Christmas Celebrations!

After coming back to Romania we got to meet our kids again at the first Christmas program of the season. We were all so excited to see eachother, they missed us a lot and we missed them too. They put on a wonderful program where they sang carols, performed a skit, recited some poems, and danced.

Our Romanian partners Sanda and Mariana put together this program and it turned out very nice. The kids enjoyed themselves very much.

This was a skit about the birth of Jesus.

Here was a dance.

And here we are with some of our friends!

Later in the week we went to the celebration at the boys school.

They put on a fun program too.

They were really happy to see us too after our long absence, thier warm hugs and smiles were so great to come back to.

After that we went to the girls school to hand out their Christmas presents.

We usually only see these girls at special times like when we hand out school kits or go to their programs or have them at summer camp.

Seeing them that little they are always excited when we come.

We celebrated Rebecca's birthday with the youth group, they sang "La Multi Ani," their version of "Happy Birthday."

We had a great week and were so warmly welcomed back to Romania. It was really great to see our friends on staff too, they came to all of the programs with us and it was fun to catch back up with them again. We were also able to catch back up on sleep after our really long trip back. Thank you to everyone who makes it possible for us to be here, through your support and prayers, we are so grateful for the opportunity to work with these kids!

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!