(8-10-11)  One of our employees did a couple walk through videos of the Gepis center.  Here they are:

If you have ever tried to get something official in Romania, then you may know the challenges and hurdles there are to complete tasks.  Then, throw on the International aspect of CITS and you can begin to get the picture of the difficulty in getting all of the approvals required to build a building there.

BUILDING PROGRESS

We had a team arrive on May 15th (3 days ago as of this writing) and they got right to work on the Gepis center…..well, except for “Muddy Monday.”  Since it was raining all day on the 16th, the team erected a temporary fence around the building area.

Team erects temporary fence around the building site in the rain.

Terrific Tuesday!!

The rain stopped allowing the team to get to work on building the first floor.  In Romania, buildings are typically built of bricks and mortar rather than wood so don’t be surprised by the lack of framing materials on site.

Team members lay the bricks that will make up the outer walls of the Gepis Center

A look at Tuesday's progress on the center

Wonderful Wednesday!!

On Wednesday (today!!!  Romania is seven hours ahead of the East Coast of the U.S.) the team made even more progress on the construction.  Check out these photos from today.

Building the window frames

Look how far the center has progressed in two days!

The Gepis Center in Romania - Day 3 of the team's help

Studying Already?

A couple of the village boys take time to go to the property and read.

A couple of the village boys take time to go to the property and read.

GREAT NEWS!

Our Romanian manager now has the first piece of important paperwork in hand!  This really gets the ball rolling but starts a race to get all of the permits done for the utilities and the construction before the next team arrives.  Please be in prayer for her as she runs all over the place to get the stamps, paperwork and approvals we will need.

A foreman

We’ve hired a Romanian foreman to be responsible for building to code, pre-purchasing supplies, and overseeing the project.  Bonus!  He speaks English!

May The Lord continue working out all of the details and help us deal with the bureaucracy.

Date: May 21st & 22nd, 2011
Time: 1:30 – 4:30
Place: Waterfront Park in Downtown Charleston (map)
Photographer:

• Chris Smith – (May 21st) Chris & Cami Photography, 843.324.8900

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

I woke up this morning to an email message this morning telling me that our oldest foster child, Claudia, had to have an appendectomy yesterday. Neli had written me two days ago to say she was suspected to have appendicitis but I did not hear from Neli yesterday so I thought everything must be okay. Georgy wrote me this morning to say that Claudia was doing well but very weak from not having anything to eat for two days. Then Georgy wrote, “Michelle, she asked if you were coming to see her in the hospital.” I felt like my heart was being ripped out of my chest. I cry each time I think of her question. (Of course I could be a professional soap opera star right now because I cry so easily.) My consoling husband helped but it was one of those times when I desperately wanted to be back in Romania and he did as well. We have had Claudia in our ministry since she was 15 months old and severely anemic because she was abandoned in the hospital. She was not even able to lift her head nor did she have any muscle tone. Now, she is a bubbly, beautiful little girl that I have had the joy of watching to grow up in foster care. Daniel has wanted us to adopt her for years but, as you know, that was never possible because of the Romanian government.

I ask you to please pray for Claudia to heal quickly so she can go home. We never want an abandoned child to have to be admitted to the hospital because the sounds and smells bring back the memories of the trauma of being abandoned. Georgy told me the foster mother, Mia, has not left Claudia’s side for the entire time but today asked a friend to come and stay with Claudia so she could go home and take a shower and change. We also praise The Lord that NOT ONE BRIBE had to be given in order for Claudia to receive the necessary surgery! Truly a miracle in that system!

I just called Claudia on her foster mother’s mobile phone and got to talk to her so I feel a bit better now. I explained that Daniel and I were very far away and could not come and visit her but that I would call her again. She was quite excited to talk to me and tell me about her surgery. She sounded really well but her foster mother said she was weak because they would not allow her to have anything but liquid still. I will send an updated photo of Claudia on Monday when Neli has returned to Oradea from her home village.

