The 4 Little Girls TAKE 2!

Oh, Kelsey. Maybe I should get ticked more often. Because when I get mad and God is already doing something behind my back it makes me more in awe of Him. If I didn't really care at all from the beginning I probably wouldn't get pumped at the answer.
Probably as I was writing the last post, the plans were being made for the 5 1/2 year old to come to Casa Alba. WHAT? Yes, that's right the Dad signed her over!
Much joy over this. (I know she'll have much pain and anger as she grows up over everything that's happened over the past few months - this joy is not in ignorance over this.)
MUCH JOY! I so believe God has created this little girl with such purpose. And to be a part of Casa Alba where I can, hopefully, take part in teaching her about that - wow, very cool!
Thanks Jesus!
Alina, will go to Casa Silvia this week. The other 2 (Viktoria and Ana Maria) will go to foster homes, I think.
I went to our teams' "house meeting" Monday night still ticked about "getting nowhere" with these girls and then Lars starts sharing the news.
Very cool. Let me say that again, very cool.

The 4 little girls...

The four girls...ay yai yai, I want to stop writing about them. I want everything to work out okay for them and for the Dad to make a wise decision on behalf of them. I want to stop asking for prayers to "save" them and instead ask for prayers for the incredible future before them.

Here's the lowdown.

Finding a family for the 3 girls together I guess is now out of the question. Viktoria (the little one) is going to a foster family today.

The Dad still refuses to sign over the 5 1/2 year old and in addition, took the 2 year old home this week. A week ago Lars told us at team worship that the Dad was only fighting against giving up the 5 1/2 year old, and to pray for that situation. I know, I know you're probably thinking "Kelsey, what's the big deal with the girls staying with the Dad?" If only you could come and see for yourself.... just trust me on this one.

Alina, the handicapped 3 year old, will go to Casa Silvia this week. (Good!) I was told this wasn't possible without financial support but somehow it's being done. One of our volunteers lives at C.S. and runs it. Alina, although moving to C.S., will actually be living with this volunteer. She will receive so much therapy, care and love this way. I am a little concerned those for this volunteer's schedule in taking on this over full-time job of working with Alina.

I feel so frustrated with all of this. You get a ray of hope and then it slips out of your fingers. Again and again this happens in Romania. Courtney last night shared with some of us how it is with some babies that were at the hospital over the past year or so. She went and visited on Friday. It's the same situation : awful. I just don't understand how the leaders of this country can go to such extents to IGNORE such huge desperation in their country. It was like this before EU and now, I fear, the "glamor" of the big "EU Spotlight" will have them blinded for even longer.

I have pictures of them to share with you. I think I'll save them for the April update though...

Team Trip Part 1

For awhile now I've been trying to plan some sort of trip for our team to take together. There aren't so many options, especially keeping in mind the young kids who are coming along as well.
Finally we were able to plan a trip to a little town called Moigrad, about 9 KM away from the town of Zalau. I think it was a little under 2 hours to get there. Anyway, in Moigrad there are Roman ruins dating back to 106 A.D. Crazy, huh? I thought I could walk you through the morning.

For starters there's a shepherd whose house is on the land with the ruins. He's paid to keep the grounds clean etc... He was interesting. I told him that we were going to have someone translate but he just couldn't help talking a mile a minute and using, how to say...using that area's "accent" so to speak. It was impossible. Little did we know, nor did he tell us, that just behind him was this sign in English explaining what he was trying to tell us.
The funny thing is that what we did understand was him talking about how much 'better' it was during Communism and Ceaucescu's reign. Oh my word - his isolated living in these hills has really warped his thinking, I think.



In the center was a our guide, notice the looks of "nu inţeleg" (i don't understand) on everyone's face.
Caleb and Dani didn't want to stand around and listen either. They were much to exciteda bout the playground of sorts awaiting them behind the fence. So, they climbed it.
Scroll down to the next post for Part 2.

Team Trip Part 2

Okay, well let's get this show on the road!


Okay, let's all take a moment of silence for Zeus' temple. I thought it was kind of cool actually until we were informed of all the living sacrifices made there.

Caleb thought climbing up, over, around and down on the temple structure was a much better use than its original!

So the sign said this was a store or something? I thought the hole was kind of neat so, with many promises of immediately returning him to his rock climbing, I got Caleb to take a picture with me.

Team Trip Part 3

You know, I'm saving you a lot of hassle by showing you the pictures. You're avoiding extreme winds, cold weather and tons of sheep "ca ca" by touring this way!


