Two Year Update

Two years ago we arrived in Bucharest, Romania, starting a new chapter in our lives on the other side of the globe. God had called us to come here and minister to the abandoned children that we had met on two previous mission trips. For six months we studied the language and after that enjoyed being able to communicate directly with the kids. The rest of the first year we spent helping at the orphanages and baby hospital. It was a year of training and learning how to reach and show Christ's love to the kids we came here for.



This year we got to try our hand at being teachers with Mark teaching English and Rebecca teaching Science. We were also involved in story time, cooking classes and in several youth groups. We use these classes not only to enhance the kids' lives but also as a way to get into the orphanages by offering something valuable to them. Through these classes we have built relationships with many of the kids. Georgiana calls Rebecca “mommy” and told her recently as they were walking through the park that if someone saw them together they would think they're a family. Andrei calls Mark “daddy” and always runs and jumps in his arms and plasters on lots of kisses.





Some of our greatest joy has come from seeing many of the teens that we work with accept Christ and begin to grow in their faith. Last year at summer camp many of them made this decision and throughout the year we have worked with them and encouraged them. Four were baptized this summer and volunteered to help lead some of the lessons at this year's camps. Two of them now want to be pastors and are excited about sharing Christ with their peers. The camps this summer were also very fruitful with several more accepting Christ. God has truly been blessing this ministry and continues to show us his faithfulness.

These two years have been quite a challenge as well, adapting to the culture, working with emotionally challenged kids, and being far away from home, just to name a few. We have been stretched beyond what we ever thought we'd be doing with our lives, but we can feel God's sustaining hands holding us up. Through the fruitful relationships and changed lives we've experienced we can tell that our work here is not finished, but just getting started. That is why we've decided to continue working here for as long as God wants us to, and only he knows how long that will be. We know that we are in the right place and doing what God has called us to do with our lives.


Thank you so much for your prayers and support, our ministry is only possible because of your faithfulness! We have appreciated your encouragement through e-mails and Skype calls and we hope that we can continue to keep in touch. God sustains us through your prayers and has truly blessed us and our ministry through you. You are as much a part of this ministry as us because we couldn't do it without your help. We pray that we can continue to be partners in prayer and support as we go forward. We have many opportunities throughout the year for you to come and experience what we’re doing.

We will be coming home on November 14 and will be home for about a month. We will be speaking in all of our supporting churches and will post more details when we know them. We are looking to borrow a car for that month so if you or someone you know would be willing to lend one to us that would be a great help. Thanks again for everything and we look forward to continuing to share our experiences with you on our blog and in person. God be with you and bless you so you can continue to be a blessing to others.

Please continue to pray:

- For God to continue to lead us in his will and for us to know what that is.
- For God to be with us and our family and friends.
- For God to work in the lives of the kids we work with and for them to be open to accepting him.
- For God to watch over and protect the ones who are growing in relationship with him.
- For God to bar the evil one from hindering our work.
- For God to give us good health and safety especially while traveling.
- For God to guide us and our organization as the fall program is planned.
- For God to bless our supporters and churches so they can continue to bless us and others.

For a printable version of the update click here: Mark & Rebecca - Two Year Update

Keeping Busy

Since our vacation we've been alone most of the time because most of the other staff is in America for a wedding. We've been keeping busy here taking care of the houses, plants, dogs, and by visiting all of our areas of ministry.

We went to the baby hospital together for the first time in a long time and as usual we really enjoyed the babies.

How could you not enjoy this?

They are so cute and just long to be picked up and played with.

I bet if you weren't smiling before you are now.

We also visited our orphanages and played with the kids there.

We hadn't seen some of them since before the summer so it was great to see them again.

We also stayed at our southern location a few days, made some apartment visits, and spent some time with Alexa who is still recovering from his broken hand.

We've also been able to get together with friends which is great because we're often too busy during the school year. These weeks have been a nice mix between resting time and continuing to work with our kids here. Please continue to pray for the planning of the fall schedule as there are many unknowns. Please pray that we will be able to have a vibrant ministry this year that builds on what we've been doing so far. Thanks so much for your prayers.

July - August Newsletter

This summer was a busy one as usual. Right after our mountain backpacking trip we went straight into our July day camps. We had three groups of kids come over from ten to five for two days each. They were from three different orphanages, one where the kids go to regular school, one from a boys special needs school, and one from a girls special needs school.

Coming to camp is something that these kids look forward to the whole year, they started asking us about it early this spring already.

We did lots of fun things at camp like a scavenger hunt, hide and seek, crafts, story times and skits.

Since it was so hot we did lots of water games too which were always the most anticipated part of the day.