I also ask you to pray for Alina Cioara, our social worker for Education Inspiration, Agape Home, and Good Beginnings Preschool. Her grandmother passed away last week and she was very close to her. Many of you have met Alina when you came to Romania so you know what a heart she has for the work she does. If you would like to write her, her email address is a_heavenlyplace@yahoo.com and here is a photo of her so you can put a name with a face.

We ask you to join with us in celebrating Neli Pirtea’s successful completion of her degree in Social Work and her licensing exam! Neli is our social worker for New Life Foster Care, Nurture Network, and Arms of Mercy. She finally finished with flying colors on Monday and is very happy to be done. When we talked on the phone, she told me the professors asked her questions about the field work that we do that keeps parents from abandoning their children. We were amazed at how little they know because no one ever actually goes to do direct work with the families. Neli said she explained that most of the families we work with chose not to get married because the mothers then get more money from the state for being a single parent. We were amazed that they did not know this! Neli has a technical degree in social work that she got after high school but the government refused to accept any of her work from then so she had to start all over a few years ago. If you would like to congratulate her on working full-time and going to school full-time successfully, her email address is p_neli@yahoo.com
Here is a photo of Neli taken a few days ago with a new baby that she has identified for us to take into our Nurture Network project.

While Alina was driving that day, they were trying to enter a village where one of our Education Inspiration children lives but could not because the cows were going home and not a bit concerned with our car in the middle of the road. (When I was a teenager, I saw a car that had been destroyed because it hit a cow in the middle of the road. The cow ALWAYS wins with a car!) Because they both have a sense of humor, they snapped this photo because they did not want our sponsors to miss out on the fun details of life they have to experience from time to time. So, here it is, a photo to put with the phrase “til the cows come home!” Enjoy!

Basking In The Son,

Yesterday was June 1st, National Children’s Day in Romania and the date that I moved to Romania ten years ago. It seemed odd being in the USA rather than in Romania for this day but it gave me lots of time to reflect on all that The Lord has done through our ministry in ten years and to give Him the glory for how He can use anyone to accomplish His purposes. It is hard to believe He developed my “six month plan” into a ministry with seven projects and completely run by Romanian nationals. Only The Lord could do so much with so little. He proves to us all the time He is still the same God who multiples the generosity of “fishes and loaves.” Never doubt this, no matter your situation.

Alina, one of our ministry social workers, wrote me today to share photos from Friday that they took when our Good Beginning Preschool students celebrated Children’s Day. Eight of our students attended the picnic and party our staff organized and they clearly had a great time. One of the sponsors of Good Beginnings sent gifts for all the children and they were very excited about receiving something new as you can see from the photo.

Here is another photo of our teacher, Lavi, with one of our students that she made a halo for out of fresh flowers. So sweet!

Prior to Friday, these precious children had never celebrated June 1st because they are simply too impoverished. We praise God for how He has provided for these children through the generosity of sponsors. I could hardly believe my eyes when I saw how much they had grown and gained weight since we left at the end of January.

Also, we are excited to share with you that one of our sponsors in Vienna donated a used but very high quality laptop to our Good Beginnings Preschool this past weekend. Plus, one of our sponsors here in the USA also donated the funds for us to buy a laptop and educational software for the children so very soon we will have a better equipped preschool than any of the other ones in our area!

Our foster care children will celebrate with Neli sometime this week by all going to McDonalds together for a meal. Many of our foster children know each other from being in our orphanage together way back so they enjoy having a positive link to their past. I hope to have photos of that day to send as well.

Our Education Inspiration students had a big picnic and outdoor party on Saturday and Alina told me they had a very good time. Of course our boys are always excited about eating and I understand there was plenty of that!

The Lord bless your week!

We received food parcels from the government social services and we supplemented with food parcels that we purchased so the families would have enough. This is the food that Neli sent me of what we purchased for each family. Thank you to all of you who donated to make this happen!

Neli also sent me an outside photo of the house of the family that I told you last week we hope to help build a new house for this summer.

It is so very pitiful.

Please pray for The Lord to provide the funds and the manpower to get this family into a new home by the fall. They are doing an excellent job of caring for their children and we hope our intervention will assist.

