July 2012 – adventuresinromania

Cake making and easing into life

Posted on July 26, 2012January 28, 2015 by adventuresinromania

An email I wrote to my mom last Thursday:
Today we made a cake using metric and it was an interesting experiment! They turned out well though, chocolate tastes good all the time. Coming up soon is apple picking season and Kim and I have been thinking about pie! The upside down recipe is… in Locust Grove cookbook i think. It is called ”The Most Unusual Apple Pie” but yummy 🙂 Whenever you get the energy, I would appreciate you for sending it! Thanks! Today was a better day at feeling useful around here because we made the cake and took a long walk. Have been combating some homesickness lately. I am trying to stay busy though, teaching bible study to the little kids at night, working in the garden, and crafts with the kids. It is bound to get better once we get more used to the flow of life here and have a better understanding of the language. Been enjoying bonding with the girls though, we had a girls day in the city on Wed and went to “practice grocery shopping.” We didn’t buy the items, but made a list of foods and their prices to make meals for a week for our imaginary families in the future. 🙂 They had to stay under 200lei for a week’s worth of meals ($65). And then we bought snacks 🙂 It was a fun experience and I hope to start to understand how to encourage them more.

I go to renew my passport next week, be thinking of me! I will go to the capital with a friend who knows English, so she will translate. Pray I have all my papers I need and we will have clear as crystal communication.

That is all for now, hope things are swell on the homefront, how is James coming with the pictures? Enjoy learning your Proverbs, every day is a learning experience.
La rivedere!

Becca

A few of our summer activities:

Wednesday, September 5, 2012: Handprint birthdays Kim’s mom had this idea to make a sheet with the birthday information of their family of 5 kids when Kim was growing up. Kim thought it would be a good idea to use here for this big family of 23 children, as an aide to remember all their birthdays! Beside their handprints and their names, we wrote the day, month, and year of each of the kids’ birthdays. Here Kim is mixing the paints. — Wednesday, September 5, 2012:
Handprint birthdays
Kim’s mom had this idea to make a sheet with the birthday information of their family of 5 kids when Kim was growing up. Kim thought it would be a good idea to use here for this big family of 23 children, as an aide to remember all their birthdays! Beside their handprints and their names, we wrote each of the kids’ day, month, and year of their birthdays. Here, Kim is mixing the paints.

Yay! It is finished! Now, they will have this for years to come to remember the kids’ birthdays. Even some of Mama and Tata’s children and grandchildren got involved with their handprints!

Prayer letters, VBS

July 2012 prayer letter

Posted on July 26, 2012January 27, 2015 by adventuresinromania

July 5, 2012

Well, our two weeks of VBS came and went and the kids enjoyed what we had to teach them. Now, the American team has gone home and the regular routine of the orphanage here in NE Romania is settling into place. Mama is treating us like her own. She is giving us directions about washing clothes and where we can help to make Kim and I, the leftover Americans, feel settled. After Tata read devotions to the kids this evening, he led a discussion on diligence in chores to be able to fit in time for crafts on a regular basis. He wants them to be able to make beautiful things with the extra craft supplies we have from the VBS. So, we will add that into the routine for the summer, with incentives for those who finish their tough craft projects.

I will post pictures soon of the kids’ play they put on at the end of VBS, on the ‘Lost’ parables of Jesus in Luke 15: lost sheep, lost son, and lost coin. These stories were creatively combined by our director into one, as if all of this happened to one family. The kids had a fun time playing their parts and the ‘copii mich’ -the little kids- were great sheep! Our VBS lessons during the first two weeks centered on the parables of Jesus with recurring themes of grace, mercy, forgiveness, and God’s great love.

Please pray for: Filip Gavril, grandson of Mama and Tata, who had surgery on his hip last month. He is 6 or 7 I am not sure, and has a rare bone condition which wears down his joints and cartilage in his hips. Filip had been in a cast and wheelchair for about a year. The specialists said the surgery was the best way to stop his condition from getting worse, considering his age. The surgery went well, and now he is recovering. We are just waiting until he is well enough to travel back home to Romania, probably in August. He had to have the surgery in Germany, so pray for safe travel when the family returns home. Dad- Romeka, mom-Camilia, sister-Rebeka who is 9.

–Also ease of communication between the orphanage staff and us. We will ease into the routine of the orphanage, but it will take time. Very grateful right now for those who speak English and for those who can make us laugh. Pray that communication comes with ease and we are able to retain the language.

–God’s hand would continue to be on this orphanage, through the trials and decisions as Tata and Mama choose what is best. Pray for funding, as they like many organizations right now feel a tightness as some donors pull out. Pray for full funding and search for God’s will in this: if it is something you and your family feel led to do, please donate to the Reach Ministries organization I have posted in the About section.

–Thank you! I end my letter with a hope that God’s hand of blessing would be on you and your family as you seek to discover what it means to live out the kingdom. Until next time,
Becca