June

It's June! Summer is here! Just last week I was drinking hot chocolate at Starbucks to try and get warm and now the second week of June I am sitting in front of a fan and drinking ice cold water. There is only one way to survive this heat without an air conditioner...eat lots of ice cream!
We had two birthdays this month, Spencer turned 10 and Nate, our baby, turned 4. We are officially out of the baby stage in our house and that phase comes with mixed emotions for me!


Nate is still very much the "baby" of the family and I am trying very hard not to baby him too much and to not let him be a brat :).



The past four years in many ways has seem to go by very slow. It's hard to believe it's been four years since we were home for a furlough. We do hope to be able to take one next year. Even though I was home for a short visit last summer and an even shorter one in February it isn't the same as a long term trip with your family. We are all looking forward to being in the states again and Joey and Gina are greatly looking forward to their first trip ever!



We will be taking kids to camp starting next month. Baron went today to visit a lady and get her permission to take her 10 year old daughter to camp. She comes to church on a regular basis and she comes to our house for tutoring. Gianina's mom gave permission for her to go but then asked Baron, "What will I do with Patricia while she is gone, she will just cry all week and I will have to take her to the hospital because she will be so sick from crying." (Patricia is Gianina's 4 year old sister) I don't think Baron quite knew what to say :-).

Camp

It's time to start raising money for camp again! We have about 35 kids we want to take this year. Some from our church but mostly kids who have been abandoned or taken from their home for various reasons and have very little hope of ever going back. The cost of a week at Camp Joy is $50. If you would like to send a child to camp please contact us.

What Adoption Means to the Twins

We had a visit from our social worker and the child psychologist last Thursday. We have all this paper work to put together again and turn in to receive a final court date. So, the twins new the ladies were here concerning them and they kept asking, "Is it almost done then?" I would say yes but then at the end of the visit I realized they thought when these ladies leave our house they would be Howertons! When they left Joey hollered out, "Is that it, are we Howertons, do we have blue passaports" (no I didn't misspell passports, that is how Joey says it). He asks almost daily if he is a Howerton yet. It's hard to explain to a 6 year old that we consider you a Howerton but that is not your offical name yet and it is also very important to him to have a blue passport but that won't come until our visit to the states, Lord willing next year. Gina is more independent and hard to read. She doesn't really ask questions about it, maybe to her she already is part of the family but Joey seems to realize that all of this is very important. It is also very important to him to have a blue passport like the rest of the family. He desires to be an American so badly! When we first got the twins Romanian passports last year so we could go to Vienna, Austria with them they were estatic! Joey always request to see his passport and always wants to show it to people. It was such a huge deal for him especially. But now he wants a blue one, his red one isn't good enough anymore :-). He wants to be like us.
We are close to having our paper work completed and then we turn in our file and wait some more. You would think by now I would be good at waiting but I'm not.