Here is a photo of Florin helping distribute the bags of groceries to them. Florin is one of our boys living at Agape Home and I LOVE the fact that our social workers got the boys involved with giving back to the community!

Here is another photo of Neli distributing the food parcels to another needy family with their two beautiful children.

Below is part of Georgy’s update to me. We are very blessed to have employees with such great written English skills!

From Georgy, Administrator for our ministry

Ciao Michelle,

I talked with Alina about the preschool today and she told me that Lavinia would like to buy some books for children and it would be great if we would have a budget for these stuff for example $20-$30 per month.

A fairy tale book cost about $4 not to give them just to keep to the preschool. Lavinia saw very cute fairy tale books and I think if would be possible to include in the budget an amount for that it would be very helpful for the kids.

Also, we are thinking if is possible to buy a dvd player, this week Vio took the tv from Agape House to the preschool and Lavinia borrowed the dvd player from her mother. We are thinking it’s not so expensive here to buy one and to use for the preschool and for the boys from Agape too. Alina looked for a price and a regular dvd player is about $55 and a Philips is around $80.

I was to today with Neli and Vio to ASCO (social services) to receive the groceries parcels for Alina’s and Neli’s families (I asked for the foster children, for the boys from Agape, the girls from Ed. Insp., for the kids from the Good Beginnings and for all their families-not including the foster families, they are considered employees, so in total 71 parcels). I made a picture of it. (Note: This is the back of our van loaded down with packages!)

I think Neli told you that she received from the sugar company 100 Kg of sugar for her families. We are waiting for a response from the other companies, too. (Note:We also received a lot of pasta!)

I almost forgot to tell Vio bought the chickens, I send you a picture, I was today to Agape too, the boys were working in the little flower garden together with Rodi and Gabi was cooking in the kitchen. Next time I will take a picture of them too. Coco was happy, like it is every time when we go there.

From all of us at Children In The Son, may you bask in The Son this weekend!

Daniel and I have had a busy Christmas season distributing all the gifts for the children and all the food parcels for the families. The week before Christmas, we were gone all day and evening on Thursday and all day on Friday delivering all the wonderful items that so many of you helped provide. Here is a photo of Daniel and one of our Education Inspiration boys, Florin, as we delivered food and presents to his family for Christmas.

Their families were very touched that we thought of them for Christmas and, as a result, since Daniel was the man, he got invited to everyone’s house for coffee and fresh sausages (every family in the entire country seemed to be slaugthering a pig that day as is tradition here before Christmas) while Alina and I struggled with folks trying to steal the food and gifts from the car! Needless to say, our experiences that day and memories are quite different!! Daniel almost got simultaneously punched by Alina and me when he finally returned from his taste-testing visits. Alina and I recovered from our trauma and continued on to deliver more food parcels and gifts and here are some of wonderful families.

“Crina’s Mom from Education Inspiration receiving food for her family along with our social worker, Alina.”
(Don’t mind the apron. She was butchering a pig in their house when we arrived and needed the apron to keep all the blood off of her.)

“Father and six children. Father has a terminal lung disease but seems to be stable right now. Please pray for his healing.”

On Wednesday the 19th, we had our Christmas celebration at our “Good Beginnings” preschool and the children were just precious doing their play. I had an enormous lump form in my throat and tears in my eyes when one of the “angels” declared without being prompted for her lines, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news. Today is born the Son of God.”

After hearing so many times how “gypsy” children are genetically prone to being unable to learn, it was such powerful proof that The Lord will expand His word to all people. We thank the local Adventist church that provided the children with Christmas gifts and a day in the park in city. The park has an indoor part and the children absolutely loved every moment of it.We had a terrific Santa Claus this year and Daniel, Neli and I enjoyed being his elves as we visited all of our foster children. They were so cute and, as is tradition here, the children either recited a poem or sang a song for jolly ole’ Santa. They were all absolutely adorable as you will see yourself from these photos.

“Michelle and Flaviu”

“Neli with one of our foster children.”

