Layover in Munich, Germany

We're back in Romania, just in time for Christmas! We had a long trip this time, first flying to Atlanta, Georgia, and then to Munich, Germany. We had a 13 hour layover in Munich and even though we didn't sleep much on the plane and were really tired, we went out to see the city. Since we are becoming world travelers we just couldn't pass up an opportunity to see a new place!

In the main square we saw the Glockenspiel, a clock tower with figurines that dance around at noon. It is a very impressive building and the square it is in is really nice.

There were booths set up all over the place with Christmas ornaments and snacks, the smell of roasted almonds was enough to make anyone have a craving!

Christmastime is a neat time to visit different places, although it would have been a little nicer if it was snowing instead of raining. I'm sure I remember seeing something like this on Rick Steve's travel videos!

This is a museum that was once part of the ruling family of Bavaria's house.

Munich is a very nice looking city.

We enjoyed breakfast at a cafe.

One of the many impressive churches there, it looks almost exactly like the one we saw in Timisoara, Romania.

The inside of this church looks just like the one we saw in Biertan, Romania. It is really neat to see the German influences in Romania and it was cool to see the origin of the influence.

The church in Biertan had an organ in the back just like this one too.

We went to take a tour of the Nymphenburg Palace, which was the summer residence of the rulers of Bavaria. It is part of a huge complex of buildings and gardens which give a pretty good idea about the decadence and richness of these rulers.

The ballroom was a sight to behold.

We really enjoyed our short visit to Munich. We love to see new places and this stopover was an unexpected chance to go somewhere new. Now we're back in Romania after a wonderful time at home spent with our family and friends. It went really fast but we had a great time, and now we are ready for all of our Christmas celebrations here!

Great Time and Timing

In the last few weeks at home in Michigan we continued to have a great time visiting family and friends. My oh my how fast time flies, our time here has come to an end. We have done so much in a little time and have been super busy, but it has been a blessing to be home.

We haven't had much snow at all which has been nice for driving. On our trip to Canada we did go through a beautiful winter wonderland where all the trees had a nice coating of snow.

We took a trip to Canada to see our Oma (grandma) who was 102 years old. We enjoyed visiting with her, but that night she fell and fractured her hip. Only a few days later she passed away and is now with her savior Jesus in Heaven. We were able to go to her funeral the following week and we marveled at the timing of it all, being home to see her one last time and then having time to go to her funeral, we can just see God's hand in it. We will miss Oma but we know that she lived a long and full life and is now in a better place.

We also got to see all of our Canadian relatives and we enjoyed visiting with them.

We went to a hockey game with some friends and enjoyed seeing our Grand Rapids Griffins win!

We continued to spend lots of time with family...

...And friends.

We have had lots of great food while we were here, many people cooked us delicious meals and we ate at some wonderful restaurants. At our friends Christmas party I (Mark) was inspired by this mango chutney to make some Naan bread. I grilled it over charcoal and it turned out great!

Our friends made orange chicken, Mongolian venison, and egg rolls, mmm.

Lexi's favorite gift was her "Christmas underwear," she kept going around and talking about it to everyone. She really wanted to come with us to Romania, she didn't want to let us leave. She told Rebecca that she is her kid, she is just too cute. We will miss everyone while we are in Romania, please keep in touch, we love talking over e-mail, Facebook, or Skype.

We are flying out Thursday and will have a long layover in Munich, Germany. We will try to see the city if we're awake enough. Please pray for safe travels. Thank you so much for your continued prayers for us and our ministry in Romania. We are looking forward to going back and seeing our kids again and we know they are excitedly waiting for us to return. We have had a really great time at home and are extremely thankful that we have such supportive family and friends. Thank you all for being a part of our lives and ministry.

Home Time

We've been home in the magical mitten for two weeks already, it is crazy how fast time is flying. I guess that is what happens when you're having fun. We have been really enjoying spending time with our families and our friends. It is so good seeing everyone again and we have just been having a really blessed time.

We spent a weekend with my mom and soon to be step-dad. We played lots of games, watched some movies and ate lots of good food. My sister and brother-in-law and brother came for a day to hang out and celebrate and Christmas.

We also spent a weekend with my dad and step-mom and we celebrated Thanksgiving with them. We watched some football games, played some games, and watched some fun TV shows.

We've also been spending lots of time with our friends, pretty much every evening we've been getting together with someone different.

And of course we have been having a great time hanging out with "our" kids, they still all remember us (thankfully we talk on Skype frequently) and play with us like we had never left.

This is a common scene from way back, the kids always surround me when I get on the computer, they're hoping to play "the racing game".

