From Gross To Glory

We have a pair of pigeons that has made their home on the window sill outside of our kitchen. They are nice looking birds and they make a soothing cooing noise, but they also make a big mess and make us upset with them. Somehow thinking about them made me think about our relationship with God, read on to see what I mean.

Here they are at their home away from home, our bathroom window ledge. This is where they go when we shoo them away from the kitchen.

This is what they do to our kitchen windows. Somehow they manage to make almost the entire window dirty with their own filth.

The windows were cleaned before we moved in but shortly after the pigeons got them all dirty again. I finally couldn't stand looking through the windows like that so I took to cleaning them off. Doing things like this is part of life, even for missionaries.

Having clean windows again is very satisfying and it's so nice to see clearly again. Although it was gross and hard to clean it was worth it because of the great outcome. Isn't this a bit like our lives and our walk with Christ? We are constantly getting ourselves dirty by sinning and often we let it pile up. Sin separates us from God and we can have a hard time fellowshipping with Him and seeing Him clearly when we let this gunk build up in our lives. Jesus went through a lot to wipe away our sins and make us clean again. He wants us to be clean so we can have fellowship with Him and our heavenly Father now and for eternity. When we ask God to forgive our sins through Jesus' sacrifice, He wipes the slate clean and we are just like the clean window. Isn't it great knowing that He is willing to do that for us? I know I am thankful, so glad that he loves me enough to clean me and save me.

Babies

This past week the guards at the new baby hospital informed us of some difficult news. Fear of H1N1 virus had caused hospital officials to prohibit all visitors in the hospital. Currently we haven't heard of any cases here, but surrounding countries do have lots of cases. The doors are closed to us, doesn't matter if we are healthy or if we take proper precautions. It is hard to know that we will not be able to go there until December 1 or later. But we take comfort knowing God is still watching over them "He defends the cause of the fatherless and widow, and loves the aliens, giving him food and clothing." Deut 10:18

Pray for God's protections for the babies, and also that the doors to work in the orphanages will stay open.

Mark and his favorite set of twins, Mihiela and Florica

Rebecca's favorite, Florin, who has a great laugh

Mark and Twin #2

Twin #1

American Traditions in RO

In America celebrating every "holiday" is a big deal. Decorations come out sometimes months before. Halloween is not a holiday that is widely celebrated in Romania. As we went about our week, it was like any other week. We had language lessons, went to the baby hospital and our Bible studies. It was good to be back at the baby hospital this week. The babies are becoming more expressive and interactive. It is exciting to see them develop. The changes are partly because they are growing, but the time spent by us and other volunteer who interact with them, is a big help to their development.
Saturday after our language lessons we headed to the team house to pick out our costumes for our Halloween party we were having with the Transition House Girls. There are four girls currently in the program. Two are from an orphanage, the other two come from broken families and needed the extra training and help to be able to find employment. H2H staff went all out in preparation for the party. We played fun games and enjoyed the night.

Our "frightful" meal

Wise guy and wizard

Happy Halloween from us all!

H2H Staff Training Week

Last week was a very special week for all of the Heart 2 Heart staff. We all gathered at the team house and spent the week there for the annual staff training. All of the H2H American staff flew in and we also welcomed our main speakers, Jim and Roe Dodgen. The main topic of the training was being wholly surrendered to God, and the second main focus was on finding our strengths and how we can best work together. Each day we started with a quiet time and then the rest of the day was spent learning about our strengths and spending time doing team building activities. The entire H2H Staff is shown in the picture below, notice that the weather was very nice!

We also had several fun activities each evening. One night we decorated masks with crate paper. We didn't know what we would be using them for but we were pretty suspicious that something was up. Another night we found out what we would be using the masks for a contest in the city. The goal was to get pictures at as many famous landmarks as we could, while wearing the masks.

Our team in front of the Pipera Metro

The Arc de Triumph is in the background

The week was filled with learning, fun, and time to grow closer together and closer to God. It was a nice break from the regular routine (although we still had to study a little for our next language lesson).

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.

September Newsletter

It is hard to believe that we have been in Romania for a whole month now. Time has been flying and we've done so much in this short amount of time. We spent the first week of September getting everything ready and tying up loose ends before we left for Romania. We sold both of our cars and got together with lots of family & friends. We had a great sendoff at the airport and all of our flights and layovers went really smoothly. We didn't even have any of our six pieces of luggage lost which was a miracle considering how many bags get lost these days.

When we arrived in Romania we got to spend some time with the Heart 2 Heart staff as we got used to the time change. We went to our first staff meeting where we took part in the initial planning for the orphanage program for this school year. We went to our apartment for the first time and had no idea where in the city we were at. We went shopping at IKEA to buy things that our apartment was lacking like most kitchen items, new couch cushions and a new mattress for our bed.

We went to several orphanages to hand out school kits and saw many of the kids that we knew from summer camp last year. Many of them remembered us which gave us a great feeling, knowing that we made an impact on them last year. We went to the girls transition house to get it ready for the new girls to move in. We went to the baby hospital for the first time and really enjoyed interacting with so many babies. We will continue to go to the baby hospital each week while we are learning the language. We started our full time job of learning the language and have had tons of memorizing to do.

We have enjoyed exploring the area around our apartment and have started to get a feel for where we are in the city and how to get around on the subway, busses, and trams. We shopped at a local supermarket which has most things we need and we also bought things from the local fresh market and a pastry shop. No wonder the time went by so fast, we have been so busy! We would like to thank everyone for their great support and would also like to give a few prayer requests. Please pray:

-For God to continue to strengthen us and especially to give us the ability to learn the language

-For the kids in the orphanages to have hope and to follow Christ and be transformed

-For the babies to develop well so they can live healthy lives

-For all of the H2H staff and all the people being used by God to make a difference here

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!