“Doll holding a doll”

“Miniature Santa playing with his new toys”

“a not so trusting Gabi reciting poem for Santa”

On Christmas Day, Daniel invited our former Agape Home resident, Mona, and her child, Maria, over to eat with us along with our current Agape Home parents and their children. We had such a fun time with everyone and Maria was an absolute doll as she opened her gifts with such wonder! Mona was giddy about receiving a gift from under the Christmas tree and it was deeply touching to see this young woman with so such gratitude to The Lord for all she has. Here is a photo of both Mona and Maria opening their gifts and one of Maria trying to understand what a “Mrs. Potato Head” is!

We thank so many of you for how you have blessed our ministry in 2007 and we look forward to seeing what The Lord does through all of us in 2008! Please do not forget to write us personal updates about what is going on with you!

Basking In The Son,
Michelle

We had some really pretty snow here last week that was beautiful to watch coming down and I couldn’t help but think of the Charlie Brown Christmas special. I have always loved that Christmas special because they have such an evangelical message at the end. My sweet friend, Kelli, is sending us over a copy for Christmas and I am so excited to watch it! (I know that is a really strange thing to be homesick about.)

Daniel and I are so sad to hear the news about the shootings in Colorado. We have worked with the YWAM (Youth With a Mission) base in Romania in the past and know what a great organization they are. We join so many of you in praying for the families of the victims and the perpetrator of the crime. I know this organization will lean on The Lord for understanding and seek Him for strength. May The Lord comfort them far beyond what they could imagine.

Like many of you, we are busy bees trying to prepare for our upcoming Christmas celebrations. We would like to do something special by providing food for all our Education Inspiration children’s families so if you would like to help sponsor a family, please send a check for $30 or use PayPal to donate by entering my email address which is michelle@childrenintheson.com because our website link is currently being re-done. This money will be used to buy staple food as well as some meat for their Christmas celebration.

We will be taking Christmas gifts to all of our foster children and Education Inspiration children thanks to the wonderful folks at New Covenant Fellowship in Cameron, NC (my hometown). They have supplied all of our children with new clothing and toys and we are so excited to deliver them with our VERY jolly Santa Claus (one of our foster fathers) and I will be sure to send photos of the day!

I visited our Arms of Mercy worker, Ibi, yesterday at the Maternity Hospital and I was saddened to find her caring for 17 abandoned babies. We are in the process of hiring another worker now to help with all the babies and it can’t happen soon enough. Here is a photo of Ibi caring for one of the babies (We are not allowed to show the faces of the babies for photos posted to the internet.)

Please pray for her as she deals with so many babies and hospital workers that keep stealing things from the babies like clothing and diapers.

Our newest project, Good Beginnings Preschool, is going extremely well and the ten children we have in the project are all counting to ten in Romanian and most of them know all their colors. They are so precious and here is a photo of Daniel and just a few faces to share with you!

We will also do a Sponsor-A-Child program for these children that are some of the poorest in our area. One of them had only adult clothes to wear to school until we gave him a set of clothing. We have six girls and four boys and we need $75 per month to cover the cost of their food, school supplies, and the salary for a Christian teacher. Our house mother for Agape Home is currently the teacher but she really needs to be spending more time helping our boys with their homework. We have identified a fantastic young woman for the position but we need the funds to pay her so we have lumped that cost into the $75 as well. If you are interested in sponsoring any of this amount, please let me know.

We still have two boys in our Education Inspiration project that we house at Agape Home that are not sponsored. Marius (pictured here)

needs $75 more per month for his costs to be covered and Gabi (pictured here)

needs $80 more per month for his costs. We thank those of you that are already sponsoring and we want you to know how much you are blessing and changing their lives for the glory of God! They are starting to read the bible for themselves now and ask deeper questions about becoming Christians. Praise God for this awesome news!

We have had many unexpected expenses in our ministry recently such as the tickets we had to purchase to return for my Poppy’s death, the trip to Germany to get the car repaired, tires for our vehicles, and other such related overhead expenses. I know it isn’t as glamous sounding to give towards those things but they are real needs in our ministry. If any of you are considering doing extra giving to our ministry, we could really use it now. We thank your for however you can support our work here.

