Pictures, Pictures.

Catalina and I at a New Year's Eve Celebration

Part of our group at the Baby Hospital

Love her smile!

A beautiful baby girl

An intense game of spoons with our new Romanian friends

Beautiful night sky from our house

Our team + Romanian friends at the New Year's Celebration

The best way to celebrate the New Year-thanking God for the last & anticipating His blessing in the next.

More to come-special thanks to Charles Zablan for taking some great shots!

Blessed & In Awe

 If I had an entire week with each one of you, to sit down, tell stories, and answer questions, it would be too little time to fully explain and give shape to what God did in Romania, to fully describe His awesome faithfulness.  He moved in ways I can hardly begin to believe, let alone convey.  For that, I am incredibly thankful, to God, and to all of you, because I know that the prayers of all of you were monumental in accomplishing the work of God that our team witnessed.  I have never felt so fully bathed in prayer.  So thank you-you were a blessing to so many people.

I fell in love while in Romania-with the people of Romania: a baby girl with big blue eyes and no name, a little girl with a great big toothy grin, and a woman who was in awe of His extravagant love for her.  I fell in love with His people, and, along with that, more in love with Him.  I prayed that God would give me a bigger understanding of His heart, and He answered that prayer with amazing clarity.  The compassion and incredible love that He feels for His children is almost overwhelming at times.  Friends, this experience in Romania changed me, is continuing to change me, to alter the fabric of my heart-He's using it to make my life more clearly mirror His.  I feel so blessed.  So blessed to have shared in loving His children.

"For the word of the LORD is right and true;
 He is faithful in all He does.
 the LORD loves righteousness and justice;
 the earth is full of His unfailing love."
  -Psalm 33:4-5

Transition House

Finally, part three of the ministries of Heart to Heart.

The Transition House is a very special place.  Each year, teenage orphans apply and are interviewed to be a part of the transition program, run by Heart to Heart.  In the course of the transition program, 4-8 students per house (the girls in Bucharest and the boys in a neighboring city) are involved in what is like a life-lessons fast-track schooling.  They start out very basically, sometimes learning what we would deem extreme basics, like learning to take a shower, take care of clothing, and clean.  Later, these life lessons grow a bit more complicated, the girls learn to cook (their teacher, Sanda, is the best!), do basic sewing and mending, computer skills, and they even have the opportunity to gain a nail technician education.  The boys learn trades like welding and carpentry.  Basically all the skills needed for living on their own-all the things that parents usually teach their children.  Throughout the process is a close-intense discipleship program.  Staff members live with the transition house students, and they begin to truly see what it means to belong to a family, to have someone that they can depend on.  For many orphans who have grown up hearing about God's love, this is where it actually hits home.  Lives are changed, eternally.

One girl who was in the very first year of the transition program was one of our translators for the trip.  She told us that when she began the program, she was very disobedient.  She said she was filled with so much hate from all the things she had experienced in the orphanage.  She began the program, only to be kicked out for violating the rules of the transition house.  Later, after some cool-down time, she decided to come back and finish the program.  It was hard to believe that this woman had once been a rebellious teenager!  She is now soooo filled with the love of God!  She is now involved in the baby hospital ministry of Heart to Heart-daily going to care for the smallest of His little ones.  As I worked alongside her there, witnessing her whispering, "Jesus loves you" to those babies, I was truly in awe of God's power to save and transform.  She is one of many who has been forever changed.