Summer 2012 Recap - Romania

Summer in Romania is always a highly anticipated time that we look forward to all year long.  Working with the kids through summer camps enables us to minister to them in a whole new way.  We get to take them out of their normal environment where feelings like loneliness, anxiety, and oppression are ever present and bring them into a high energy, fun filled time.  We also have more freedom to talk and study about God and to share His good news with them and make it real through our testimonies and interactions.  This summer was no exception and we really had a great time!

We started out with a special camp for teen girls and two trips to the mountains with some of the older boys.  The girls enjoyed an olympic themed camp at the girls transition house.  In the mountains with the boys we set up our tents inside the protective fence of the mountain rescue station to keep out the bears and other animals that roam around there.  We did lots of hiking and sight seeing and we had many chances to talk about God and what it means to be his follower.  We focused on how we can honor God, grow, and be joyful in the trials that we face.  We also followed the life of David and used him as an example of how to be a man after God’s own heart.  We had an awesome group of guys come from America to help us and they contributed a lot to making these trips great.

We then started day camps with the younger kids, from ages 3 to 14.  We brought them out to our transition house in small groups and did a sort of VBS program with them.  We sang, learned about the Bible, and did olympic themed crafts and games.  The weather was so hot most of the time, usually mid 90’s to low 100’s, so we played lots of water games like duck, duck, goose with water balloons, balloon toss, and slipping and sliding on a giant slip and slide.  These camps were the highlight of the kid’s summer and they never wanted to leave!

After two more older boys and girls camps were finished a small team from FairHaven Ministries, our home church, came to help us run a fun VBS program for the kids at one of the orphanages.  We had a really great time ministering with them and they did a great job of working with the kids.  We were really encouraged and blessed by them coming and are hoping that more people will come on a trip that we are planning for next year. 

At the very end of summer we headed to Vienna, Austria to visit our friend Carolin, who was an intern with H2H last year.  We really enjoyed touring three palaces, seeing impressive cathedrals, going to a Mozart & Strauss concert, and eating amazing food.  We then headed home for a short visit which included being part of Rebecca’s sister’s wedding.  We enjoyed seeing family and friends but our time home was way too short to even begin to see everyone.  Don’t worry though, we’ll be back sometime around Christmas for a longer time so we’ll get to share with our churches and spend more time visiting with everyone.

Please Continue To Pray:

- Praise God for such a great summer. He sustained us even as it was very busy and taxing.  Pray that the seeds that we planted will grow into faith that will be put into action

- School is starting soon!  Please pray for guidance and wisdom for us and all of our staff as we plan our classes and work on scheduling

- Both transition programs will also be starting soon, for the first time in two years for the girls program. Pray for the kids coming into the programs that they will have a great growing experience in the programs.  Please also pray for all the staff that will be involved in these challenging programs

- None of our students passed the college entrance exam, only 40% in the whole country did!  Pray for their next steps as some enter into our transition programs and others will be helped by H2H to find apartments and jobs.  Some will continue to study to take the test again next year

- Praise God for all of our support partners and pray that God will bless them and continue to provide for us.  Pray also that H2H and our churches will be fully funded.  Pray for staff unity and for a great year in which we can see a big change!

To download a printable copy of our newsletter click on the picture of it below and download it.

Also check out the promotional video that H2H had made with all new footage from this spring!

New H2H Promotional Video

Thanks as always for your prayers and support, we couldn’t do this without you!

Beautiful Vienna

After all of our summer camps and the busy summer ministry are done we usually get some time to recharge and take a vacation.  This year we headed home for Rebecca's sister's wedding which is this weekend.  On the way over, we stopped in for a short visit in Vienna, Austria.  We met up with and stayed with our friend Carolin who was an intern with H2H last year.

Vienna is a really beautiful city with many palaces, churches and buildings with amazing architecture.  This is one of the three imperial palaces there that we saw.  Inside was an art museum with lots of classical paintings.

At the palaces the landscaping is always immaculate with flowers, shrubs and fountains.

This is the banquet hall in another one of the palaces, unbelievably big and so ornate and rich.

In the old part of town there was limited car traffic and lots of horse drawn carriages.

There were also many well kept parks.

We also had the good fortune of going to a symphony orchestra concert where they played Mozart and Strauss pieces.  It was really fun and we enjoyed hearing such classical music in the place that it was composed and first played.  That is one of the neat things about touring different places in Europe, there is so much history there.

This is one of the main churches in town, St. Stevens.  I climbed the 343 steps of the bell tower to get a great view of the whole city.