We've also been sharing our story and talking about our ministry at our supporting churches, which has been going great. We have been showing a video that we made this summer of the testimony of one of our kids who has committed his life to Christ and was baptized this summer. He has a very moving story and hopefully we'll be able to share it with you in a future blog post. Besides just telling what our ministry is about in Romania, we've been really trying to encourage people to get more involved in missions. Helping people realize their potential to make an impact in God's kingdom is something that is really on our hearts.

Jesus called us, even commanded us as his followers to spread his love and his teachings to all people. You don't have to be called all the way to Romania to do that, even your own neighborhood is a mission field. Leaving our lives behind in order to serve God in Romania doesn't make us superstars who are doing what most people can't, we are just normal people following God's will for our lives. He has been providing for us all the way and we also really appreciate the support and prayers from all of you. We are very blessed to have such great and supportive family and friends and churches.

Fall Classes

Well, after moving into our apartment and settling in, we thought it was about time to disrupt our schedule again for a trip back to Michigan! We are currently back in MI for a month and are visiting family, friends and speaking at 5 churches. So far we have been enjoying our time home, but we miss our kids too. We are really enjoying our schedule this year. We are teaching classes in the apartments of the kids (english and a science/geography class), teaching at the special needs school, tutoring in our apartment (math, english, biology), involved in the youth group, and the Boys Transition House has started up again so we will also be teaching there. Most of our teaching is done in the afternoon, we tutor in the evenings and are at the transition house in the morning-early afternoon one day a week. So we are pretty busy, but we really enjoy our classes and being able to spend the time with the kids. On our one free evening of the work week, usually you will find us hanging out with some of the older kids at our apartment. That is the unique and special part of working in the southern location, Rosiori. The kids live in apartments (just down the street from us) and can get permission to come and visit us. We both have kids that are special to us that are more than just kids we work with, they truly are our friends. It is such a blessing to be able to support and encourage them and also to laugh together and spend time together as friends.

Mark at one of the apartments

We also had our annual Thanksgiving feast early this year. Last Saturday we had around 70 people at the team house for Thanksgiving. All graduates and current transition house "kids" (18 and up, since this is our after high school job and life skills program) are invited as well as some other people who are part of the H2H family. We had a good time and enjoyed lots of good Thanksgiving food!

Cristi, Amy, Haley and Steven

Aurel (who just graduated this spring from our program), Rebecca, Mark, Josh, Missy

Halloween and New Apartment

Who knew we'd still have fun celebrating Halloween in Romania? Halloween isn't very big here, but we're a bunch of Americans and it's still kind of fun to dress up. We went to a party with our friends from church, Amy and Cristi. It was also a birthday party for Amy.

Here we are at the party: Josh - a Jedi, Missy - a fall fairy, Me - a Jedi master, Rebecca - a Flinstone, Haley - little red ridinghood, Steven - the big bad wolf, Amy - Frankenstein's bride, and Cristi - Frankenstein.

There were lots of other people from church there too. We played some fun games and watched a nice video that Amy and Cristi made of their wedding which was just last year.

We continue to have a good time teaching our kids, our classes are going really well and we are enjoying staying in one location and working with so many more kids now.

We had worked with many of the kids only at summer camps, like this little guy here. But just those couple days of camp were enough to start building a wonderful relationship. He is probably one of the most excited and loving kids when we come to his school, he runs up and jumps in my arms every time! It is so great to be able to continue to build on these relationships. It is so great to see the joy on their faces when they see us, so rewarding!

Lately you've heard us talking a lot about our new apartment, and today you're going to be able to see it! The reason we needed an apartment is because we're now working in our southern location the whole week. It is about a two hour drive from Bucharest, and last year we only worked here two days. We only got to work with very few kids out of many, and this year we are working with the majority of them because we're here longer. Now that we are staying there more than anywhere else, we really needed our own space as opposed to sharing an apartment with some other staff like we did last year for the two days we were there.

Here's the entryway.

And the kitchen, not too big but we have it arranged so it's pretty workable now.

Across the hall is our pantry and refrigerator.

This is the living room. We spent the last two weeks putting together all the furniture (from IKEA) and mounting things on the walls. There were no light fixtures in the whole place, just lightbulbs hanging from wires. It would be a lot easier if the walls weren't solid concrete, but hey, that's why they make really big hammer drills.

This is the opposite view of the living room, showing the balcony. It is attached and adds some nice space to the living room.

Here is our bedroom. Rebecca made/ is making the curtains (they weren't quite done at this point).

Here is our bathroom. I put up the mirror and towel hooks, and we put a nice organizer in the corner which you can't see. Try and find the silhouette of George Washington, we noticed it when we were looking at the pictures with some friends!

