Day Camps +

Summer is here and that means summer camp is here too!  We've been having a great time with kids from all the different orphanages.  Our program is about the Olympics and the kingdom of God, so we have lots of fun games and stories and crafts that we are using to point the kids to a relationship with God.

It has been really hot so we've been doing water games every day.  Here we are playing on the giant slip and slide.  This is also a way to get the kids to take a bath without even knowing it because we put soap on to make it slippery :-)

 We also play with water balloons a lot, and we have some special big ones saved for soaking the kids at the end.

Of course we love loving the kids and being loved back!

Duck Duck Goose with water is always one of the favorites.

And we even turn an old milk bin used for making cheese into a mini-pool.

We spend some time each morning and afternoon taking about God and doing crafts like bracelets and cross necklaces.

And we play other games like the pulling the boat relay, bowling, scavenger hunt, hula hoop, and more.

More water...

... And the penalty for getting caught in Duck Duck Goose.

Each time we also separate the kids into different groups and we assign each one a different country.  Then we color flags from our countries and do a parade with the Olympic torch.

Here is where the "+" comes from in the title of this post.  There are a couple other things going on right now that we would like to ask you to pray about.  

We've been talking a lot about the kids we work with who needed to pass the college entrance exam to get into college.  The test is done now and unfortunately no one passed.  This isn't just something that our kids are facing, only about 40% of kids passed in the whole country, just like last year.  There is something majorly wrong here on a country wide educational scale, but it hits our kids the hardest because they will be put out of the orphanage with no possibility to go to college and better their lives.  Many of them will probably enter into our transition program which is great but for some going to college would be a better fit.  Some will retake the test this fall but they have lots of studying to do if they want to have a chance of passing.  Please pray for all of these kids, that God will reveal his plan to them and for there to be good options for them to go forward.  Without family support we may be all that they have as a support network.  Please pray that we will be led by God and know how to help them.

Another unfortunate situation that we have right now is with our car.  We were driving down to camp when we noticed a change in the A/C temperature and very shortly after that the car overheated.  There was no more antifreeze at all even though I had checked right before we left.  We were able to get to a Ford mechanic after filling it back up with water and found that there were around 5 holes in the radiator, probably caused by a rock that somehow got in the fan and was shot at the radiator.  After having that replaced I drove it to camp and noticed that it was low on antifreeze and there was really high pressure in the cooling system.  I took it back to the mechanic and they said that all of their repairs check out and they believe that something was damaged when it overheated.  At this point we need to figure out what it is and are hoping it isn't the worst case scenario which would be the head gasket.  Please pray that we will be able to find the root cause of this and that it can be resolved permanently and inexpensively.  We know that our car is a true gift from God and we praise him for it, so we are praying that if this is an attack from the evil one that it will be stopped and that this will work for God's glory.

Thanks as always for your prayers.  We really rely on God's strength and he uses your prayers in big ways.  Please continue to pray for endurance as even though our camps are a lot of fun, they are really taxing on our energy.  Thanks for being there for us!

Second Mountain Camping Trip 2012

This year us guys on staff had the awesome opportunity to go on two trips to the mountains with boys from the orphanages.  Doing this allowed us to take more kids than we would normally be able to.  We started our second trip fearing rain but it never came, praise God.

We didn't have any problems this time with directors or car problems, but there ended up being fewer boys than we thought there would be.  We learned a lot from the first trip so we were able to better organize things and so this trip went a lot more smoothly.

We even set up a nice little cooking shelter in between the two vans that stayed up with us.

We started out with a long hike to a huge waterfall.  It had rained a couple days before we got there so the water was flowing a lot more.  Here are Steven and I in our matching Patagonia sweatshirts which were kindly donated for this trip.

Here we are closer to the waterfall, we had a blast climbing up there and it was really spectacular.

We really enjoyed our times of worship and praise around the campfire.

And of course smores are always a big hit!

This time we went up in a canyon and climbed up some pretty tight crevasses, good thing we brought some good rope!

And of course we saw lots of nice waterfalls along the way.

We went into the cave again...

And I tried out some light writing, guess what it says.

Some of the boys and Bryce were brave enough to go in the freezing cold lake, they said it was refreshing but the rest of us just took their word for it.

I love taking closeup macro shots and I found quite a few opportunities...

With my favorite being this beautiful butterfly.  

We had a great time, and best of all the boys really listened and participated with what we had to say about God and how we can have a relationship with him.  We also shared more testimonies which the boys really enjoyed and we think connected with. The last day on the way home we had one last devotional and at the end we asked them if they wanted to accept Christ. Almost all of them did, praise God!  Now we just need to pray that God makes all of these seeds grow into full faith.  Please continue to pray for all of these boys and all of the others who will be coming to all of our camps.  Pray that they will be open to the gospel and that they will be transformed.  The hardest part is for them to put their faith into practice once they've gone home, so pray that Satan doesn't snatch away their new hope in Jesus.  Thanks for being such great prayer partners!

First Mountain Camping Trip 2012

For the last couple of years we have had a backpacking camping trip and this has been our premier summer camp.  Up until now we just did this once but this year we decided to do two trips so that we could take more boys up for a great time of enjoying God's beauty and hearing about his saving gospel.

We welcomed a large group of volunteers this time: our friend Adam from Michigan, Steven's friends Jason and Bryce from California, and Parker, Drew, and Ryan from Jen's home town.  Plus Steven and Josh are new staff and Ghita came to help translate so we were a group of 10!  Ten guys on one trip is something that doesn't happen very often and for this it was perfect!

