Hi Everyone, Yesterday we did "Rome in a day"! We left at 8:30 am and made it back at 9:00 pm. Short of a coffeebreak, lunch and supper we walked all day! Yeah, those Albertans aren't afraid of walking! It's the quickest way to get around the city. We saw oodles of old (1500's) churches, the Pantheon, now a R.C. church (27 B.C.), and of course, the Colloseum. Not to mention the rest of the stuff in between, like the Palatine Hill where the Ceasars used to live, now ruins as the Renaissance robbed the beautiful palaces for building material for [View Full Entry]

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Hello Everyone, We made it to Rome! Not overnight, of course, considering that it took us 22 hours just to get to Venice. We left Romania on Friday, May 9, Bethany’s birthday. We had birthday cake with Peter, Hailey and the team, and then had a cake at Vasili and Ana’s place, a wonderfully hospital couple. They live in a typical Romanian apartment building; very interesting! Not exactly what we are accustomed to. We left Peter and the team at the Sibiu Airport. It was then that we had to drastically alter our travel plans; we had planned to drop south [View Full Entry]

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Hello Everyone, This is our last day here; we've not had internet connection since Monday to blog, thus you haven't heard from us. We've had a great couple last days. On Tuesday I went with the nurse to various homes to visit elderly people in the little outlying town of Lunca. It was amazing to get inside their homes and listen to their stories. (through a translator). The houses were very, very poor. One room in the house serves as kitchen, livingroom, bedroom. The room was probably about twelve by twelve. The house was made up out of two rooms, but [View Full Entry]

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Well, it was quite the Sunday! In the morning we lost the keys for one of the vehicles and some of us got to Centre of Hope were we met in the morning rather late; transporting twenty-five people has taxed the mission's organization to the max as it is! Then when we all arrived safe and sound (in mind :)) and all of us had left for church in Lunca, Peter and Hailey's vehicle broke down. Regrettably, the driver of our van had not heeded my advice to drive behind them as the vehicle had been giving them trouble for a [View Full Entry]

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Today we visited Sighisoara, home of Dracula, a Romanian folk hero. NOT the Disney Dracula! The castle dates back to the middle ages, although the settlement is probably older. Dracula pushed back the Turks who continually invaded Romania. We went there via train; a forty minute ride. Today was Peter's birthday, although we celebrated last night already with Peter, Hailey, Gerrit, Jane, Ed and I while the young people were at the youth group in Lunca. Tonight we had children's ministry in Cenade again. They are meeting with about twenty-five kids in a tiny home made out of cow dung and [View Full Entry]

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We spoke to the women's group this morning. I spoke on Galatians 6:9 "Do not grow weary....." and on the first chapter of James which again speaks of perseverance and how God loves the widows and orphans. These women all have taken orphans into their homes. Jane spoke about being refined as silver from Malachi. God allows us to go through trials so we can reflect His character. We couldn't talk with the women as it was through an interpretor, so don't know the response. I am sure we'll hear sometime. We then did groceries with our driver, a middle age [View Full Entry]

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Hello Everyone, I just noticed that I haven't blogged since Monday! Wow! Time is going so fast! So much has happened since then. On Tuesday afternoon we planned a ladies' tea with the ladies from the tiny village of Lunca where we are working. They had never done anything like that in the village, so the ladies from the team here wanted to make it very special for them. Jane and I went shopping with some of the Romanian women for cake, juice, napkins, table cloths, etc. We put on a really nice tea party for them. In total we had [View Full Entry]

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Hello Everyone! Easter Monday; more planning and meetings this morning to get ready for the projects, starting tomorrow. This afternoon we went with Peter on a tour of how his journey to Romania started back in 1990, one year after the fall of Ceauscecu. He described the horrible conditions in the staterun orphanages, with kids lying in their own excrement, two in a crib, eyes glazed over as they never received human touch. A few years later they adopted their little girl from that orphanage and then returned to run an orphanage, later on to be broken up into permanent foster [View Full Entry]

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Some of you have asked about our return date; we are unable to reasonably change our tickets. Meaning, we have two tickets on Aeroplan which are absolutely not changeable before May 21. Thus, Julian and I will need to buy two new tickets for our return with Air Transat, which means that we need to transfer from Heathrow to Gatwick and spend a night in London to catch the next day flight. New tickets from London alone are about $2000, incl. tax, but not including our stay in london, transfer to Gatwick, as well as the two flights Amsterdam to London [View Full Entry]

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Our first day in Romania. Easter Sunday. This morning we got together in the Centre of Hope, the main mission station here in Medias. We had lunch there with the team and then headed out to church in two tiny villages in the country in Lunca and Lodroman. In Lunca a single lady had been praying for a church for years, and now there was one established. She greeted the team with lilac flowers, oliebollen and cooked eggs. We carried on to another tiny little church with about fourteen people, mainly youth and very elderly. This is where they'll be building [View Full Entry]

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