Dear Family and Friends,
This is an unusual email for me to write because this has never happened before. We should have sent the wire to our Romanian account several days ago for their monthly budget but there were not enough funds. In fact, we are short about $5,000 this month. Although many of you are sponsors for our children, there are many projects that we have that do not have sponsors such as our foster care program (which alone is about $3,000 per month) as well as the salaries for our social workers. I want to make this need known so you can pray about whether or not The Lord would have you help our ministry this month.
I explained a little about what is going on economically to make things harder for our ministry in my newsletter and I decided to include the same explanation here. Like many other ministries in Europe, our ministry is suffering terribly because of the economic situation with the USA dollar falling against the Euro. For those of you who don’t understand exactly how this works, I will explain it like this. Romania is now part of the European Union and their prices on everything are being raised to be the equivalent in Euro rather than their old currency, Romanian lei. They still only accept lei in the stores but the prices are clearly reflected in Euro. So, the USA dollar that at one time equaled 3.8 Romanian lei is now equal to 2.3 which is a drastic fall. Our Board Treasurer recently told us she must wire over $2,000 – $3,000 more each month to meet our monthly budget which has not increased. Coupled with this fact is the reality that our American economy is not doing well because of the increased cost of living for everyone due to the soaring fuel prices. So, needless to say, giving is way down from where it normally is. We are really thankful for those of you who give monthly because we depend on it. We want to make sure the children and families we are distributing food and services to do not suffer. We have always believed in The Lord as our Jehovah Jireh (God our Provider) and we stand on this more now than ever.
On a happier note, my nephew, Samuel, was released from Duke Children’s hospital yesterday!!! Yay!!! Cheryl and Russ still face many challenges with the port that is now in his chest for his nutrition supplement each night but we are believing for The Lord to provide them with the needed strength for the task. They will have some home health care nurses coming to assist but they are unsure for how long and to what extent. Cheryl went through an extensive training last night. And, Samuel’s life will be modified from what it was (no more swimming, playing in large sand piles, etc.) until that port comes out for fear of infection.
Here is a photo of Samuel celebrating his 4th birthday in the hospital last week with Russ and Cheryl. Thank you so much for your prayers.
And thank all of you individuals and churches that do sponsor us monthly. We couldn’t do what we do there without you doing what you do!
Basking in The Son,
Michelle
