Summer Camp Rosiori Kids Part 2

Here is the next part of our series of posts on summer camp here in Romania.  We continued to have a great time running the same VBS program with another group of kids.  

Here we are opening things up with a skit and some songs.

Vasi and Stefi are showing off the purses that they made for kids in other countries.

The kids made them some cards as well.

We continued to have fun doing experiments to learn about God, not sure what Vasi is doing in the background though!

We had more fun making crowns...

...painting pictures...

...and playing with goup.

At the end we had some more swim parties at the pool.

So that was another week of camp, time has flown by as we've had so much fun with the kids!  One more camp with the younger kids followed this one so in the next post we'll talk about that one.  Thanks for your prayers and for keeping up with our summer camp adventures!

Summer Camp Rosiori Kids Part 1

Summer camp continues to be in full swing here in Romania!  The last two weeks we had camp in Rosiori, where there are three different orphanages.  We did camp with each group separately and there are so many pictures that they will each get their own blog post.

This is the first of the three groups.  We continued to use our VBS curriculum and the kids really enjoyed it!

Brandon played the part of the bully that the main character had to overcome by standing strong in God.  It was fun having a medieval castle theme and the kids loved the costumes.

Here is Mihaela practicing to be a princess.

We continued to do lots of experiments and crafts and had lots of fun with the kids.

Here Ionut is concentrating on making the cartesian diver sink with his mind.  In reality when the bottle is squeezed the dropper sinks to the bottom.  When I showed them this trick all the kids thought it was magic!

Adam enjoyed painting with Adi.

Antonio enjoyed the Bible lesson and also being a helper.

In free time some of the kids turned into monkeys. 

One thing that we added with this group was pool parties.

Cannonball!

Nice try at flying!

Swimming is so fun and not something that these kids get to do very often.

Even our good friend Marius was able to make it to the pool party to see kids that he used to live with before he was in our transition program.

Thanks for all of your prayers, the camps are going very well and we know that God is blessing our efforts.  We really enjoyed this week of camp and will look forward to sharing about the next one very soon! 

Summer Camp Alexandria Girls School

We started summer camp in the beginning of July and now we are nearly half way through it.  It is going incredibly fast.  Our first group of kids were the girls from the special school in Alexandria.  We usually only see these girls at camp and at Christmas but we are still really attached to them.

For camp this year we are using the "Kingdom Rock" VBS curriculum.  We started off each day with a skit and some singing.

After the opening ceremonies we divided up into groups and went to some different stations.  There was a Bible station where the kids learned about the story of the day and was also a games station.

I headed up the imagination station, where we imagined being in God's kingdom and did fun experiments and crafts that were related to the day's lesson.

We played with a corn starch and water mixture to see that it was a liquid normally but a solid if you put pressure on it.  It was related to standing strong with God because he gives us strength.

We also did fun crafts like making crowns...

...and painting on papers that were colored with white crayons to see the coloring appear.

Rebecca headed up the missions station, there the kids learned about other children around the world who are also in need of help.  They made several different things to send the kids, like these purses...

...here is Giana proudly showing hers off.

They also made cards for the other kids...

...and bracelets too.

We had some play time too where we did some crafts and we finally broke down and let Ionela played the piano.

Camp went great thanks to our volunteers and interns helping us and a great curriculum.  God really blessed the girls and they had a great time.  There were some logistical issues but we got through them and tried to focus on helping these kids to have a good time and to learn about God.  Even though we only see these girls a couple times a year we quickly form bonds with them that last.  We have known some of them since our first summer camp in 2008!

Thank you for all of your prayers for these summer camps, please keep them coming!  We are very busy and it is easy to get tired so we need special energy and endurance to finish this well.  We can only make it with Gods help!

Summer Ministry

The school year officially ended two weeks ago, wow did this year just fly by.  We have had many teams here since May and we have done a lot of different things with the kids because of that.  

We played lots of games at the kids' apartments.  One that they really like is hot potato.  Here little Stefan is frantically trying to get rid of the bear (the hot potato) before the music stops.

We continued to do our art class at the boys special needs school.  We made paintings using dots instead of brush strokes.

In addition to the teams we also have had many interns, Brandon and Becky came to stay with us to help out and they enjoyed the kids a lot.

We have enjoyed spending time with Elena this year, we go way back!  She is planning on being baptized later this summer, praise God!

I gave a final exam to my math students and they gave me a box of chocolates and a neat origami swan.  They did very well for the most part, and hopefully after a couple years when they graduate from high school they will be able to pass the college entrance exam.

We had another reward pool party for the kids in the geography class.  We'll be doing a lot of this during summer camps, nearly every other day!

We also got to visit the other orphanages that we don't normally work in.  We know lots of the kids there because before we moved to our current location we worked at these places.  Aurelia is still Rebecca's girl.

We did a fun art lesson on perspective.

We have had lots of play days too.  We have enjoyed spending time with little Ana who was gone for a couple years and has just returned.

Ana likes to cuddle as you can see and she also likes to play cards, run across the field, and go for piggy back rides.

We even had some time that we could spend some time with friends.  We went out for dessert with Steven and Haley.

Mmmm, macarons, best part is that they are naturally gluten free!

After dessert we went to take some night pictures in Bucharest.

Thanks for all of your prayers for us in these last few weeks.  We have been very busy but have been having a great time with the kids.  We start summer camp on Monday and will need even more prayers for strength, patience, energy, and wisdom.  Most of all for the kids to have a great time, to learn about God and to have a personal relationship with him.