The second part of the month we had teen boys camps where they stayed with us two days and nights. We had boys come from all of the different orphanages that we work in.

We did lots of fun things at these camps too, like swimming and kayaking in the river. There was even a small waterfall that we could jump off and kayak over, this was one of the highlights for everyone.

We also did an obstacle course through the whole yard and a scavenger hunt through the whole village.

The most important part of the camps wasn't the games or activities that we did but the bible studies. We created a ten lesson series on accepting salvation through faith in Jesus and growing in a relationship with God. We talked about how to live out a new faith and how to be an example to the world.

We taught the boys the basics about becoming a Christ follower and talked about many of the hardships and stumbling blocks that normally keep them from accepting Christ.

Each night we had a campfire where we did our bible studies and had snacks like smores and popcorn. There were also testimonies and fun stories. The last night of camp one of the boys shared his testimony and we were all moved. Five of the boys accepted Christ right then and we praise God so much for this! God really answered our prayers that the boys would be touched by him. Only through him were these camps a success and we are so excited that he is using us to make a difference here.

After all the camps we went on vacation around Romania. We saw many of the well preserved medieval towns in Transylvania and enjoyed the hospitality of the local people we stayed with.

We went with our German intern Carolin and saw many of the fortified churches that were built by the Germans who settled here in the 1200's.

And we also toured the painted churches in the north which were also built very long ago. We had a great time seeing the beauty that this country has to offer. The rest of the month we have been going to the different orphanages and the baby hospital.

Thanks so much for your prayers for this summer ministry. It turned out to be greatly successful. Now the follow up work begins, with all of the kids who heard about salvation. Please continue to pray for those that accepted Christ that they would grow in their faith and that they would be protected from the evil one's attacks. Please pray for those who didn't accept Christ yet that they would continue to be touched by God and that they would come to him. Also please pray for one of the boys who fell and broke his hand, he has had surgery and it isn’t healing well. He is having a hard time with the situation. Please continue to keep us and our ministry in your prayers. Look out for our two year update very soon.

For a printable copy of this newsletter click here: July - August Newsletter

Rebecca's vacation thoughts

For the past two weeks I have been on vacation in Romania, visiting cities all over. Romania truly is a beautiful country! If you know me at all, you know at times I can be very quiet. And at times I was very quiet on vacation. Silence for me can mean many different things...but sometimes it is the way I try to process all that is going on. Vacations are supposed to be fun, relaxing times where you leave all the stresses and worries of normal life behind. I found that I was bombarded by many different things, things that make you stop and evaluate your life, your purpose, your very existence while on vacation. It was the faces of the children begging in the train stations, the thoughts of what is their future, and wondering how cold your heart has to become to not be touched by them. It was thinking about the kids I love, "my kids," and wondering about if they will ever accept the greatest love possible...wondering what their futures will be like. I was thinking about a friend from back home who is battling cancer for the second time. This is the exact kind of thinking that brought us here full-time...when we were stuck in Amsterdam for two days in 2008 on our way home from summer camp here in Romania. And I had to ask myself again, am I really following after God with all my heart? Do I sacrifice all of myself, do I love with all that I am and more? Does my life bring glory and honor to God? It is only in God that my life has any value, purpose, only in him do I find the reasons to go on and to have hope. There are so many things in this life that no matter how much you think about them, you can't make them right...only by trusting that God is in control and is doing his perfect, pleasing, and good will, can you find any balance. In the faith that he is doing something good, bigger than we can imagine behind the scenes and moving through all the chaos of life and the consequence of this sinful world. In that faith I rest, I trust, and can move forward, full of hope for the complete restoration that is to come.

So in conclusion, vacation for me apparently means wrestling with the truth and getting my heart broken again for the things that break God's heart.

Who is ready to vacation with me?

Romania Tour Week 2

Our last post left off with us being in Hunedoara, Romania on our tour of Romania. After we saw the big castle there we headed off to Timisoara. We got in really late at night and then spent the next two days there. Timisoara is in the very western end of the country.

Timisoara has a beautiful center square, and there are even a few other large squares in town. The sides were lined with cafes and restaurants. We enjoyed the best Mediterranean pizza there and also the best raspberry smoothies. The revolution of 1989 started there because the communists were trying to forcefully evict a Reformed pastor and the people protested. We went to a great museum where we learned the history of the revolution. We also went to the art museum and enjoyed looking in the various old buildings. We stayed next to a mall and we saw Cars 2 which we really enjoyed. Timisoara was a great because we had a nice mix of the old town history and the modern convenience of the mall nearby.

