What We've Been Up To Lately

In the past few weeks we have done quite a few special things outside of our normal routine.

We got together with Jenny, a friend from our small group Bible study from church. She made us chicken tacos, it is hard to find Mexican food here so it is always a treat when someone makes it. We also went to her birthday party and hung out with our other friend Kristie. They both work here with another organization. We enjoy getting together with friends when we can find the time.

We drove up to the mountains for a little taste of Transylvania. One of the new couples on our staff, Steven and Haley, had some family come so we went on a little sight seeing tour.

We saw the most famous castles in the area: Peles and Bran. We also saw the fortress Rasnov from a distance. It is always neat to see these as we just don't have anything like it at home.

Here we are with the new couples on staff and our intern Talitha. We really enjoy spending time with them!

We love nature and history so going to these areas is a great time because they are full of both.

Rebecca and Talitha became very close in her few months here. We hope to see more of her in the future...

Clear days like this are great, you can see the beauty of the mountains here.

After seeing the castles we went to the Medieval town of Brasov, which is very beautiful. We ate at a great restaurant there which is in an old wine cellar.

Last weekend we took a group of 16 kids on a field trip to a museum in Bucharest. This was a reward trip for good behavior and participation in Rebecca and Sanda's Geography and Science class. The kids enjoyed the natural history museum, especially these prehistoric skeletons. It was really hard to keep track of the kids because there were hundreds of other kids on field trips. What a time!

After the museum we went to a park and played and had a picnic lunch.

At the beginning of this week we had a special time with the special school for (mostly) boys here in the city that we work. There was a team here from the states so we went to the forest and they talked about America and we did some crafts.

After we were done playing at the park the new director of the school invited us over for refreshments as is the tradition here when there are guests. She had two really nice special cakes made up for us and talked a lot about how she wants to be a part of our team and to work together with us to make this school be a great place for the kids.

One of the team members presented her with a large world map and some other tokens of appreciation. We are very thankful for her and her enthusiasm, it is really special for a director to fight for the kids and to really want us to be a part of their lives.

We have both been sick the last couple weeks but Rebecca took a turn for the worse at the end of last week. She is now on antibiotics and is starting to feel better. Please pray that we will both regain our health and stay healthy. Please pray for things to go well as we enter into spring break time and try to plan fun things for the kids.

On The Playground

On Wednesday we had the day off because the schools here were having meetings for the day. We decided to go on a walk and enjoy the beautiful weather (finally!). We walked through several parks and at the last one we ran into some of our kids from one of the apartments that we work with.

We had lots of fun playing...

...And taking lots of pictures.

Getting ready for another go at the monkey bars, I was the safety net man.

Playing on something like a sea-saw.

How cute!

The monkey bars were a big hit!

We had lots of fun with all the girls, did I mention they are "our" girls? Five of them are from one family and they are definitely our special kids.

This started as the girls trying to balance me out but ended up as a jam pile on top of me!

It is really neat to have such a great relationship with these kids. When we're walking through the park and we hear "Mark!, Rebecca!" and see kids running to us, that is when we know that we are having an impact here. We are so loved and we enjoy giving these kids the love that they crave. Please pray for them and all the kids that we work with that they will be able to grow up and be successful, and that they will come to know Jesus as their lord and savior. Please also pray for those who don't participate with us, there are many who have the option but are too cool to come. Please continue to pray for us, thanking God for this ministry and also asking for wisdom, guidance, health, and safety. Thanks!

Blessings From God

We have been incredibly blessed this year, especially recently. For a long time we have been wanting and trying to get a car here in Romania. At home we both had our own cars since the end of high school so coming here and having to share a vehicle that wasn't ours was a big adjustment. We knew that at some point we would want to get a car, but things hadn't been working out well for us until the end of 2011. It was then that God stared the ball rolling by leading my former employer Extol in Zeeland to make a donation to us designated for a car.

When the money came through I started searching online. I found several cars that I liked and went to check them out with my friend and coworker Ghita. The first one I looked at was exactly what I was looking for and was really immaculate, so I decided I didn't need to look any further. We brought it to a test place where they checked everything out, and it scored 95 out of 100 overall. Here you can see it on the dyno getting the engine, transmission, brakes, and suspension checked out.

