Long Time No Post

We are counting down the days until our big trip to America! We leave 12 days! We have mixed emotions about this trip. It has been long anticipated, we have not been home on furlough for 5 years. Nate has spent all but 3 months of his life in Romania. Drew has spent all but 6 months of his 8 years in Romania. The twins, well they have never been to the states. Spencer has spent 9 1/2 of his 11 years in Romania and Zach has spent 9 1/2 of his 12 years of life in Romania. In the past 10 years we have been in the states for a total of 7 months. I'm excited but also realize it will be quite an adjustment! For one thing there will be sensory overload, lots of sights and sounds and way too many choices! We are excited to see family. Some of Baron's side of the family we haven't seen in 5 years. We haven't seen his parents in 3 years and my parents haven't seen the grandkids in 2 years.

The down side of leaving, is leaving behind a family that is sad to see you go and worried of how they will cope without you and worried you won't come back! We keep assuring them that God is their Rock and He holds all things together!

We have seen God working in the lives of people. I'll share one story about a boy who I will call John. We have known him since he was a toddler. He is almost 10 now. He lives in a two bedroom apartment with his grandparents, his mom and dad and sister and uncle. His grandma is raising him. Grandma has 3 grown children who are all in some capacity mentally unstable. The youngest of the sons married a lady who was of a limited mental capacity and they have two children whom I will call John and Sarah. John is a little slow but he has come such a long way. He is passive and quiet but is learning to think for himself. We always wonder how much the kids at church are really soaking in well, after camp we were excited to see that John is soaking in a lot! He was being made fun of at camp and our son reported to us that John stuck up for himself, he told the boy making fun of him, "It doesn't really matter what we look like or if we are good at sports, God cares about our hearts." Our Sunday school teacher, Cristina has really been teaching the kids to accept each other not based on appearance or wealth but to accept each other as Christ does. John also has talked a lot with his grandma since camp and told her how he has invited Christ into his heart of sin to make it clean. He told her he doesn't like playing outside anymore with the kids who are mean and only talk ugly (he lives in a rougher side of town). He reads his Bible alot. When you think of him pray for him. He also told his grandma he was really sad to see our boys leave because they are his only friends. We are so thankful to see God working in this young boy's life and pray that John will always stay open to the working of God in his life!