We had a rough beginning because the director at one of the orphanages changed things up on us the day before, so we had to scramble to change around which boys were going when and we had to shorten the first trip by one day.  To make matters worse when we left one of the cars wouldn't start so we got up to camp pretty late.

We ended up having a great time though and God blessed everything that we did.  The boys were super excited about camping and hiking, here we are at the Sphinx, a rock formation on the top of one of the mountains.

We hiked of course to the cross because it is such an impressive monument and is a natural place to talk about what Christ did for us.

Here I am showing off my new backpacking gear, my Osprey Kestrel 68 backpack worked out really nicely!  I look forward to using this and my Alps Mountaineering sleeping bag and pad on many future trips.

Around each meal and at some hiking stopping points we had devotional talks.  We talked about what James says in his book of the Bible, that we need to be joyful in trials and to live out our faith.  This whole trip was filled with trials and tests right from the start because of all the changes that happened, so we got a chance to model this for the boys.  We also talked about the life of David and his triumphs and struggles.

Adam gave his testimony and the boys were able to really connect with his story.

We did lots of fun stuff too like tour this awesome cave that is part of a monastery compound.

And we saw lots of waterfalls on our hikes up and down the mountains and valleys.

This gave me a great opportunity to try out some of the settings on my new Panasonic LX-3 that my friend Dan from Canada gave me.  I am really excited about what I was able to do and how these pictures turned out.  I've always wanted to take motion blur shots of waterfalls because I've always loved waterfalls so much.

Here I am with my pal Steven, wearing our Patagonia gear.

We had a really great time and made it through the trials and hardships as a stronger team.  We had many great talks with the boys and they seemed to really listen.  As a team we talked a lot about planting seeds in these boy's lives, God says that we are responsible to do this and also to water existing seeds.  But he tells us that it is His job to make the seeds to grow, so I would like to ask you to pray for these boys.  Pray that the seeds that we planted and watered will grow into faith and that the boy's lives will be transformed.  Pray for the boys to put what they learned into practice, this is always the hardest part especially for them going back to the same exact bad situation.  Pray for all of us who were helping on this trip to be continuously used by God and that this will be looked back on as a great growth experience.  Pray for this to continue to be a great and powerful trip for many years to come and for more guys to continue coming not only on this trip but throughout the year.

Primavara 2012 Romania Update

Did you know that we serve a God who is always working in us, through us and around us?  Often times it is difficult to see God working in hard situations but we have to cling to the hope that he never will abandon us and will always fight for us.  Here in Romania we often get to clearly see God working and would like to share a few recent stories with you.

We’ve been talking a lot about the director who got upset last summer when some of our kids were baptized.  He told us that if we wanted to work with any of his kids we wouldn’t be able to talk about God, so we have been praying a lot for a change of heart or for him to be moved.  We have just found out that he has been moved and that the new director seems to be more open to what we want to do.  We don’t know her very well yet but we are praying that she will support our goal of sharing the love of Jesus with these kids.

We were recently at a wedding of some friends from church and someone told us that the groom’s parents had adopted a girl named Flori from the hospital that we worked at on our first trip here in 2007.  We instantly remembered that cute little girl and wondered if this was her, so we went to talk to the parents to find out.  One of the hard things about working at the baby hospital is that once the babies leave it is hard to know what happens to them.  But in this case we found out that our little Flori was in fact adopted by a great family and is now a healthy, happy, flourishing little girl.  We are so overjoyed that we were allowed to see how God has worked in her life and were given a glimpse of hope for all the other babies that are left at the hospitals each year.

 There are of course many situations that are still ongoing that we are waiting to see how God works.  The kids who have just graduated high school have to take a test in order to go on to college.  We have been tutoring some of them and it has been an emotional rollercoaster becuase they haven’t been very motivated to study or work hard.  They often feel overwhelmed and that there is no way that they can pass and they feel worthless and stupid.  It has been a challenge to encourage them that they can do it; they need lots of help from God right now.

 

 Two of the five boys in the transition program found jobs in Bucharest and moved there already.  The others have been getting impatient and one of them left the program even though there is such a short time left.  After talking with him and our leaders a lot over the last couple weeks and searching all over town for him, I (Mark) was able to bring him back into the program.  Now he just needs to be patient and endure and know that God has something in store for him.

 

We have also done many special things in the last few months too, like take many kids on field trips, be part of the filming for a new H2H video, have guests stay with us from Michigan and Austria, and have many birthday celebrations.

  

Please Continue To Pray:

- Praise God for replacing the director who wouldn’t let us talk about our faith and pray for the new director to be open and willing to work with us.

 - Summer camps are starting now!  Please pray that all the details come together and that God uses this time to work in amazing ways.  Pray for him to work in the hearts of the kids and to give all of us workers the strength and wisdom to do his will.

- Pray that the high school graduates who will be taking the college entrance exam will be prepared and will pass the test.

 - Pray that the graduates of our transition program will be able to find jobs and an place to stay.

 

 

- Pray for our family and friends especially for some specific health concerns.  Pray also for us to stay healthy as we come into the busiest time of the year.

- Pray for all of the volunteers that are coming, for safe travel, health, energy, and funds to come in.

- 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.

 Thanks so much for reading and praying and for being a part of our ministry!

If you would like to print out this newsletter please just click on the picture above.  We would love it if you distributed this with your family and friends and those at your church.  The more people that know what we're doing and can pray for us and our ministry the better!