A week later I went to pick up the car and began a full day of running all over the city and standing in lines like at the place above. We started at 9:30 AM and got done at 7:30 pm. We had to go to at least 5 different locations to get everything checked out and all the documents and taxes paid. It's not nearly as easy as just going to the secretary of state or the DMV and registering the car, but I have heard that here in Romania we were fortunate to get all done in just one day!

Here we are with our new car! It is a 2007 Ford Focus with a turbo diesel engine.

This Focus is designed and made in Germany so it's totally different from the one in the USA. So far we have gotten around 45 miles per gallon! It has great suspension and handling and has lots of torque and power. It is really fun to drive.

It is also very practical and spacious, we can fit lots of luggage in the trunk which is great because we travel around so much and often take others with us.

If you know me really well you will probably get this license plate.

Many others helped out with some of the expenses like the registration, insurance, future maintenance and gas, we are so grateful and want to say thank you so much.

We thank God so much for seeing our need and meeting it above and beyond our expectations. We know that this was his plan because everything just fell into place perfectly and now we have a really nice car that we are already enjoying very much.

God provided something else special for us recently. Rebecca has been teaching about different countries and has wanted something very portable to be able to show presentations at the kids' apartments and school.

Through the generosity of several different people who gave us gifts without us even mentioning the need, God provided us with this iPad2. Rebecca has already been using it to create and show her presentations, the above being about Mexico. Thanks so much!

We would also like to say thanks to everyone who has been praying for us this year. God has honored your prayers and has really been watching over us and providing for us. He has been using many people to bless us over and over and we are so thankful for that! We are overwhelmed by your generosity in support and prayers. God keeps teaching us over and over that when we depend on him he provides in ways we couldn't even imagine.

Pray For Romania Part 3

Romania today is a land of great contrast. The large cities are modern and bustling with people whereas country life is slow and you would think you have gone back in time 100 years. Many people are buying expensive sports cars to show off and while they sit in traffic beggars come down the road asking for money. People are building bigger and bigger houses while others struggle to heat their homes for the winter.

In the wake of communism Romania ushered in a new era of democracy and capitalism, but it has been a struggle to shed the old ways of thinking and doing things. Under communism everyone had a job even if it meant creating useless positions. The communists didn't want any foreign debt so they exported nearly everything they produced and left little for the people. Now that Romania has joined the EU, much more is available but it is hard to attain as the country struggles with enormous debt and high unemployment.

Many people are really struggling to make it here in Romania, and among the hardest hit are the widows, like our friend Catarina. She has been a widow for over 20 years and gets a pension of around one hundred dollars a month. Her medication costs nearly half of that which leaves very little for life's necessities, especially wood for heating in the winter.


Catarina usually only heats one room of her house where she stays nearly all of the time. She has a daughter who works in Spain in order to help her out, but many don't have anyone to help them.

Even so, they are always very hospitable. I visited Catarina this week and she invited me to eat with her, we had a traditional peasant meal of mamaliga (kind of like grits but with cornmeal), cheese, eggs, sausage and milk. We have experienced this sort of hospitality many times, it is very humbling when someone who has far less than you uses all they have to make you feel welcome.

We have had the great pleasure of staying in this small village for summer camp the last two years in a row. We have enjoyed getting to know the locals and ministering to them.

There are so many people here that just long for someone to care for them. Just like the kids, many of the people here don't have a great family network that sustains them. When they get old they don't typically go to nursing homes, they just keep trying to survive on their own. Please pray for them, that God will provide for them and help them to have faith in him.

Please pray for all of the struggling people in Romania. One of the main reasons that children are abandoned is that the family or single mom doesn't have the means to support them. Many families struggle with alcohol abuse and other forms of abuse, please pray for them and ask God to touch the hearts of the abusers so that they stop doing this.


Please pray for Romania's economy and government. The economy isn't doing well here and the government is often corrupt and ineffective. The pay for government workers keeps getting cut and that includes teachers, nurses and doctors, so the quality of work in those sectors is going down. People are in general very discontent and there is a lot of political unrest.


