Great Scott!

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

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

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

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

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

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!