And here is our new washing machine. The only space that would fit a washing machine is really small, so we had to get this kind, it is a top loader but the drum is the same as a front loader. The drum actually opens up so clothes can be loaded in there. It is pretty slick, and it works great.

We are really enjoying our new place, we feel like we finally have a place to call our own again after quite some time. We are so thankful to God for providing this place to us and thankful to you for all of your prayers!

Two Full Weeks

Wow, these last two weeks have been so packed with things happening and God working. We've been falling behind on our blogging lately, it would be easy to blame it on all the business but it always comes back to time management, doesn't it? The good thing is that we have a mostly established schedule now, it always takes a few weeks to get everything arranged. There are still kids who don't fit into our schedule because of class time conflicts that want to learn English so we are working on figuring that out.

Youth group continues to go well, we've had around 25 kids so far, it's a lot for one apartment living room, but we make it work. Our amazing race challenges continue, this week they had to find matching pairs of socks from a big pile.

We are working on creating posters of the kid's dreams, by drawing and using magazines. We are trying to encourage them to think more about their futures and to realize that they can do a lot with their lives.

With the younger kids we have many classes, like character development and craft time.

In the spirit of fall we had the kids do colorful tracings of leaves.

Rebecca and Sanda teach a combined class about geography and biology.

Then of course we have many english classes, we are going through the alphabet and having the kids draw pictures of things that start with each letter.

They always want to write on the white boards so we thought it would be a good teaching tool if we could use it in class.

Here is a very interesting elephant!

The other business has come from our apartment search. Praise God that he has provided one for us! We moved in this week and have been working on cleaning it up and putting together all of our new furniture. We had to go on a shopping spree to furnish the apartment (ouch!) but we're thankful that God has provided for us so we were able to do it. We really like our new apartment and it is like a burden has been lifted from our shoulders. We are so thankful and want to thank you for your prayers and support! God has really provided for us and we know now that this is the place he had in store for us from the beginning. It is awesome how He works.

God also provided for us on another front. When we are home soon we will be traveling quite a bit so we need to borrow a car from someone. Up until Sunday we hadn't heard of any car being available. We were talking with some family about it and were saying that even though the time is getting near and we didn't have a car yet, we knew God would provide one for us in His timing. Right after that conversation we got an e-mail from some friends saying that they had a car we could borrow. Their mom doesn't use her car anymore and it is just being stored and she offered it to us to use. How awesome is that?! We can tangibly feel the joy that God is giving us through his providence. Truly wonderful. When you trust in God he is faithful, we have seen that in our lives time and time again!

Start Of The Year

Wow, it's the middle of October already, and now we know it's fall because our beloved nice warm weather has left and the cold has come in it's place. But I guess that is to be expected in October. Eight years ago when we got married it was pretty cold already, dare I say nearly snowing that day. We celebrated our anniversary with our new couples, and amazingly Steven and Haley's is the same exact day.

Josh and Missy made us chicken parmesan and apple crisp, and I made the second dessert of cinnamon rolls.

The hours it takes to make these are worth it, they are sooo good, if I do say so myself.

We started our programming this week and worked a lot on scheduling. We started with a plan and knew that it would change a lot, but it actually didn't too much.

We are working in all of the locations in this area now, with many more kids than we worked with last year. Since we are staying the whole week we have much more opportunity. We are teaching English, math, biology and character to kids of all ages. The hope is that this will not only help them do well in school but get to know us better, and through that will be pointed to God.

At youth group we did Amazing Race games and challenges, complete with authentic looking envelopes and clue cards.

The kids had to put together a puzzle according to the picture...

...Solve a word search with each person missing one of the senses...

...And keep drinking pop until they found the one with the X in the bottom. They all had a lot of fun. It was pretty crowded in the small living room with 30 of us in total, but we're used to that from last year. We hope to be able to have an impact on these kids even though we have been forbidden by their director to talk about God. We know that God will work in spite of that and will do amazing things.

The last three weeks have been an emotional roller coaster with the apartment search. We have been so close to finding a few but each time something hasn't worked out. Right now we have a great prospect, one that is very nice and the price is right and everything seems to be in order, except that the owner lives in Italy and he didn't leave the legal papers with his brother-in-law who is in charge of the apartment. We would love to move in there but need to have some sort of contract with them, so we're trying to figure out how to do that. Please continue praying for this to be resolved. We know God will provide as he always has up to this point. It's just hard to put aside our worries and stresses after having such a hard time finding anything. We appreciate all of your support and prayers as we go through this, thanks!