBQ for a wonderful make your own stir-fry, that was our special out to eat meal.

While George was here it snowed like crazy, so we took advantage of that by going out cross country skiing.  There is a place near us, Pigeon Creek Park which has lots of groomed trails, and they rent out skis for $8 for 2 hours.  We really had a blast and the scenery was so beautiful.  Even though it was George's first time and we haven't done it very many times, we went on all the trails including the difficult ones.  We found them to be the most fun because they were the hilly ones.  

That's us, cute couple, huh?

Mark in some deep snow, could have used snowshoes here.

Rebecca showing off her mad skiing skills by skiing on a bench.

George sitting on a bench full of snow, that's just a lot of snow!

It doesn't get any better than this in the winter, does it?

One last thing, we would like to ask you to pray for George.  The reason he is going around the US is that he is going to be a missionary in Montenegro, so he is raising funding.  Please pray that God will provide for him and bless his support raising and his ministry.  Thanks!

December 2009 - January 2010 Newsletter

Buna ziua de la Mark si Rebecca in Romania! (Good day from Mark & Rebecca in Romania!)  These last two months have been great and so many things have gone on that they have really flown by.  December was all about Christmas, we had parties with the kids at the orphanages, handed out gifts to them and watched their Christmas programs.  We had lots of fun playing games and spending time with the kids and they were so excited to share in the joy of Christ's birth with us.

A holiday team came to help us with all of the festivities and activities with the kids and one of our friends from home, Amanda, was on the team.  It was great having Amanda and the team here because it allowed us to go to orphanages that we don't go to the rest of the year because we don't have enough staff.  We finally got to meet up with Elena, our special girl from camp the last time we were here.  We have kept in touch with e-mails and letters and it was great to be able to reconnect with her.  She was very touched to spend time with us and was very sad when we had to leave again.

Here we are with Elena.

We met Mihaela for the first time and she instantly knew that we were married and clung to us, she's a very sweet girl who had just been dropped off at the orphanage a few days earlier.

We spent lots of time with the kids at the orphanage we normally go to, they were on break so we were free to play games and be at there longer than normal.

We made lots of crafts as we handed out clothes and gifts.

In January things returned to normal except that we are staying at the team house instead of our apartment.  Jen our team coordinator is back home in the states visiting so we are taking care of the intern couple that we have here.  We have now had four months of language classes and can understand a lot of what people say.  We are still going at quite a fast pace thanks to God's help.  We only have two more months of classes and by then we should have a great foundation for becoming fluent in Romanian.  

Prayer Requests:
-For our language learning to continue to go well and for courage to use it with people even though we'll be making mistakes.
-For the kids to accept Christ in their lives and to be transformed.
-For energy and health, we've been battling colds on and off.
-For God to fight against Satan here, he has been waging war on us by breaking down vans, causing problems with orphanage directors, and keeping the baby hospital closed.  Please pray that God remedies all of these situations.
-For our family and friends who miss us and for us to continue to stay strong here even though we're so far away.
-Praise for our abundance of faithful supporters and for the ability to keep in touch easily.

We hope you have been keeping track of what we're doing here on our blog, we try to keep it updated every week, and there's so much that we can't share in these newsletters because of space.  The address iswww.weloveorphans.blogspot.com .  Thank you for your prayer support and thanks to our financial supporters for their faithfulness.  Let us know if you have any questions about what we're doing here or just to talk, we'd love to hear from you.

In Christ,
Mark & Rebecca

Supporting Our Ministry...You Can Make A Difference!

We are very excited about following God's call to Romania to minister to abandoned orphans there. Our goal is to start our ministry around April, and in order to do that we need to raise funding to support our ministry. Our start up fund that will pay for things like airfare, language classes, visas, and housing set up is coming along wonderfully, praise God! Thank you so much to those of you who have contributed to this, we are so thankful that you have chosen to be our partners in this ministry.

We also need to raise monthly support commitments that will sustain our ministry while we are there. Would you please pray about this and ask God how He would like you to participate in this area? To those of you who have already committed we thank you very much!

Below is our letter explaining what our ministry will be about and why we are following this call. There is also a card that you can print out and send in so that your support will be tax deductible. If God leads you to a monthy committment you can set it up by using this card. Thank you so much for partnering with us in this ministry, God will use your support to change the lives of many hopeless and abandoned kids.

