Philippians 4:12-13 “I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty of in want. I can do everything through him who gives me strength.”
Dear Family and Friends,
I am not quoting the above scripture because I feel this way every moment of each day. I quote is because I know this is how I need to feel every moment of each day. It is a promise from God to me I have leaned on considerably in the last few months.
We have lots of fantastic news to share with you today! First, after many months of waiting and complicated details, we FINALLY have the first step of the permits we need for Agape Home! This is a tremendous sigh of relief but we are afraid to get too excited because there are still many steps to take before we can move in the first women. (Actually, the first client happened last night when the stray dog we have out there gave birth to a litter of puppies…photos to come soon!)
The other big news today is the approval of our first two Christian foster families! Our social worker, Lia, has worked extremely hard over the last few weeks to complete home studies, mountains of government forms, and medical tests for each member of every family. We prayed for today’s “hearing” to be successful and it was! They issued approval of both families and the right for each of them to take a child. The photo below is both foster mothers on the outside with two of our children and Lia in the middle.
During the month of May, we celebrated the birthday of “Moses,” one of the children we have had in our care sine we opened New Life House three years ago. We have recently experienced many problems with him related to Reactive Attachment Disorder and we have looked for another ministry for special needs children to take him. Please pray for this to happen soon! “Moses” is celebrated his 6th birthday with lots of cake.
A few weeks ago, I mentioned we have a new intern missionary, Mona, serving with our ministry. Mona has become an instant hit with our children and her co-workers! She is a tremendous blessing to our team and we know she will continue to bless us over the next 3 months. Below is a photo of Mona with our smallest child, “Tian.” Because God is good, “Tian” will be leaving New Life House in two weeks because he is being adopted by a Romanian family! We are so excited for him and we know we will continue to see him because his adoptive family lives right around the corner!!!
We have two medical cases pending in our By His Stripes project and I would like for any of you who have contacts to please let me know if you have any suggestions for how we can help these two cases. The most urgent of the two cases is a three year old little girl born with an eye disease called “retinoblastoma,” a genetic mutation which resulted in a malignant tumor that caused her loose her eyeball. The disease has now moved to the other eye and she has already lost most of her vision in that eye. The mother is desperate. She has been in almost every major city in Romania trying to seek treatment. The x-rays taken were sent to a hospital in Germany and the prognosis is as follows: if the child does not have immediate surgery, she will be permanently blind and the tumor can metastasize to the brain. I checked this with an American doctor who lives here and she looked up the disease in her books and verified this.
The hospital in Germany has given the cost of 20,000 Euro to perform this surgery. This is an wonderful mother who loves her child very much and I would like to help her if possible. If any of you have suggestions of how we can be used by Jesus to help this child, please contact me.
We thank all of you who support us to help us help the children of Romania. We are seeing God do amazing things among the people here. Last week, we had FIVE Romanian families come forward to adopt. Thank you, Jesus!! Y’all keep praying!
Basking in the Son,
Michelle
Posted on June 9th, 2003 by Michelle
Filed under: Michelle's Journal