Children In The Son

Good Beginnings Preschool was birthed out of our repeated experience of seeing Roma children not succeed in school in the village of Santandrei which is four kilometers outside of Oradea and where we built Agape Home. As we would work outside in the garden or chicken house, our Roma neighbors would tell us that their children were not accepted at school because they were not clothed or bathed properly. In the spring of 2007, we talked with the school principal of the primary school and he told us that not one Roma child was registered beyond 4th grade! Hearing there was a 100% school failure of the Roma children broke our hearts. We prayed about what The Lord would have us do to minister to these little ones and His answer was clear: a Christian preschool to prepare them for primary school.

We discussed the idea with the local mayor and school principal and they agreed to give us a room to use for the preschool. They pay for the heating and electricity and we take care of everything else. We are very pleased at our collaboration with the town hall of Santandrei.

One of the reasons that Roma children do not do well in primary school is that many of the children do not speak the Romanian language well because they speak Romanii (the native language of the Roma) at home. At Good Beginnings, we teach them the Romanian language so they will have a good basis for school when they begin. We also teach them about God’s love through Jesus Christ, Christian morality, math, music, their colors, logical sequencing, and the appropriate behavior for a school setting. In addition, we feed the children a nutritious snack each day along with vitamins to help them grow properly. Since beginning this project in the fall of 2007, we have seen tremendous improvements in the weight and growth of the children in addition to their quick retention of the Romanian language.

Our preschool will continue through the summer with our preschool teacher spending extra time with the children that will begin school in the fall. We collaborate with churches in the area to take the children to parks, puppet theaters, swimming pools, and other fun outings.

We currently have 10 children enrolled in our preschool and we are actively seeking sponsors for each child. It costs us $65 per month to feed each child and pay for the salary of their teacher. You can either commit to some or all of the monthly cost. If you can only commit to $25 per month, we will try to find other sponsors to commit the remaining $40 per month. If you are interested in sponsoring a child in this project, please contact us. Thank you for helping us help the Roma children of Santandrei succeed in school because of the hope they will have in Jesus!

To donate on-line now for one of the children below, please click on our “Donate” button to donate through the secure services of PayPal and be sure to put the child’s name in the “notes” section. To donate by check, please send a check along with a separate note with the child’s name to the following address:

Children In The Son
P.O. Box 99063
Raleigh, NC 27624-9063

Laura - Sponsored, Praise The Lord!

Darian - Sponsored, Praise The Lord!

Elizabeth - Sponsored, Praise The Lord!

Florin - Sponsored, Praise The Lord!

Liana - Sponsored, Praise The Lord!

Marius

Rodica - Sponsored, Praise The Lord!

Roxana

Rita - Sponsored, Praise The Lord!

Dacian 

All international adoptions from Romania have been suspended.
If we get more information, we will post it here.

Agape Home is a educational housing facility for Roma and Romanian teenage boys that wish to continue their educations but cannot due to their extremely impoverished families.  The boys live with Christian house parents that minister to them with the love of Jesus. 

The goal of this program is to prevent teenage pregnancy by collaborating with their parents to agree not to arrange their adolescent boys’ marriages until the boys are done with their education.  In the city of Oradea alone, 4 or more children per week are abandoned. The Agape Home project shifts the focus from reacting to abandonment, to a program of proactive, preventive measures.

This project includes a home and a small farm with a large garden and a large chicken house. We produce our own meat chickens during the warmer months of the spring and during the summer and fall to use for our boys and the house family that ministers to them.  The House Father spends time each morning with the boys in prayer and bible study.  The House Mother is a licensed teacher and helps them with all their homework assignments and teaches them how to organize their time for studying.  This is a huge blessing for these boys since none of them have educated parents and therefore would have no resource at home during the week.  During the weekend and school vacations, the boys return to their families to keep their relationships strong with their parents and siblings. 

All the boys are required to work on the farm to stay in the facility under the supervision of our House Father.  Additionally, we are teaching the boys life skills such as basic cooking and domestic budgeting so they will be properly prepared for fatherhood in the future.  

Our hope is that all of the boys will make a decision to accept Jesus as their Savior so they will have the joy and hope they need to finish their education, seek gainful employment, start a family and, most importantly, raise their children to know Jesus!

