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.

Pray For Romania Part 1

Last weekend we went to the movie theater to watch a documentary about Romania titled "Hand Held." It is the story of a man who traveled to Romania shortly after the fall of Communism in 1989 and what he found here. It was a very moving film and it made me think about why we are here and what we are doing. Many people wonder: why Romania? Out of all the countries that we could have gone to why did we chose to come here? Aren't there people even in America that need help too, and isn't Romania already a Christian nation? Well yes of course, there are people all over the world who need help, even in America, yet we ended up here. First of all, we know that God called us here, we would have gone anywhere but we felt him calling us to Romania.

It all started when one girl from our church wanted her parents to adopt, but they didn't feel it was the right time for them. Instead they searched for a way they could help children in great need, and found out about mission trips to Romania. We went with them on their second trip and after that we felt God pulling us there more and more, to the point when, after our second trip we felt that he was telling us to leave everything that we knew to work there full time. I'd like to share some of the recent history of Romania so you can have a glimpse of what these people have gone through in the last half century.

Romania has been a largely rural and agricultural country for a long time. They were in fact quite prosperous, their capitol Bucharest was called "Little Paris" because of the prosperity and architecture in similar style to Paris, France.

Then world war two happened and it all went wrong, Romania was originally allied with the Axis powers and it wasn't until near the end of the war that there was a coup that changed the leadership so they changed their alliance to the Allies. It was too late though, as Romania was given over to Russia which led to the rise of communism.

The communists took everything good in the country for themselves and didn't leave much for the rest of the people. They constructed block buildings and forced most of the people to move in so that they would all be equal and so they could build a huge industrial work force.

I've always wondered why the plumbing is always so bad in the block buildings, and I heard the answer in the film: when they were constructed the builders said "If they don't have indoor plumbing in their houses in the country they don't need it here." Imagine living in a 5 to 12 story building with no bathroom and no elevator. The conditions were horrible in the winters especially. It was all really a method of control. Thankfully plumbing was added later and this puts it in perspective: any plumbing is better than no plumbing at all.

Another method of control of the communists was to take over the Orthodox church and install priests who worked for them. Priests who wouldn't agree to be informants and to only talk about approved things were put in jail and badly mistreated. The communists took the truth that faith in Jesus is the only way to be with God and instead said that someone would have to be stupid to believe in God. This lead to a whole generation of lost people who believe that they are OK because they are Orthodox but they don't have a relationship with Jesus or even believe that God exists. The evil one really used this to bring a veil of darkness over this country and to create a place where people are very resistant to the truth and are very oppressed.

So I ask you to really pray for the people of Romania. Pray that God will soften their hearts and prepare them to hear and receive his gospel. Pray for God to bind the evil one so he can no longer oppress these people and that they will revel in their freedom by turning to God. Pray for a true revival here, and pray for the faithful people here to make a big impact on their society. Pray for those working here including us who are trying to bring God's kingdom here by sharing about Jesus Christ and how he died for our sins so that through faith we can come to God.

The last few weeks have been bitterly cold here and there has been lots of snow, up to 12 feet in some remote areas. Please pray for the people who are too poor to heat their homes and are struggling to survive this winter. Many people have died not just here but in many other areas of Europe too. Please pray that God will give some relief from this snow and cold and that when it starts to melt that there aren't floods.

Thanks for your prayers, they are so important! In the next couple weeks I will finish this story by talking about what happened to the kids of Romania under communism and how they and the country are doing today.