Some Play Therapy and Some Snow

Since my last post things have gotten a lot better with ministry. Our team has started praying together regularly for the kids and see improvements not only in our responses to them but their behavior as well. I have noticed so many more good moments with them than bad over the past few weeks. Even when things get a little crazy, there are still more positive moments to remember than challenging ones. And we have seen some really awesome things happening with the kids like remembering unexpected things from our lessons, stunning moments of insight, and consciously choosing to do what's right and not what is easy. Please continue to pray that the Holy Spirit would fill us daily as we work with these kids.

Petruța and I

Character Classes are going well. We are doing a unit on Emotional Intelligence and the kids are exploring what different emotions looks like, sound like, and feel like. So far we have covered happiness and anger. The unit has a detective theme so the kids are creating "Feelings Files" for each emotion we discuss.

I have also been doing individual play therapy sessions with some of the kids. I use games like Candy Land and Chutes and Ladders to teach about feelings and consequences for our actions. The kids really like the game Boom Boom Balloon where they get to poke a balloon with sticks until it pops. We talk about how the balloon represents us and the sticks represent things that upset us. We then discuss what happens when we don't have healthy coping skills (we "explode" like the balloon) and what we can do to help self-calm in challenging situations (deep breathing, writing, listening to music, praying, etc.). Sometimes I let the kids have free play time where I simply observe what they are doing. It's a lot of fun to see them working out problems in their head or acting out things they have experienced.

Marius free playing with Legos. He has a very vivid imagination. This started as a house and morphed into several other things before he was done.

Since the beginning of February the weather had started to get a little warmer. It was so nice to feel spring just around the corner and to see some of the snow finally starting to melt! However, that didn't last long as just the other day we had 3-4 more inches of snow. At least it didn't interfere with us going to see the kids as they were in the mountains on vacation this week.

Wednesday and Thursday were cold and snowy here!

I'm enjoying having a little break and catching up on things while the kids have been away. Next week we'll be jumping back into our emotions unit and learning about sadness. I'll be working with some of the kids on self-esteem issues, friendship building, and mindfulness in our individual sessions. I will be leading Youth Group in a few weeks as well. Pray for me as I prepare for these activities. Be in prayer for Heather as she is traveling to the States for two weeks of furlough this month and Mariana and I as we run our programing at the orphanage. Also, pray for our staff as we receive teams over the next few months and for the people coming who are serving on those teams.

As always, thank you for your prayers and support!

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!

Snow Days: Round 2

Well, we got hit again this week with some serious winter weather.

These pictures were all taken on Wednesday. We got sleet and freezing rain on Tuesday night and things were mostly iced over Wednesday. Then Wednesday night we got some snow. Today (Thursday) things started to melt but it may get icy again over night. I've been off work since Tuesday (we were called off early in anticipation of the coming storm) but I'm reporting tomorrow. While I wish that I gotten at least one more day of work in this week I'm thankful that I'm in not in a position where some unexpected days off are detrimental to me.

So, what did I do on my time off? I starting knitting a sweater obviously.

 That's all hand dyed yarn that I've been saving for a special sweater, Colorido which was designed specifically for a charity knit. I've had this queued up for over 3 years and I dyed this yarn specifically for this sweater. I finally got off my bum, wound up the yarn, and got started. And after 2 days of working away...

I think I'm making some good progress. Most of my knits will go into my charity knitting pile and this one is no exception. I hope it will keep some child nice and warm. And hopefully the color combinations will help them feel cheerful as well.

I've also been chipping away at my 7 pages of Romanian homework but that's not very interesting to look at.

Hope that you stayed safe and warm over this last week and are careful as you head out over the next day or two!

Snow Day

In case you have been living under a rock Atlanta got a little bit of snow on Tuesday.

People were abandoning their cars after being stranded for hours. [Source]

Spaghetti Junction...eerie without all the cars on it. [Source]

Downtown ATL just hours after the snow had been falling. [Source]

Things got bad quickly because all the schools, government agencies, and businesses waited until after the snow started to fall before they called it an early day. Then everyone tried to leave all at once, a disaster we live through on a normal day but significantly compounded by the snow. Deicer trucks couldn't get out on the roads because of all the traffic. I don't blame anyone for waiting until it started actually snowing, we've been through this many times before and gotten little to no actual snow. I don't know that there was a better way to handle the situation. We're just not prepared for this kind of thing! I really feel for the people who had to sleep in their cars and especially the teachers and students who ended up sleeping on buses or at schools.

Everything was pretty much shut down Wednesday.

This about sums it up...

A snow/ice day meant I (tried) to work from home. I didn't have a ton of stuff to do so I quit about an hour and half earlier than I normally would. Bonus: I got to wear my pajama pants and wool socks all day :)

Hope everyone is safe and warm today! Be careful if you're like me and heading back out to work as usual today.