Barcelona

Thursday in Barcelona was sunny and cool. We went to a very quiet and peaceful monestary that was founded in 1326. We enjoyed riding the tour bus that you can hop on and off around town and visit different places. We enjoyed eating without 6 children. We are used to cutting up their food and telling them to be quiet and chew with your mouth closed so it was quite nice just sitting down and eating!
Friday, we walked a lot and looked in shops and just relaxed. Went and sat on the beach of the Mediterranean Sea. It was so relaxing. Then on our last day, Saturday, we took a boat ride on the Mediterranean Sea which was so lovely. We then went back to the apartment we stayed at, got our luggage, walked through the crowds to the subway and got on...if you remember our last anniversary trip to Rome, Baron got pick pocketed on the subway so we were so careful this time but on our way to the airport with all our luggage we were prime target and Baron let his guard down and put his wallet in his back pocket. We were crowded by a group getting on the subway and they got his wallet. Our instinct when he knew his wallet was gone was to jump of the subway because the guy that stole it in Rome ran off so we thought we could catch him that way but we realized too late it was the group of people that had been acting really strange and they actually stayed on the subway. Right there in the subway station Baron called the bank and thankfully we cancelled all our cards before they had a chance to use any of them. They did get away with 90 Euro and Baron's DL, and permanent residency card but we are trying to be thankful because it could have been much worse. We actually believe they may have gotten in my purse too because my makeup bag was missing from my purse. We are so thankful they got that instead because that left me with a bank card so we could access our bank account still. We decided to go to the police station at the airport to fill out the report so we headed to the airport bus and to our surprise when we got there the driver told us the airport was "clos-ed"...we thought he was joking with us but we didn't think it was very funny seeing as how we had just had our wallet stolen! There were a lot of other people standing around though and when we found someone who spoke English sure enough, the airport was clos-ed due to the volcanic ash from Iceland! The airport closed around 4 p.m. Saturday and opened back up early Sunday morning but we missed our flight. We flew Wizz Air which is a discount company so there is no Wizz Air office at the airport and no one there can help you...that is the price you pay flying discount...if there is a problem you are in trouble! So, we were fortunate enough to be able to go back to the same apartment we stayed in and she let us have it for half price because she felt sorry for us! Baron called Ionita back in Romania and asked him to call all our church people and to go to church to wait for anyone who might come to let them know why there was no service. The Tylers fortunatley agreed to just keep the kids a while longer :-). We got up early Sunday morning and decided just to head to the airport in hopes we could get a flight. We then found out there is no Wizz Air office there and tried in vane to get ahold of the airline and put about 20 euro into the phone and kept being put on hold. We did find out there were two options, flying out Sunday night to a city in Romania but we would arrive in the middle of the night and there was no train to Lugoj until the next day or flying to Budapest, Hungary on Monday morning. Thankfully our good friends the Tylers said they would be willing to pick us up in Budapest. After 6 hours in the airport we realized we weren't getting out that day and we got a hotel close to the airport for the night. Then from the hotel we finally got a hold of Wizz Air and were put on the Budapest flight for the next morning. We enjoyed dinner at a Pizzarea that Sunday night ( it was a really weird Sunday for us). We got up and the airport shuttle took us at 7:15 to the airport. The flight was scheduled to take off at 8:55 a.m. When we arrived at the gate it said estimated take off was 11:30 a.m. So we sat at the gate and around noon someone came to the gate and gave us all free snack voutures and told us they had no idea when the plane was actually coming. The plane finally did come around 1:30 and we got out around 2 p.m. We arrived in Budapest at 4:30 p.m. and then had a 4 1/2 hour drive home. We stopped to pick up the kids and finally at 11 p.m. Monday night we arrived home! What a memorable ending to a wonderful anniversary trip!

Day #1 in Barelona.

Day One in Barelona. Right away we could see the beauty of Barcelona. We stopped and had a donut and coffee/hot chocolate for breakfast...yes it was chilly enough that hot chocolate was yummy. Then we walked a little further and spotted...

So we had breakfast number two which was even better then the first one! It was a little overcast and drizzling rain but by noon it cleared up and was just chilly. We took the tour bus around town and even made it to Toys R Us and got the summer birthday boys a gift (toys in Romania are soo expensive).


Barcelona, we found was a quiet city. We stayed right near the beach in the Barceloneta area and it was very quiet. We loved it and thought it was a beautiful city.

God Is Trustworthy

I am reading and doing the Bible study that goes along with the book, Trusting God by Jerry Bridges. The last assignment to do for the first day was to journal about God's hand in your life so you could look back during hard times and be encouraged when you see how God has worked in the past. So, I journaled about three things from our past.

Several years ago we were still paying off the new church building. We had received money for half of it and borrowed the other half. Just before the rate of the dollar drop, an annonymous donor paid off the $20,000 debt that we owed. Just a few short months after that the rate of the dollar dropped drastically and we lost about 30% of our income and would not have been able to keep up with the payments on the church property. God is trustworthy and looks after His children!

