Greetings once again from Sebis, Romania! We hope that you are enjoying the summer, getting some rest and staying cool!
The last three months for us have been busy and many good things have been accomplished. Earlier in the year someone mentioned that our logo for the ministry seemed to appear outdated so we began to explore options to update it. The old logo has served us well and was created by a close friend, over 26 years ago so it is a bit sad to say goodbye to it, but in this life, change in inevitable… change often is good! Here is the new logo that we have come up with and it will be used from this time forward in our communication.
We have also made a separate logo for our children’s work which we are hoping for it to become very well known in our area as we seek to reach out to the children and teens here.
The last few months we have been distributing the toys that had been collected during the annual toy drive in the States. In total we were able to visit 5 kindergartens with a total of 11 classrooms and to leave behind plenty of toys for the children to play with. When we visit the classrooms we have the freedom, to share the message of the Gospel and we always ask the kids to say a prayer before bringing the boxes of toys inside . It is always a joy to see the kids faces as these boxes are opened. Thank you once again to all who helped with this outreach in any way. Please pray that many of these children will come to know the Lord!
June 2nd is Romania’s national day of adoption and we were once again able to help organize and participate in our county wide outreach to encourage adoptions on this day. Last year we came up with the idea of a balloon launch, with one balloon representing each child that is in the county system being raised without parents. This outreach was very effective in drawing attention to this problem so after last years event, we immediately decided that it was a worthy outreach to repeat this year. This year’s event was much easier to organize and involved more non-profit organizations working together, alongside our county child protection to bring awareness for the need of foster parents.
June is a difficult month for us as school is finishing and there are so many exams that each of the kids have to take. Sometimes it is a real challenge and everyone is always glad to get to the summer break. Ashley has finished her second year of university and is spending the summer months here at home. Jacqueline will now be a senior and is taking extra courses in preparation for medical school. Alexandra has just finished the eight grade, Annabelle and Adrian have finished seventh grade, Anna Maria has finished fifth grade, Claudiu has finished the forth grade and Ioana has finished the second grade. Here in Romania the hardest school years are the fifth grades, eighth grade and the twelfth grade, so this coming year will be a challenge for us as we have four of our kids entering into these grades.
In the month of July we hosted three short-term mission teams all from the same church (Leatherwood Church in Pennsylvania). Their Pastor and two of his children came with the first team and left with the third team after spending 24 days with us and working with Barnabas Ministries. For us the months of July and August are camp season so these teams were able to work with us doing camps and taking care of the camp. Each of the teams were an incredible blessing and much work was accomplished.
Team number one, worked with us doing our annual day camp at Casa Ezra, for the children ages 3-9. In total there were approximately 45-50 children that participated at this camp. One thing interesting to note about this camp is the fact that Maria and I were not involved in it, as we were away in the city each day attending some required counseling courses for Barnabas Ministries. This team worked very hard along with us cutting the grass, cleaning the rooms and getting the camp ready.
Team number two, worked with us to do the camp for ages 9-15, at our camp in Laz. The theme for this camp was, “Faith, Hope and Love” and there were 26 kids that attended this camp. This team also worked with us to take care of the camp, visited some of the needy families that we help and managed to paint a few halls at the camp.
Team number three, worked with us to do a three day camp for young adults, ages 16-22. The theme of this camp was, “The Holy Fire of God”! This team also worked with us to take care of the camp, visited some of the needy families that we help, painted a hall and did a ladies meeting.
In the last week of July, a short-term team of eight from Chapel on the Hill (our sending church in Pennsylvania) arrived to work with us for two weeks. The first week we held a camp for ages 13-22 and the theme of this camp was “Only Jesus”! All of the camps this year were very successful and during the last evening service of each camp, we were able to pray individually for each one of the participants. Some accepted the Lord for the first time and others made new commitments to the Lord. It is always a joy to see the Lord work at these camps. We are very grateful for each person that has come here to help, those that have given financially and those that have prayed to make these camps a success. Thank you!!!
At the moment the project that we are working towards for the afterschool program is being held up due to some structural problems that we must resolve before moving forward. With all of the camps we have not been able to resolve these issues. Please pray that the Lord will send the right person our way to help us to get this project moving as it is very needed!
Thank you so much for your prayers, support, encouragement and friendship!!!
Love,
Dan, Maria, and kids