The Arms of Mercy project was the original project of Viata Noua Pentru Copii (New Life for Children). In June of 1998, we began involvement in the Children’s Hospital of Oradea. Now we are involved in the Oradea Maternity Hospital where we nurture, stimulate, and diaper up to 20 babies per day.  Many of them simply needthe greatest gift of all; love. Our ministry has installed a sound system and beautiful classical music as well as instrumental praise and worship music can be heard floating throught the air.  We are seeing astounding results in the lives of the babies!

Our ministry pays workers to bath the abandoned babies each day as well as providing all the toiletries and diapers that our employees use.  Our workers also insure the babies do drink the milk they are given and also administer vitamin drops and other medicines.  Most importantly, they pray for the babies and show them compassion and mercy with each embrace. 

 We are blessed to have such a wonderful collaboration with the Oradea Hospital administration and, after many years in Romania, we can honestly say we are working together to see an improvement in the lives of abandoned babies.  We praise The Lord for all the favor He has given us in this project. 

Testimony of “Arms of Mercy” volunteers that worked in the Oradea Children’s Hospital

Hi, I am Jenny Surratt. from, SC. In the summer of 2000, I went on a missions trip with a team from my church to Oradea, Romania. Our mission was to hold as many helpless and abandoned babies as we could and to pray over them. We went into the hospitals where we would see babies no older that ten months lying in these cribs, soaked in their own urine. Some of them were covered from head to toe in mosquito bites. One ten month old child, Darius, weighed no more than seven pounds.

The bottles that they use to feed the children have a hole in the nipple about the size of the tip of my pinkey finger. At feeding time, they prop up a blanket beside the babies and stick the bottle in their mouths then they go away. If the bottle falls out of the baby’s mouth, the liquid falls onto their bed and all over them. When the nurses come back to pick up the bottles, they take them regardless of whether or not they are empty. Needless to say, most of these babies do not get any source of nutrition. It is a very sad situation. I wish I could be there all the time to make sure these children at least get to drink their bottles. The older children get a piece of bread with butter and a bottle for their meal. On occasion they get a banana supplied by an outside charity. They have to be tied to their cribs all day because there is no one to supervise them all the time. They have no toys to play with only the sensation of rocking back and forth in their cribs keeps them entertained. They do have a play area at the end of the hall but it is rare that they get to play in there because the nurses aren’t willing to take them. Only visitors and missionaries like myself or Michelle are willing to take some time to play with them. It is really hard for someone to leave a place like that because you wonder about tomorrow or the next day. Who is going to sit there and feed them and hold them? I have to trust God and know that He’s got the whole world in his hands.

Barbara raised her own financial support for her three month missions trip. She served daily in the Children’s Hospital tending to the various needs of the children. Some of these tasks included feeding, bathing, and physical therapy. Most of all, she loved on the children. The first few years of a child’s life dynamically impact the remainder. We praise the Lord for people like Barbara willing to come and serve.

Allie is a Physical Education student who chose to serve for three months in the Arms of Mercy project. As with all people who serve with Arms of Mercy, she raised her own financial support for this mission trip. Allie worked in the Children’s Hospital each day doing physical therapy with the babies. Allie has since returned to the United States to complete her education. Her service truly touched the lives of many children.

We thank all of you for all your prayers and support in Romania. Please pray about how God could use you to glorify His name wherever you are!

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“Who his own self bore our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes we were healed. ” 1 Peter 2:24

By his Stripes was originally developed because of a severely burned little girl, Crizantina. Because of the overwhelming need to find specialized medical care for children with difficult medical problems, we have decided to continue this project permanently with the focus now being on children suspect of heart problems.  We pay a Romanian pediatric cardiologist, Dr. Eniko Bereki, to see children for free during the week using the ultrasound and EKG machine that our ministry provides.   She is able to give extremely accurate diagnoses and then works very hard to find the needed intervention on a case by case assessment. 

 We continue to be amazed at the provision of The Lord for this project and we are so thankful for how many children received early diagnosis and intervention for their cardiology problems. 

Critzantina’s Story

Critzantina was a patient at the Children’s Hospital in Oradea, Romania and was unable to walk because she had not received medical treatment for severe burns for over one year. Critzantina had sustained burns over 60% of her body and was confined to the fetal position on her back. Through the grace of God, we were able to get a medical visa for Critzantina to travel to the United States to receive wonderful medical care that included over 8 operations in 10 months. By His stripes, Critzantina was healed and is walking!! She was reunited with her family in September, 1999. In May of 2000, she demonstrated how she can now run. What an astounding miracle!!

