Happy New Year!

Wow! It's hard to believe that 2017 is here! It seems my last post was in October when we were just starting our school year ministry. And now ministry is well underway and we are on the other side of the Christmas holidays. One of my goals for this year is to update the blog a little more than once a quarter. I would say that I would like to update it 3-4 times a month but I figure starting out small is probably better so... at least twice a quarter I will try and update the blog 😜

I was Stateside for furlough throughout the month of December and came back to Romania the day after Christmas along with members of our Holiday Team. The next week or so was a blur as I re-adjusted to the time change and the weather and jumped right in to helping with the team. We delivered Christmas gifts, read stories, did crafts, and spent time just hanging out with the kids each day.

Petruta getting her Christmas gift.

Alexandra and Darius with Marian Stefan (from our boys transition program) checking out their Christmas gifts.

Reading a story at Tancabesti, the severe special needs orphanage.

Vlad, Elena, and Lucia working on crafts.

Lucra with her craft, a winter hat!

On New Year's Eve we had a party for everyone who had graduated from the Heart to Heart transition program. This is one of the big "family" events that we do throughout the year. This year we invited AlphaOmega, a church that many of the graduates and staff attend, to join us. There was good food, games, dancing, and, of course, plenty of fireworks.

After the Holiday Team left we've had a few days to regroup before jumping back in to seeing the kids. There was lots of snow over the weekend and the temperatures have been quite cold. I've had some firsts over the past few days including shoveling out the driveway and driving on snow!

After the first snowfall. We got about a foot of snow over the course of 24 hours.

Today was our first day seeing the kids without the rest of the team in tow. It was just a short visit because currently 2/3 of our household are fighting off the plague (or maybe just the flu). The kids will start school on Wednesday and we will start introducing spring programing on Thursday. There is more snow in the forecast for the rest of this week though so that could impact our schedule.

Pray for the health of me and my roommates and also that the kids will be receptive to our spring programs. We are looking forward to being back on a normal schedule with our kids and to what God will do through us during 2017.

Sweet Ana, she has the best smile!