Tuesday, January 17, 2006

A New Beginning...

Last week we began our new year of ministry. It was awesome to be back on the street with the kids again. I was SOOO happy to see them and to see that they had done alright while our team was away. Some of the kids, including my little princesses, Elena and Angelica, have gone to another city, but most of the kids are still hanging in there as always.

The Day Center is doing well. It was also great to be with the kids there and they seem to be doing well. The outreach team from Ireland has two team members there a day so they are taking care of the special activities and for now it seems like one of the teachers is taking care of the Bible lessons which I had been doing when it was my day. I'm relieved about this because for some reason I get so freaked out about doing Bible lessons. It is so difficult keeping the kids attention in the first place and then when you have to take time for translation you really loose them. So I guess I will tackle this Bible lesson challange another time in the future. For now I am hanging out and helping with the kids and get this- TRANSLATING!

No joke! The other day the teacher who speaks no English asked ME to translate what the kids were saying to the outreach team! I totally laughed at her because I am SOO not that good at Romanian. But I guess that kind of kicked off my year...as far as language goes, its sink or swim! In the day center they lost their aid that did the translating for outreach teams and in our street team we also lost our translator and only Romanian! So, Therese, who speaks a good deal of Romanian and I are the only ones to translate now. Its crazy. Please pray for me to get better and quickly!

Now for some serious prayer requests:

*NADIA* We know this girl, about 23 years old, and she has come to us asking for help with an abortion. She some time last year she was in a horrible accident where a wall fell on her and her baby girl, killing the baby girl and injuring Nadia. I am not sure if this accident had anything to do with this, but she is telling us that due to some surgeries she had in the past and her physical condition now, if she tries to give birth she could die. She has no money for the abortion and that is why she is asking us for help. We are really praying about how to respond to this situation as there seems to be no easy answer. Please pray for God to give us wisdom and to do a miracle in this girl's life and in the life of her baby.

*Eugenia* This woman, has had a very hard life. I won't go into her story for time-sake but she needs to pay a very high water bill as soon as possible and our team is trying to go about drawing papers for an agreement to give her a loan. We need prayer for this to go well and to take care of this is the appropriate way. We also need prayer for the money that we will need in order to give her the loan. This is going to be a huge blessing for this woman and a gigantic burden lifted off her shoulders.

*Vasile* Sunday at church a bunch of street kids came and stayed, listening to the whole message which was a simple, straight-forward, passionate message of salvation and God's love! It was the PERFECT message for street kids and as a result one of the guys from the street, Vasile, prayed to receive Jesus as his Savior! Awesome! Please pray for this young man to grow in the Lord and that we would be able to take the right steps to disciple him. We are seeing more and more that we need to start a Bible study for these guys on the street. Pray for this as well!

*More Workers* And as always we are praying for God to call more and more people with different gifts to Constanta for this ministry. We now REALLY need a Romanian or at least someone who speaks fluent Romanian. And we are also praying for a nurse/medical assistant to join our team too, but we can use anyone with a heart for this ministry! We will be losing Cressida at the end of this month (And I will be saying good-bye to a very dear friend!) and sometime in Februrary we will be having a man from Sweden joining us. He has a big heart for intercession and that will be a huge blessing for us. So God provides in his timing, but I am reminded that we need to continually seek God's face for these needs. He is our good Daddy who provides for us. Amin!

Thank you so much for your prayers and LOVE! I hope you are all doing well and I will give you more updates soon!

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"All that is not the love of God has no meaning for me. I can truthfully say that I have no interest in anything but the love of God which is in Christ Jesus. If God wants it to, my life will be useful through my word and witness. If He wants it to, my life will bear fruit through my prayers and sacrifices. But the usefulness of my life is His concern, not mine. It would be indecent of me to worry about that."
- Dominique Voillaume
(From "The Signature of Jesus" by Brennan Manning)