The inside was amazing and we got to do something that we've never done before, going down into the catacombs underneath the church.  It started off as just some normal looking rooms that were nicely finished but as we went further they got darker and older feeling.  Then we were able to look inside some rooms and see the bones and old rotting coffins.  It was kind of creepy knowing that these were real bones and skulls that used to belong to real people.

In the streets there were many statues and monuments like this one.

This is the altar inside of another church that we visited.

This is the state opera house all lit up at night.

This is one of the palaces that we visited and it looked really cool at night.

You can tell that Vienna takes a lot of pride in their city and loves to show off the beauty of their historical buildings.  This is their town hall.

We stayed with Carolin and she was a very good hostess, arranging all sorts of good breads and cheeses and cooking for us the first night after we arrived.

The following nights we went out to eat and had some delicious Indian, Thai, and Austrian food.

We really had a good time in Vienna and with Carolin.  It is always fun to see a new city especially one as nice and full of things to do as Vienna.

FairHaven Team!

Last week we had the incredible pleasure of working with a group of people from FairHaven Ministries, our home church!  We have been praying for a group of people to come and work with us her from our church for a long time, and our prayers were finally answered.

The McCrum family came along with Howard and Genny.  They all have awesome stories of how God provided for them to come.  Howard is the only one who had been here before, in fact, he was with us on our very first trip in 2007.

Each day we went to one of the orphanages and did the same VBS program that they did at our church this summer.  The kids absolutely loved the singing and making motions with the songs!  After singing we did crafts like paper plate fish, painted sun catchers and bracelets.

After crafts we went outside to play on the playground and always had a blast.

 

There are many new kids at this orphanage so even we don't know them all since we normally don't work there.  It was fun getting to know more kids.

The girls had their nails panted many times.

The guys carried lots of kids around.

And we had lots of fun playing around.

 

More nail painting...

...and lots of sidewalk chalk drawings.  Usually after the orphanage the team would go to the baby hospital and love on the many babies there.

We had a really great time working with this wonderful group of people (here the other couples on staff are with us, Steven & Haley and Josh & Missy)!  It was a big encouragement for us to have people from home come here to work along side of us.  They all had a great time too, building lasting relationships with the kids that they worked with for the whole week.  A big thank you to those who supported them and helped them come.  

We would love to have more people come from home!  Next year another group from our church will be coming so please start thinking and praying about whether God is calling you to do this too.  We will keep you informed of the details as they come.  Of course, you don't have to be from FairHaven to come, you can come with them or with one of the many other groups.  The main thing is that the more people that come to help us out the better, there are so many kids who need love!!!

On another happy note, our car is finally fixed and running great!  Earlier this summer we were driving and a stone somehow got into the engine compartment.  It hit the radiator and caused the coolant to leak out quickly, which caused the engine to overheat rapidly.  That caused the head gasket to rupture.  So we had that all replaced and now it is back to normal.  Thanks for your prayers as we went through trying to figuring it all out and waiting for it to be done.  Please pray that something like that doesn't happen again!

Boys Camp...the best for last

After day camps we had two boys camps.  Boys from four of the orphanages we work with came and spent three days and two nights out at Nenciulesti.  The location is in the middle of a small village so we are always trying to be creative in the activities we choose.

 

One of our longer activities was a compass course through the village.

We had three guys from Kansas that stayed the entire summer and were a big help.

It was quite hot, upper 90's, so we played water games. This is water balloon baseball.

Tug of war on the slip and slide

Ultimate Frisbee

The first group of boys

The first day of the second group of boys ended up a little different than we planned.  We had rain with high winds and the tents the boys were going to sleep in got flooded...but if there is one thing we have learned while being here in Romania, it is to be flexible because plans will change!

 

The wind blew the gate open!

The next day was beautiful!

A different kind of human pyramid :)

And of course, lots of soccer!  The older boys love to play and several of them have a lot of talent!

Singing at the campfire

Obstacle course

 The second group

I hope you are still reading, because the important things are coming now ;)  One of the best parts of having the oldest kids at camp is the level of conversation you can have.  The same curriculum was used from the backpacking trip, from the book of James and about the life of David.  And after the lessons there were many good questions and conversations that occurred.  There are many different reasons why some of these boys are choosing to not follow God, and it is a privilege to be able to openly talk about and discuss the questions they have.  And while we may not have seen anyone change the way they thought, we have the hope that one day God will use our words and bring them to him.  So please join us in praying for these kids, for God to soften their hearts and reveal himself to him, to open their eyes and give them the faith and life they need.  It is a blessing that God has choose us to be a part of these kids lives and that he uses us to show them his love.