Week One and Two Update

Ceau from Oradea!  This is my first post from Romania. It is so amazing to actually be here, I still can't believe it sometimes. My first two weeks have been very busy and I want to tell you all about it.

                                                              View from the bridge over the Crisul Repede river.

Monday and Tuesday (May 14th and 15th) were the longest "day" of my life consisting of a total 36 hours of travel and lay-overs. But it was also the easiest international travel I could ever imagine. Not a single delayed flight, no annoying co-passengers, no problems anywhere... And really great service from all of the flight crews. Tuesday afternoon I met up with four girls from California (Emily, Jenny, Brittany, and Shellie) in the Budapest airport and from there travelled approximately 3 hours by car to Oradea. That was the first of  several interesting experiences here: the driving. You may think the tail-gaters where you live are bad but I am fairly certain that no one can hold a candle to the drivers here. But the scariest part was passing other cars in oncoming traffic, I was actually scared for my life at one point. But all in all I made it here alive.

Our first day at the Beauty from Ashes center was sort of an introduction day. We met all the staff and the girls who live and work there. Corey and his wife Diana live at the center with their two year old daughter, Evelyn (who is absolutely adorable and has a wonderful little Romanian accent) as well as 5 of the seven young women enrolled in their program. Their staff also includes Diana's parents, Eva and Sandu, Eva teaches the girls to cook and greets all of us with a kiss (or two) on the cheek every morning, and Sandu does the gardening and maintenance as well as making cheese and fishing (see my pictures on Facebook). Then there is Geta, who helps the girls and Diana with their craft projects and "charges" five dollars for everything from passing a piece of paper to helping with the Cricut and has a beautiful little 10 month old daughter, Rebecca. Last but not least are Andree, Ana, and Cosmina. From what I understand, Andree is the director of the Center and the Romania side of the ministry (whereas Corey is in charge of the US side of the ministry based out of Tennessee), Ana buys supplies for their craft business and sells the finished products, and Cosmina is a social worker who gets the girls involved in the community as well as works on the government side of running the ministry.

As I said above there are 7 girls enrolled in the program. Their names are Nadia, Natalie, Corina, Theresea, Cireasa, Rihanna, and Iolanda. They all grew up in Orphanages and are at the center to basically learn how to become responsible, hardworking adults. The orphanages offer no real guidance for the kids in their care so the kids leave at 18 with no idea how to cook, clean, get or keep a job, etc. No one ensures that they are going to school and doing their homework so many of them don't know basic things like telling time. Corey and the staff home school the girls who are too old to go to school. They teach them math, science, Romanian, English, and anything else the girls want to learn. Corey said he recently started teaching them Anatomy after one of the girls came home asking what her kidneys were, apparently some one on the street asked her to sell him one of her kidneys (she said no). The craft business is one of the ways they train the girls in how to work. Most of them make greeting cards and Nadia makes fabric flowers, they also want to try making jewelry.

Corina, Shellie, and Brittany finding buttons for cards.

This is mostly what we have been working on here. Diana usually makes a prototype card and gives it to the girls and they make about 40 of them. But it takes about a day (or two) to come up with a card idea and make it just right. Diana wants to make cards that people will buy rather than ones people might see and think "I could make that myself" so needless to say they need to be really nice. She has also been doing this for a while and is happy to let us try some designs so she can get a bit of a break in that area hopefully.

Natalia working on cards.

So that doesn't cover EVERYTHING but is a short over view of the first two weeks. More posts and Stories to come!

Prayer Requests

Less than a week to go!

    I booked my flight yesterday and am flying out of Boise bright and early Monday morning and arriving in Budapest, Hungary around noon on Tuesday. I will be flying through Minneapolis International Airport to Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport and then on to Budapest. I am really nervous about travelling through Schiphol and Budapest considering I don't know the languages (thankfully I speak the second most widely spoken language in the world. Thank you Jesus!) But seriously, I would really appreciate a lot of prayer that everything goes smoothly, that I don't get lost, that my luggage doesn't get lost, etc.
    From Budapest I will be taking a shuttle with several other girls to Oredea which is just over the Hungarian border. We could also use prayer that we meet up without incident and that none of our flights get cancelled or delayed (at least not for too long).
    Other than that, I have been and still am learning some basic Romanian so hopefully that will be helpful. I can't believe this is happening so fast, it hardly seems real. Thank you to everyone who has been praying and again to all the people who are helping me financially to get there and stay there. God bless!

Look's like it's happening!

I am happy to announce that plans are finally coming together to get me to Romania! It has all happened very fast (I will be leaving in two weeks) but I am glad that the goal so close that I can't forget or ignore it.

As I said it all came together quite quickly. In March a Ministry contacted me about coming to Romania in May. That was a rather scary prospect considering I had little to no funding and only two months to get ready. I didn't jump at the opportunity right away, but took a while to think about it and mostly ignore it because it was  frightening. But I finally got to a point where I didn't have a single excuse not to go. Everything was coming together and I had to decide whether I was going or not. However, I finally decided to pursue the opportunity thinking "I might as well give it a try" and was pleasantly surprised by how well everything is coming together.

The ministry is Romanian Orphan Ministries and I will be leaving around May 14th  and coming home sometime in July.  I will be staying in an apartment with a few other girls who have been there before in a town called Oredea on the border of Hungary.While I am there I will be very busy. I am told there is always something to do, but a few things would include English tutoring and Bible studies.

This last weekend I had a garage sale and was able to raise about $330, thanks to everyone who came and supported me! There are many people who have helped financially that I would like to thank, but am unsure if they would like their names posted so I will simply say you know who you are and so do I, so Thank you! May the Lord bless you abundantly for your contrbution!

If you have any questions, please ask I would love to answer them!