David

We were contacted by a doctor in the local children’s hospital regarding this case. David has hydrocephalous and his mother was told he would not receive surgery in Romania until he was two years old; way too late for him. We prayed for his case for almost a year before the Lord provided miraculously. We found a neurosurgeon in Budapest, Hungary who could easily do the surgery but the cost of the care would exceed $6,000. We were given $2,000 by one church and no more money came in for him for almost a year. Out of the blue, we were contacted by a charity from Germany also based in Oradea asking us if they could partner with us to get David surgery. We exclaimed, Absolutely!!! Two weeks later, David received neurosurgery and returned home to be with his mother. For the first time in his 18 months of life, he was allowed to go home to live with his mother! Many happy tears were shed for the miracle we saw happen in the life of David and his mother.

We thank all of you for all your prayers and support in Romania. Please pray about how God could use you to glorify His name wherever you are!

” And whoever receives one such child in My name receives me… ”
Matthew 18:5

New Life Foster Care was started due to the overwhelming needs of the children abandoned in government run institutions in Oradea, Romania. Many of the children would languish in a horrific state of malnourishment, sustain abuse and develop Failure to Thrive and Attachment Issues. Even now, children are sent back to parents having unthinkable conditions for a home. Witnessing the harsh reality for abandoned children served as grounds for beginning this project. Through God’s grace, we opened New Life House in April, 2000, to help alleviate the suffering of the children. In June, 2003, we began to transition our children into wonderful Christian Romanian foster families. We are seeing amazing results with the children receiving the love they need in a family setting. We are so proud of what the Lord has done for our children through our foster care program. Florin is just one example of what prayer and God’s love can do to change the life of an abandoned child.

Florin

Florin came to our ministry from the local Children’s Hospital where he was abandoned when he was 3 months old. He was in good health but we wanted to intervene early so he would not develop so many of the problems that the other abandoned children already had. He was taken into our Christian orphanage, New Life House, and then transitioned to foster care in June, 2003. In his current foster care, he is very loved and treated just like a little brother by his older foster sisters! He is so smart and loves animals (especially horses!) and being with his foster family on their farm. Although we would like to see Florin adopted, the fact that his biological mother will not sign for him to do so prohibits him from ever having an adoptive family. His foster family has agreed to raise him in permanent foster care if the laws do not change to allow him to be adopted.

Agape Home – is an educational housing facility for Roma and Romanian boys that come from impoverished families and unable to continue their education beyond 8th grade without moving to our facility. We house the boys during the week near the city and they return on the weekends and during school vacations to be with their families.

Arms of Mercy – is a project that cares for abandoned babies in the Maternity Hospital of Oradea, Romania. We pay Christian workers to love, nurture, and stimulate abandoned babies to prevent developmental problems. Our ministry pays for the diapers, toiletries, and items needed to care for abandoned babies.

By His Stripes - is a medical project that provides diagnosis for children suspected of having cardiac problems. Our ministry pays a pediatric cardiologist to see children for free that are referred through our ministry. Our diagnostic equipment was donated and sent over from the United States.

Education Inspiration – is a Sponsor-A-Child program to provide transportation, clothing, school supplies and other needs to impoverished Roma and Romanian families that desire to send their children to school but have no financial means to do so. Our focus in teenage girls that are at high risk for pregnancy because of their lack of education.

Good Beginnings Preschool – is a Sponsor-A-Child program to prepare Roma children for primary school by teaching them the Romanian language as well as educational basics for beginning school. Our goal is to prevent school failure in the Roma community where we minister. We provide children with a nutritious snack as well as vitamins and clothing.

New Life Foster Care – is a Sponsor-A-Child project that cares for children in Christian families that have been abandoned by their parents since birth. These children are loved and nurtured by their foster families until they are adopted by Romanian families.

Here is how you can contact us:

Mailing Donations and Letters in the USA:

Children In The Son
P.O. Box 99063
Raleigh, NC 27624

Sending packages or mail to Romania:

Sims, Michelle
CP 274, OP 1
410017 Oradea, Jud. Bihor
Romania
Europe

By phone:

(919) 721-3833

Or you can email us using this simple form.

Michelle Kelly Sims

Blessings to you in the name of Jesus! Thank you for taking the time to read about the ministry that God is doing in Romania. I praise God that He has given me the privilege of representing Jesus to the Romanian people. I entered the world of full-time foreign missions in May 1998. Prior to that time, I received my Masters in Social Work and worked in the field of child abuse and neglect for seven years. I also hold a Bachelors degree in Psychology in addition to a degree in accounting. How’s that for diverse education! I visited Romania for the first time in 1995 and I knew then that I would be coming back to use the power of Jesus to help suffering children. I visited again in 1997 and, at that time, God gave me a vision for opening a facility to minister to the needs of children that were neglected. In the fall of 1999, God put the “dreams” into motion and through His grace, I founded “Viata Noua Pentru Copii” (New Life for Children) in Romania and subsequently the USA non-profit “Children I The Son, Inc.” in July, 2000.