Last December our old white van burned up. We transported people to and from church with it and took kids to camp every summer. It was a very old van. Our family vehicle only had seats for 4 kids so we were always either taking the old van with no seat belts or the new van and putting two kids to a seat. Baron had been pondering lately which vehicle to get rid of but he really didn't want to get rid of the old van. We just kept discussing it but never made a decision. God made the decision for us! The white van burned up and was beyond repair. In just three months enough money was donated to buy a much newer van that also seats our whole family and has seat belts. The van is much better then what we imagined or dreamed. God always blesses His children even when they aren't looking for it!

When we were moving to Romania almost 9 years ago now, I asked God to give us a house. We had two boys at the time and I struggled with the thought of living in an apartment. Little did I know that just 8 years later we would have six kids! Baron's parents came to Romania to house hunt for us. They found a house near the center of town for $28,000 with a nice big courtyard and plenty of space for a growing family. Just a year after we bought the house, housing prices went through the roof and we could have not afforded to buy a house. Our house now could sell for many times more than we bought it for. We saw our house for the first time the day we moved in! I didn't get to pick out my dream house but God picked out a dream house for me...much better than I could have ever dreamed!! God is trustworthy and brings about things more wonderful then we could ever hope for!

The most recent story is this: We have known all along we wanted to work with abandoned children but our first priority was starting a church. Our partners that are coming to Romania (Lord willing this year) will be a big part in this ministry to children. We have sought out many different opportunities but it seemd doors always closed on us. It is much harder now to minister in state run homes, they do not seem to welcome foreigners in any more. Baron was out visiting this past Saturday and he ran into a family we have known for years. In fact, the dad used to come to our church and then quit coming. They are a friendly family and always enjoyed when we visited them. Well, the daughter is now working at a state run home in a village very near us and she said they would love for us to come and help them out. We met with the director of the place just last Monday and he welcomed any help we could give them. They are individual apartments that house about 14 kids each with educators who work shifts. There are a total of 72 kids that live here and a majority of them will never be adoptable but they will also never go back to their families. Then Tuesday we received 10 boxes of children's clothing from a ministry in the states. Saturday, we get to go out and personally hand out all the toys and clothes to these children. God always has a plan for His children and brings it about in His timing!

Another Police story...plus an adoption update!

Where to start...I guess at the beginning of the day. We started out for Timisoara. We were taking Gina to Timisoara for some special time together for her birthday which is next Thursday. We were on a two lane side road and in our lane cars are always parked...we are used to this, the no parking signs are ignored and the police never ticket so people continue to park in the street. We have always been able to still fit down the street though but today a car was parked several feet away from the curb so their wasn't a lot of room and Baron was zipping through (he thinks he is invinsible when he drives) and he is talking to me when ping...we crash mirrors with the passing car...not just any car but a jandarmeria car...what is that you ask, well that is what you would call the police better known as the "brute squad." So, Baron stops and goes back, our sideview mirrow is cracked but still attached and still works. The police guys are a bit ticked at first because Baron didn't stop right away and they thought he was driving off. Anyway, Baron asks them if they are going to write a ticket for the car parked in the no parking lane and he says that's not his department. Baron then asks well, lets file this and my insurance will pay for the damage to your car...the police man proceeds to say if we demand to call the traffic police and go to court that they will take Baron's liscence (this is the second time Baron has had an accident and the romanian police threaten to take his liscense if he files his insurance!). So, they finally agreed that it would cost around 100 Ron to fix the mirror (about $30) so Baron gives it to him and that is the end of that. This whole time I thought Baron was getting a steep ticket and who knows what else so I was very relieved to find out we were only put out $30! Baron just can't seem to stay away from the Romanian police :).
Well, we finally get to Timisoara and we decide to stop by the child protective services and see how the adoption was going and the social worker there looked very happy as she conveyed the news that our file was awaiting a final stamp from the judge to show the twins were ours and it is irrivocale and they are adoptable. Then we will take all our paper work to the court and they will be ours...just one court date!! Other Americans have experienced so many court dates and call backs we just assumed that would happen to us too but it looks as if in just a few short months we could be having our final court date and officially introduce you to two new Howertons!!! Isn't that exciting??

Finally, little fun encouragements...Today as we were grocery shopping, my little eye spotted:



That's right, Oreos have arrived in Romania!!!