Dear Family and Friends,
Thank you so much for the outpouring of emails, phone calls, and cards that we have received with many of you sharing in our joy of the miracle God has done by allowing me to get pregnant with twins. We were humbled to learn how many people had been praying for us to have children for years, especially when we learned that many of our prayer warriors were children themselves. Again, we deeply thank you for your prayers. I am 17 weeks now and doing extremely well with the pregnancy.
Daniel and I were blessed to be able to travel back to Maryland last week and visit Good Samaritan Presbyterian Church and Grace Brethren School. As usual, the folks at both places treated us like family and it would good to see so many faces that celebrated our pregnancy news with us. The youth team that the school sent over last year threw us a surprise baby shower and we were definitely surprised! They were so sweet and had purchased many precious baby gifts for us. It was such a delight to see teenagers so enthusiastic about the miracle God had done in our lives. Here is a photo of us with all the kids from the group that came over to Romania to work with us last October.
We have lots of news coming from Romania that I want to share with you related to several different projects. Our employees are doing an amazing job of managing all of the projects well and keeping us abreast of road blocks and praises that arise. I decided to paste Alina’s entire email about the Good Beginnings Preschool that she wrote for their sponsors at the bottom and I really did not edit her English too much because it makes it more authentic that way. I hope you will appreciate her heart for this project as Daniel and I do. She also wrote me today to say that she had met with the teachers of the public primary school where our older students will start attending in the fall. She had to make a file on each child so they could be registered for school since none of the parents are literate. She met the two teachers that will be working with our children but expressed a concern that these teachers would have to be encouraged to believe that Roma children can succeed in school. Her prayer request was that they have a strong collaboration with the teachers for the benefit of these precious, bright children. Six of our current ten students will start school in the fall and then we will take another six from the community into our preschool. The preschool teacher, Lavinia, will spend this summer making sure the children are properly prepared for primary school. We are trying to buy a computer and learning software so we can be even more advanced than the public school system.
Neli’s news relates to her project, Nurture Network, where we sponsor families to keep their infant children at home rather than abandoning them at the local hospital due to lack of resources at home. Neli has continued to supply baby formula, vitamins, groceries, bottles, clothing, etc. for these families and it is working. She told me the families were so excited when she brought them the photos she had taken of them with their children. For most of them, it was the only photos they had. We are considering helping one of the young families with their desperate living conditions.
As you can see from the photo, their ceiling is literally falling in on them as they all sleep in the same bed at night.
The roofing material is made of cardboard and other random bits of trash. We hope that a group going over in July and another in September will be able to help this family construct a new, larger home. Right now, they live in a room approximately 6 feet by 4 feet, barely a closet for most people in the USA.
Neli also sent some great news this week that really amazed us. Since Romania will celebrate Easter on April 27th this year, she put in requests with many local companies for items we could donate to our needy families. I was thrilled to learn that her efforts paid off when the local sugar manufacturer notified her they would be donating 100 kilos of sugar to our ministry to distribute! This is a tremendous praise item and we thank The Lord for making this provision. So, in addition to the funds that came in from supporters for Easter food parcels, we have sugar to give to families as well. We thank The Lord for His faithful provision to our ministry!
Our boys at Agape Home are growing incredibly (which should not be a huge shock given how much they eat!) and all doing very well in school. We are SO proud of what these young men have accomplished and we are 100% behind them. Here is a photo of all five boys with our beloved dog, Coco, who we pine away for each day.
For those of you that our dog lovers, she may not look like much but she is a German wired-hair pointer and possible the smartest dog we have ever owned. Hopefully, one day, we can bring her back to the USA with us. Until then, she continues to be spoiled by everyone at Agape Home.
Now that our car is repaired, the employees are having trouble selling it because Romanian’s say they are afraid to buy automatic transmission since so few people own them. Please pray that someone buy this car from us very soon so we can finally buy the 4 x 4 truck we have needed for years!
Okay, I have more news but this is already quite long so I’ll save news for next week as well.
May The Lord bless each of you as you pray and partner financially with us.
Basking In The Son,
Michelle
From Alina Ciora
- Operation Lice: As you probably already know he faced a serious issue at the preschool at the middle of March. Our teacher at the preschool discovered that all of our kids had lice. That was a big challenge for all of us here. We discussed a lot and decided to use this incident as a way of helping the parents to take the full responsibility for their child hygiene and health. What we did was to buy them some lice shampoo and explain them in the smallest details how to use it for all the members of their family. Because most of the parents were working and they needed time to clean all of their kids we decided to have a day off at the preschool to give them enough time. We’ve explained the parents that after the day off the kids will come to the preschool and would be carefully checked to see if they still have lice or eggs. They need to be clean in order to continue coming. All the parents agreed to this at that point…We all waited anxiously to see the results. We were hoping and praying (and I know you also prayed for this situation) that things would workout OK.The next day we checked them all at the preschool. Most of the parents had done a good job. The kids did not had any lice. We found a few eggs but these were dead.
Two of the families did not used the shampoo because did not had the time to do it, as they later explained to us. Hearing about this we immediately took their kids at home so that they would clean them as soon as possible. In one case the parents were at work the hall day before and their daughters were asleep when they returned. But 20 minutes after we got to them they had already washed the girls and clean them after that.
The other case has one of the boys. His mother had to stay in the hospital with a smaller child and couldn’t wash his hair and clean him. She was at home when we returned with her child from the preschool and by the next day she had cut his hair, washed him with the special shampoo and clean the eggs.
It was God’s help and his victory in this situation. Thank you very much for your prayers. The problem is solved for the moment but it can reappear any time. This is way our teacher at the preschool started to check each of the kids more often.
- A thank you that makes it worthwhile…I want to share with an event that is really special to all of us. One of the mom’s came a couple of weeks ago to see our preschool. She was in the area and she decided to stop by. She had never seen the facility where we have the preschool because her oldest daughter was the one that came when ever we had a meeting with the parents. She was really surprised to see everything and wanted to be sure that we know how much she appreciated what we do for her 2 daughters that are at the preschool. “Nobody cared about our children before”, she said, “and I thank God for sending you to help our children becoming more than we are.”
She had seen huge differences in her daughters since November when we started the preschool. She could not believe how much these girls had learned. Really proud of her daughters and thankful to us in the same time she started telling what had happened one of the days before. One of her sons that is now in the 2nd grade found a newspaper somewhere and he was trying to read it… but unfortunately he doesn’t even recognize the letters. All of a sudden, Rahela, his sister, one the girls attending the preschool took the paper and explained her brother that the letter he was trying to recognize and couldn’t was “capital A”. Her mom could not believe what she had just heard. After 2 years in school nobody cared enough for her son to teach him a few letters and in a few months her younger daughter learned to recognize them.
This was encouraging to us but in the same time made our hearts cry for all the Roma kids in school that don’t have a chance to study and learn the basics. Keep these children and their future in your prayers and may God bless you for being a part of our ministry.
Alina
Posted on April 18th, 2008 by Bill Nixon
Filed under: Michelle's Journal