May The Lord bless you and help you keep your focus on the miracle of Christ’s virgin birth and the fact that his birth and death gives us all life.

Basking In The Son,
Michelle

Dear Family and Friends,

I am very tardy in reporting back to you after our trip to Germany because I am disappointed to tell you that they worked on our car for five entire days and did not fix the problem. The automatic transmission was totally rebuilt but we told them in the beginning that was not the problem. Because they did not repair the problem, we did not have to pay the $2,200 for rebuilding the automatic transmission so that was a blessing. They even sent the car to a large VW dealership service center to be put on the computer and they still could not find the problem. I said to the mechanic, “If I am in the motherland of Volkswagen and they can’t find the problem, I am not sure I have hope left that it can be fixed.” He replied, “Sure we can. You just have to leave it for at least ten days until we can take all the electrical components out.” Daniel informed them that we were leaving that very afternoon and that they needed to put the car back together. They did so and we drove that night through hail, rain, sleet, and snow. I am not joking a bit! We did find out that there is possibility it can be repaired for free by VW if it is determined that our car has a manufacturer’s defect. Our mechanic in Oradea is trying to work all of this out for us now but we still have no definite answers.

We did have some fun stopping along the way to get our car fixed. We spent a night in Mondsee, Austria, the sight of the beautiful church in the “Sound of Music” where they had the staircase seen. We also spent one night in Salzburg seeing the sights. In the end, Daniel refused to do the “official tour” of the “Sound of Music” sights because he thought it was too pricey for us. So, we took a map and set off along with our friend, Lauren Peckman, who we picked up in Vienna after she flew to meet us from Greece. Lauren kindly took this photo of Daniel pretending to sing to me in front of the mansion where they fell in the lake in the movie. We had fun posing for her!

The next stop was in Fussen, Germany to see the world famous Neuschwanstien castle in the state of Bavaria, Germany. We were not disappointed by the beautiful interior of the castle but the extremely dense fog because of the weather made it impossible to take a photo of the entire thing so I have included one from their official site along with one that we took of the entrance. It was so beautiful done and I am thrilled to have had the opportunity to finally see the original “Cinderella’s castle.”

We are thankful to The Lord for all the safe travel and for protecting me when I took a bad fall in Salzburg. (Long story that I am too embarrassed to share!) We prayed for His presence to guard and protect us and we know others were praying as well so we thank you so much!

We were happy to get back home to Romania and see our employees. Here is a great photo taken of our family at Agape Home and all five boys.

The house father, Viorel, is pictured far left and his wife, Rodica, is pictured on the bottom with their two children. The rest are our boys and if you go back and look at the first photo I sent out of them, you will notice that they have all gained weight in the last six weeks!

I had no idea that teenage boys could possibly use as much hair gel as they do. Oh my! George has now been converted to a hair gel user as well as you can see from the photo. (He is the one standing directly behind Rodica.) Our social worker, Alina, informed me that she thought she would loose it with them the day she took three of them to buy new sport shoes for school. I had warned her that boys were far more difficult to shop with than girls and she informed me I was right. It took them hours to decide on shoes!

Our truck donation total is now up to $19,704 so we still have some left to go before we can buy a truck. We are getting very close and we thank all the people that have so generously given.

We are so excited about the speaker system we were allowed to put in the Maternity hospital to play classical and instrumental worship music through a MP3 player for the abandoned babies in our Arms of Mercy project! All of the speakers are mounted now and the wiring is done and I downloaded some music yesterday to see how it will work. There are currently 11 abandoned babies in the section where we have our workers. I would love to be able to send you photos but I am not allowed to take photos. I will, however, ask permission to take a photo of our workers holding a baby with only the back of the baby’s head showing.

Okay, I think I will end for now as this has turned out to be much longer than I anticipated.

We hope everyone in the USA has a blessed Thanksgiving celebration. May The Lord bless your families abundantly and may your heart truly be thankful to The Lord for all He has done.

Basking In The Son,

Michelle

Mark 10:45 “For the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”