Please thank God that he has called us and many other here to help these people, and ask that he would send more people here. The people need hope and the only way they will have it is by knowing Jesus as their savior. With the kind of hope he gives us we can live through any situation knowing for sure that we are in his arms.

Thank you for reading this series on Romania, I hope that you enjoyed it and that it has given you a better idea of what this place is like and how you can pray for it and its people. We are very thankful for you and your prayer support, please continue to lift us up in your prayers as well.

Pray For Romania Part 2

In the last post I talked about what has happened in Romania in the last half century as far as the government and what communism did to the faith of most of the people in the country. One of the things that the communists wanted was a large industrial work force and a large army, so the way they went about that was to make women have lots of kids. Women were supposed to have at least five children and were considered national heroes if they had ten or more.

All forms of birth control were outlawed and so the population started to grow. The problem was that there was no infrastructure or economical prosperity to support all these kids, and their families couldn't take care of them. The children would be dropped off as babies at hospitals where they were basically warehoused because there were so many. Sometimes they would be three or four in a crib and none would make a sound because they got used to being ignored.

Medical sciences were taken away by the dictator because he thought they were worthless, so nurses and doctors didn't know how to properly care for the kids nor did they have proper equipment. The nurses were given two needles per year and they didn't have sterilization so diseases spread easily.

Kids languished in their cribs and if they survived long enough they would be sent to the orphanages where they lived in close quarters with little personal care at all. Their development was stunted and they developed behavioral disorders.

By the time of the revolution in 1989 there were around 150,000 orphans who had never known what it was like to have a family or even people who loved them. They had no hope of a normal life because of their problems and the stigma of being an abandoned kid.

Thankfully their plight was brought to the public eye after the revolution by people like the man who made the "Hand Held" documentary, but change was really slow to take place. Many Romanians didn't even know that there were orphanages in their own cities and still had a hard time believing what was being said about all these kids.

People from America started adopting kids and going to Romania to help, but in the early 2000's adoption was stopped due to corruption in the system, so once again these kids had no hope for a future.

Over time the number of kids who end up in the orphanages has dropped, but not by much. There are still many babies being left in the hospitals and now it isn't because of government policies, it is because of the high teen pregnancy rate and widespread poverty. A of lack of readily available birth control and a culture that is very open sexually means that there are many young girls who are having babies. Many people are struggling financially so they can't take care of their children so they also end up in the orphanages.

This problem has created a new problem, abortion. Today Romania has the highest abortion rate in Europe, so while the number of kids in orphanages has gone down the abortions have skyrocketed.

This is why we are here in Romania, because there are still so many kids here who need to be loved. They don't have a lot of hope for their lives and we are here to help them see that they can have a bright future.

We also long to share with them the most important thing in our lives, which is our faith in Jesus Christ. This faith brings salvation through the grace of God and without it everything we do in this life is in vain.

To accomplish our goals we build relationships with the kids through our classes and interactions with them. We have really deep relationships with some and love being called Mommy and Daddy by the little ones. We love the kids with all of our being and love spending time with them and encouraging them. We are here to show them love that we have through our savior Jesus and through the joy that we have in knowing him.

There is so much yet to be done here. Things have gotten better for the kids in general but there are still thousands who grow up in orphanages without loving parents.

Please pray for these kids, that they can have hope for their future and that they will come to know Christ as their personal savior. Please pray for us and others who are working here to make a difference in their lives. We are so few and there are so many kids, please pray for God to send more people to help. Please pray for God to continue providing for us and our organization Heart 2 Heart. Pray also for other organizations that are working here too.

Please pray against the powers of darkness that strive to stop our work here. The kids have so many temptations here, pray for them to choose to follow the path that God wants for them. Pray for the directors of the orphanages to be open to us helping and speaking about God. We have a problem with one of them now who has forbid us from teaching about God, pray that his heart is changed or that someone who loves God would replace him. Most of all please pray for God to work here and to do his will, that he will use ordinary people like us to change this place.