Wednesday, March 13, 2013

Mission Possible Team 2013

We just got finished with our first team of the season...the Mission Possible Team from Michigan!  They always come the first week of March and they are usually a small team to kick off the season...it's kind of nice starting small!  We had lots of fun visiting Peris, the baby hospital, Voluntari, Rosiori, BTH, GTH, playing and baking with the mommies, making loads of flowers and a day trip to Bran Castle!  Sarah's son, Ryan joined her this year and we had a lot of fun teaching him how to play Saboteur!








Thanks, Mission Possible for another great team!

Hair or No Hair



I came back from America to this cute little face with no hair!  Romanians believe that if you shave your child's head that their hair will grow in thicker and darker!  We shall see!

Mirabela

One of the main reasons I moved to Romania was because of Mirabela and the relationship that I built with her twelve years ago in Diosti!  After I eventually came to Romania, Diosti was closed down and I no longer had the opportunity to share God's love with the children at that orphanage.  About the same time that I moved to Romania, Mirabela moved to France to go to college and to make a better life for herself.  So, after ten years of not seeing each other, we finally had the chance to meet up once again.  She was coming back to Romania for some meetings and was going to be in Bucharest!  We made a plan to meet and had a few very short hours to catch up.  We snapped a quick photo as she was getting on the metro to go back to her bed and breakfast.


Pink, Pink and More Pink!

I celebrated my 40th birthday with a pink party!


I could post so many fun pictures because we had a photo booth, but then again, you could also look at all of them on my facebook page.

We ate lots of good food and had pink champagne cake! 
These three helped me blow out the candles!
I visited and saw so many people!  It was great to see everyone!










At the end of the day, we had to have a little family photo shoot!!

Fun Times in California!

 Every year, I go home for about a month.  This year, I went home after Christmas and the Holiday Team.  I had many things planned...Disneyland with the family, a pink birthday party for my 40th (which gets its own post), visits to my nieces and nephews, a trip to San Francisco/shopping at the outlets with my friends, and many lunches and dinners out with family and friends!  I always enjoy reconnecting with loved ones that I have not seen in awhile and wait to see how the Lord is going to bless my visit.  This year was no exception!
Meeting Mickey!


Waiting for World of Color


Ice Skating with Tanner

Shoveling Snow and making Choo Choo tracks for Jett
I celebrated my actual 40th birthday with these two
At the zoo with Micah and Lucy
Let's see if I can get this right....the first annual second tree lighting!  In other words, we burned their Christmas tree!  It went up in flames soooo fast!  Kind of scary to think about!
Playing at the mall!

We started our girl's weekend with a little shopping at The Gilroy Outlets!  We had a little photo shoot that night at the hotel!
Whose feet are whose?  We all bought a new pair of shoes!
We rode the BART into San Fran and had a fun day of walking around,  shopping, and eating at the Cheesecake Factory on the top floor of Macy's!


Holiday Team 2012/2013

The holiday team is a time when we get to spend extra time with the kids at the orphanage (because they are on vacation) and to deliver Christmas presents!  I helped deliver some of the presents to the apartments in Rosiori.  I also spent a day playing with the kids at Peris!  The Lord truly blessed me with special reconnections in Rosiori with some of the girls I've worked with at girly camp during the summer (even though it was very short).  The holiday team this year was really great with quite a few team members that returned from past years and also new faces.  It is a blessing to see them be the hands and feet of Jesus Christ!  It was also pretty cool to see our current transition kids interact, play with and show affection to the kids at the orphanages. They got to visit some of our ministry sites and some of their old "homes" alongside our team members.  The team also participated in a very special event: Mariana/Sunny (one of our transition graduates from our first generation of girls) celebrated her golden birthday...28 years old on the 28th of December!  She loved her rainbow cake and 28 gifts (many of which she received 28 of the same thing)!



Mariana, the birthday girl




playing cards with Diana's rules and she kind of cheats :)
Josh, Jim and I had the opportunity to speak at our church about H2H
The Holiday Team with the BTH boys