Just so you know a little about me personally, I am originally from North Carolina (yes, I have a Southern drawl) where I enjoyed a life of close family and farming (both of which I miss now.) My family members are treasures to me and I thank the Lord that are all supportive of my ministry here. I was born in 1968 and I am blissfully married to Daniel Sims! I praise God that He has brought me from the perils of darkness into His everlasting Light.

Daniel Sims

I was born and raised in Ohio until moving to Winona Lake, IN, to attend Grace College. I received my Bachelors degree in Elementary Education with a minor in Learning Disabilities and Counseling. Before being directed to Romania, I was teaching in the school system in the Learning Disability field. It was during that time that I came to Romania initially in March, 2001, to meet Michelle before bringing a possible future missions team. It was in the course of that first trip that The Lord directed my steps towards Romania as being my new home, as well as, directing me to my future wife, Michelle. We are happily married and plan to stay here until the Lord directs us elsewhere.

The Lord has been my Savior since the age of five. He has grown my faith throughout the years by His love, faithfulness and companionship. When I sit down with Him and think of His grace and mercy that He has given to me, overwhelming joy and worship follow closely behind. He alone causes my love for Him to grow as He reveals Himself throughout my life. I am grateful and humbled to know Him as my Lord and Savior. It is by His strength through His Spirit that I live and move.

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

Children in the Son, Inc. is an international non-profit founded by Michelle Kelly Sims that operates with a Board of Directors based in Raleigh, NC. Michelle is a Master Social Worker who visited Romania for the first time in 1995. During this first ten day visit, Michelle and a group from Seacoast Christian Church distributed shoebox Christmas gifts to orphaned children. Two years later, Michelle made a return trip to find Christian organizations in dire need of social workers. In May 1998, she moved to Oradea, Romania to dedicate her full-time work to the orphans and special needs children of Romania. One year later, she founded the Romanian non-profit, New Life for Children, a ministry that addresses the needs of children in distress. New Life for Children cares for children that are abandoned and those in need of medical care that cannot be obtained in the Oradea area.

The sole basis for our belief is the Bible, which is uniquely God-inspired, without error, and the final authority on all matters on which it speaks. As the Bible teaches, there is one God, eternally existing in three persons - Father, Son and Holy Spirit - each possessing all the attributes of deity.

God created humans to have fellowship with Him, but they defied God by sinfully going their own way. As a result, we need God’s saving grace to end our alienation from Him. Salvation comes only through God’s grace - not human effort - and must be received personally by repentance and faith.

Jesus Christ, second Person of the Trinity, lived a sinless life on earth and voluntarily paid for our sin by dying on the cross as our substitute. This accomplished salvation for all who receive grace by trusting in Him alone. He rose from the dead and is the only mediator between us and God. He baptizes believers in the Holy Spirit. He will return to earth to consummate history.

The Holy Spirit draws sinners to Christ and equips believers for personal growth and service to the church. The church’s role is to glorify God and serve those in need. At the end, everyone will experience bodily resurrection and the judgment. Only believers will enjoy eternal fellowship with God.

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

Children in the Son, Inc. is an international non-profit founded by Michelle Kelly Sims, a Master Social Worker. Michelle visited Romania for the first time in 1995 for ten days with a group from her church to distribute Christmas gifts to orphanages. Two years later, she made a return trip to find Christian organizations in dire need of social workers. In May 1998, she moved to Romania to work full-time in the city of Oradea. One year later, she founded the Romanian non-profit, “Viata Noua Pentru Copii,” (New Life for Children), a ministry that addresses the needs of children and families in distress through several projects. Daniel Sims visited Romania in April, 2001 to organize a missions trip to bring over medical supplies to children. Two months later, he moved to Oradea to work with abandoned children and those in need of medical care. In July of 2001, Children In The Son, Inc. was founded as a United States non-profit which directs and provides accountability for all work done in Romania. The Board of Directors for the ministry is based in the Raleigh, NC area. Daniel and Michelle reside in Romania and lead the projects God has directed along with their wonderful staff of Romanian ministry workers.