An Open Heart

We are all overwhelmed by God's love, goodness, and mercy in Romania! Exodus 34: 5-7 says:

'Then the Lord came down in the cloud and stood there with him and proclaimed His name the Lord. And He passed in front of Moses, proclaiming, "The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet He does not leave the guilty unpunished; He punishes the children and their children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation. '

How great is our God! How great is His love for all - especially those considered non-worthy by society.

Although we are in Soard to build outhouses and conduct health education classes, our real purpose is to open our hearts fully to Jesus. God is showing us that Jesus can and will do anything with an open heart.

God is so faithful and greatly to be praised. Let's continue to open our hearts to the King. He is faithful and good, beyond all comprehension.

Stay tuned for more.

Where There Is a Need God Provides

Day after day God has been faithful to provide all that we need to do His
work here in Romania. We have had some struggles with materials for the
outhouses. Yesturday, we ran.
out of lumber. However, as I type this I am sitting in a lumber yard and we
are getting the materials to finish the job we started. The best part of
being on this trip is waiting for God to come through for us. He has shown
His faithfulness in so many ways. We have received discounts on things we
couldn't afford, and we have always had enough to eat to give us energy to
do His work. We have grown so much as a team. And, we have had some members
join us here. Trusting God for His provision has been a daily task. It has
transformed our view of God and how He truly is the one in control of all
things. We thank God He has brought us here to bring Him the glory He
deserves. More to come...

Day One

And what a day it was!

We started out our morning with a great breakfast, followed by some worship
and a short Bible study. I (Chris) shared from Psalm 105:4 - seeking the
presence of God continually. I read this verse Sunday morning before church
after having a vivid dream in which God spoke clearly to me the sentance,
"I want to spend more time with you.". It was great to hear an immediate
response from one of the members of Mana church, David, who joined us for
prayer and worship - he said he need such an encouragment for his busy day.

We also had a bit of a busy day. We arrived in Soard at around 11 after
some last-minute errands and went over to one mans house to pick up a table
saw. Now this was no ordinary table saw - it was a homemade, hand welded,
nearly 500 pound monstrosity of a machine. Wait til you see the pictures!
Thankfully he also helped operate it as it was a pretty intimidating.

After four solid hours of work we managed to strip down all the rough cut
2X10 and 2X14 to pseudo normal 2X4 size and to cut all of the backs and
sides out of the plywood sheets. Our last hour was spent assembling the
sides of two outhouses and preparing the final details for the inside.

Many things were not exactly according to our plans, but God worked it all
out for the best.

At the end of the day we had a wonderful debriefing and time of sharing.
Sadly, after this time we had to say goodbye to Courtney as she had a train
to catch in Bucharest, but we all went to the train station to see her off.

So now it is off to bed to rest up and prepare for day two of our work
week!

We Have Arrived!

Sigisoara, Romania

After two days of travel through England, Ireland, and Hungary we are here in Romania! We have passed through five airports (Boston, Manchester UK, Dublin, Budapest and Tirgu Mures) and not once were we stopped by customs, the police or gate agents, we have not lost any luggage and we have not had to pay any sort of over-weight fees for our luggage even though every one of our bags was over the weight for one of flights!

God has truly been with us every step of the way. Here are a few photos of our journey to this point.

Cole and Jamie sleeping in Manchester UK during our 4 hour layover. This is 6 hours after leaving Boston, about 7am local time.

Jamie, Mischa and Danielle in Dublin. We spent the night with Cole's brother Fanel and his wife Monica in Dublin on the way to Sigisoara.












Fanel and Monica put on a wonderful dinner for us after our flights from Boston to Dublin (via Manchester). Thankfully, they also had coffee!

After arriving in Romania we went straight to Cole's parents house where they fed us a wonderful lunch and we tasted the spicy Romanian peppers. Here, Cole's mother and father look on while Cole smells the pepper to see how spicy it is.









On Sunday morning we attended Mana Church in Sigisoara. Cole's brother Pilu is the pastor here. This man led worship and we sang all Romanian songs. Even though the langugage was foreign there was no need to interpret the worship - the love of God came through clearly in the songs we sang.



After the church service, we met some of Cole and Jamie's friends.
















So that is all for now - we'll post again soon!

Getting Ready