We then flew to Iasi, which is all the way on the eastern side of Romania. We saw this palace of culture but unfortunately couldn't go to any of the museums inside because it was being restored.

From Iasi we headed over to Suceava which was our base for seeing the world renowned painted monestaries of Bucovina. We started off our tour by seeing an old fortress.

The monasteries we saw on the first day were all very nice in their own ways. One was painted inside by Romania's best painter, another was very new so the paintings inside were really vibrant. They all were in beautiful settings.

I don't think I mentioned before that we were on this vacation with our German intern, Carolin. When we decided we wanted to tour around Romania she asked if she could come because she had the same idea. We had a great time together.

The second day of the tour we went to the painted monasteries, all of which are UNESCO world heritage sites. They were painted on the outside so that people who couldn't read would be able to understand important events of the Bible. They were built around 1400-1500 and the paintings have survived outside for that long. They are so beautiful and the pictures don't even come close to capturing it.

The Voronet monastery is called the Sistine Chapel of the east because of the vibrant colors and the uniqueness of the blue color used. This is a scene of the last judgement, in the middle on the top is God the Father, then under that is Jesus, and under that the Holy spirit, each performing their tasks.

More of the paintings. I would encourage you to click on the picture so it comes up in a full sized window so you can see the detail.

This is another similarly painted monastery.

All of the monasteries are surrounded by huge walls and defensive towers. This is typically where the monks and nuns live.

After seeing the monasteries we came back to Bucharest and showed Carolin some of the sights there. We had a really fun time on our vacation and are so thankful that God was with us and watched over us. It was a great opportunity to see the country we're working in and we were able to find so much beauty here.

We were also reminded about the immense needs in this country, seeing kids and older people begging just about everywhere we went. God didn't want us to forget why we're here, to help the people in the greatest need. We had several opportunities to share the gospel with people and to help them out. God broke our hearts again for a people that is hurting and largely without hope because they don't truly know their savior.

Romania Tour Week 1

We have been touring around Romania for a week now already and have been really enjoying ourselves. After we helped pack up and organize everything after summer camps we took off on a train for Brasov. Brasov is in Transylvania in the Carpathian mountains. It is a medieval town with much of the walls in place and many of the buildings too.

This is the black church, a large cathedral that is the center of town. There is a nice square too where the city hall is.

Another large church in Brasov.

We enjoyed some great food there too, we had Mexican at Bella Musica, a restaurant with great atmosphere in a wine cellar. We found lots of other great food too at the cafes, with the highlights being a cappuccino croissant and a strawberry-rhubarb bar. Around Bucharest nobody has even heard of rhubarb so this was an exciting find!

We continued our tour of the medieval towns in Sighisoara, which has this great clock tower in the center. This is also the birthplace of Vlad Tepes, aka Vlad the impaler, the inspiration for the Dracula story.

The streets are lined with colorful houses like this, making it a very fun place to explore.

We also enjoyed great food here at the international cafe, the spinach quiche and blackberry apple pie were awesome. The cafe is run by the Veritas organization which works with people of all ages helping them better their lives. Our friend Jess worked with them here a few years ago.

We made a quick stop in Medias to see the church there.

Then we traveled by bus to Nemsa, which barely shows up on a map. We stayed at a really nice guesthouse where we talked over dinner with the owner about the history of the area. This area was settled by people from Germany in the 1200's and they built churches like the ones in our pictures in all the little towns. Many of them were fortified with large walls to keep out invaders. With all the recent wars involving Germany and then communism most of the Germans have left, especially after communism fell. The villages are so much different now, with the houses being lived in by Roma people now. Being there we could just feel the history and were witnesses to how quickly it can change.

We walked nearly an hour and a half with our backpacks through the mountains to arrive at Biertan, one of the best fortified churches. We asked some people if we could go up the hill through their garden to get a good picture. Then we caught a ride with a German couple back to Sighisoara because there was no public transportation at all.

We then went on to Sibiu, the European Cultural Capital of 2007. There is another huge cathedral there and we walked all the way up to the top of the bell/clock tower to see the city. We also went to an art museum but we didn't have much time because we were feeling sick earlier that day so we were resting.

We then went on to Hunedoara to see the spectacular Castle Corvinilor. This castle was built by one of the kings of Transylvania in the 14oo's and was added onto and modified by many others.

The dining hall was the neatest area, looking just like what you'd think of from a movie.

We're having a great time so far, and we have one more week to go. We are continuing to pray that God takes care of us and leads us to the right places, which he has done so far. This is our first vacation backpacking in Europe and also the first one where nothing is really planned out. So far everything has worked out just right though and we are having a lot of fun!