You can click on the pictures to bring up the full sized copies.

One more thing to ask, would you please pray that God raises up people to support us monthly? We know he will but the more people that pray for this the better. Thanks!

An Eventful Week!

This week has been a flurry of activity and it has been a really fun time. It all started last Friday night when we got a message from one of the Romanians we worked with at summer camp. George has been in the states for a while and he decided to come to Michigan, so he asked us if he could stay with us. So Sunday night we went and picked him up from the train station in Holland. Then Monday afternoon we went to the airport to lend my car to one of the Heart 2 Heart missionaries who's visiting family and friends in the area. Monday night we started taking a class called Perspectives on the world Christian movement. We are going to be learning about global missions each Monday night for the next few months.

Wednesday was another busy day. Rebecca took George to Grand Haven and they walked on the pier. It was really beautiful and they got some great pictures. Wednesday night we took George to KICK, the kids program we volunteer in every Wednesday night at church. Only half of our group of kindergarden & first graders was there but oh were they hyper. They thought that their names sounded really funny in Romanian and George enjoyed helping with the crafts and games.

Usually we walk underneath the arches that are up to Rebecca's waist here. There must be at least 3 feet of ice and snow built up on the pier.

Here is our Romanian friend George enjoying the beautiful day.

This ice is just cool (no pun intended)!

Tomorrow we will have a getogether with Angela the H2H missionary and our Romania missions team. Then we will hang out with Angela until she has to go visit other friends. Talk about an action packed week!

Oma's 100th Birthday Celebration

We spent the week of Christmas 2008 in Brampton, Canada celebrating our Oma's 100th birthday. December 24 was the big day so there was a big open house for lots of friends and family. All of Oma's 8 children came out to visit, which was great because one uncle lives all the way in Saskatchewan. Below is a picture of us with Oma on her birthday.

Besides the fact that she's 100 years old, the amazing thing is how sharp she still is. She remembers little details of things that happened in peoples lives years ago. She still lives on her own in an apartment and for the most part takes care of herself on her 0wn.

Oma's favorite pastime is knitting, and she is still incredibly fast. We have many slippers and blankets from her and they are all really nice.

This is a picture of the whole family with their spouses. Rebecca's parents are on the far right.

We spent the rest of the week hanging out at Oma's apartment visiting with family. For exercise we walked around the entire apartment complex, which was fun because there are several buildings connected by underground tunnels. We played hide and go seek once which was really fun. We had a great week and were sad when the vacation was over.

Top 10 Happenings Of 2008

Happy New Year! 2008 was a year of big happenings in our lives so we decided to put together a top 10 list. I added a link to previous posts if there were any so you can read about the event. These are in order of occurrence because it was too hard to rank them by significance.

1. My sister Sandi got married to Jay and we were in the wedding.

2. We finished our basement with the help of family & friends.

3. Our friends Dave & Holly & their son Jaden lived with us for a while.

4. We went to Romania to help with summer camp for orphans for 5 weeks.

5. We celebrated our 5 year wedding anniversary.

6. We put our house up for sale.

7. We were accepted to be full time missionaries to orphans in Romania.

8. We went to California to vacation, go to a wedding, and plan for Romania.

9. We joined techies everywhere by starting a blog, getting on Facebook, and buying a Macbook.

10. We went to Canada over Christmas to celebrate Rebecca's Oma's 100th birthday.


Links:
1. http://weloveorphans.blogspot.com/2008/05/sandi-jays-wedding.html

2. http://weloveorphans.blogspot.com/2008/06/wrapping-things-up.html

3. See above.

4. http://weloveorphans.blogspot.com/2008/06/our-upcoming-romania-mission-trip.html (+ 26 other posts!)

5. http://weloveorphans.blogspot.com/2008/10/very-memorable-5-year-anniversary.html

6. http://weloveorphans.blogspot.com/2008/09/missionary-application-selling-our.html

7. http://weloveorphans.blogspot.com/2008/11/it-is-official-we-are-going-to-romania.html

8. http://weloveorphans.blogspot.com/2008/11/our-trip-to-california-part-1.html & http://weloveorphans.blogspot.com/2008/11/our-trip-to-california-part-2.html

9. None really.

10. http://weloveorphans.blogspot.com/2009/01/omas-100th-birthday-celebration.html