Okay, this house totally cracked me up. Look at the picture above. Hello, Sweden during Roman times? The red roof is the icing on the cake. They created that picture from what you see below. And, of course, as the tour guide/shepherd told us "All of this is "Probabil"(Probably)"

Cool catepillar huh? It was the highlight of walking up one of the hills. Thought you all might enjoy seeing it as well. Did anyone else out there collect these fuzzy ones and stick them in empty egg cartons? I think my egg cartons became more of cemetaries than homes.... The tour guide just kind of stared at me for taking a picture of it : )

This was the main "poarta" gate. After walking through it we came across a massive drinking trough for the soldiers and horses (probabil again), some traces of where the roads left/met to come to Porolissum, and then we saw this....(scroll down to next post.)

Team Trip Part 4

During Ceacescu's reign, much of this amphitheatre was rebuilt.

Is it Greece? Is it Turkey? No, it's the middle of nowhere Romania!

It was cool because you could hear everyone's conversations from inside the circle.

What you see Caleb doing is the result of no nap and not eating lunch on time. He refused to climp up the small, grassy hill with me and opted for "this" instead. Then, he sort of fell down it and climbed up again. You would have thought I was physically hurting him when I picked him up and said "no more."

Well, that's it for the tour of the Porolissum outside of Zalau, Romania!

Lots to Learn Before I Get Married!

Don't jump to any conclusions from this post's title. It was just something one of the Casa Alba ladies told me today when Kari and I were there to do the program with the kids.
Tomorrow I will be by myself and I didn't think I could do both puppets alone. So instead of just doing the puppet show for some of them today, and none of them tomorrow, we opted for cookie making day. Maybe a little last minute but it turned into a really great experience for the kids. And, it's something that I'll (hopefully) be able to handle by myself with the rest of the kids tomorrow. I would say the majority of our kids at Casa Alba have never made cookies before. Or, for that matter, helped "mom or dad" in the kitchen at all. Their meals are prepared, plated and brought to them for every meal. So for them to make the cookies themselves (and they really did for the most part) was like a trip to Disneyland. And the other kids who'll I'll do it with tomorrow could barely handle the fact that they weren't going to make them today! So how did this turn to marriage? I'll tell you. The recipe for the cookies said UNGREASED cookie sheet. No greasing, I didn't grease. The cookies stuck a little but honestly didn't require much elbow grease to clean up later on. But, the Romanian ladies working at Casa Alba thought that I just didn't know to put oil (ulei) or margarine (margarina) on it first. The one lady said, in response to this, "You have a lot to learn before you get married. Don't worry though, you'll learn. I learned a lot my first year of marriage. You'll learn." Hello, hello where did that comment come from? I told her "The recipe said ungreased cookie sheet." But I'm guessing that "ungreased cookie sheet" is not a common practice here. To appease her I put margarina on the final tray. She also suggested a combination of ulei si margarina. I wasn't about to venture into that. Just stuck with wiping the butter wrapper over the cookie sheet instead. The cookies turned out so-so, mainly because we only had a cheap-o gas oven to work with. Gas ovens are really hard to use, especially when baking things that need to have heat coming from top and bottem. These gas ovens only have heat from the bottem so most times everything gets black below super fast. I've given up trying to make any type of bread, baked goods in my oven here at home. Just doesn't work. The kids liked the cookies though - that's what matters!

It's crazy how fast plants grow. Seriously these pictures were taken only 24 hours apart.
The top picture also shows how Caleb thinks our plants are birthday candles. Every minute we were home that day, almost, he stood there "blowing out the plants." Anyhow my parents hooked me up with this super dooper garden starter kit thingy. That's what the plants are in above. Okay, maybe it's lame but I love growing veggies and stuff. I just never have really done it by myself. So, this year I decided I was going for it. Plus I was a little tired of not having pumpkins readily available for Thanksgiving, and zucchini is unheard of. Hence, the motivation for the garden. Lars, my boss, gave me permission to dig up a small part of the volunteer yard for it and I did that last week. Simon, our construction guy, is going to fence it in this week. I'm pretty pumped. Plus it's been cool so far to do it with Caleb. He planted all the seeds with me and we've looked at them everyday. And, it's a great example of how Jesus wants to grow in our hearts so we've been talking about that a lot as well.

Day Off

So yesterday was a rare day for me. I had the whole day off. I think it was too much time actually, probably would have preferred to just have 1/2 a day instead. It wore me out so much that I was in bed, actually asleep I think, by 9:30pm'ish'. My life here in Marghita is really 2 lives that continually combine: being Caleb's mom and the ministry areas with FCE.
It can get overwhelming at times with the amount of work, spiritual - physical and emotional, that each require. Especially, being single. Being single as a missionary and being a single mom.
Anyway, I lined up the volunteer babysitters and I was off! A good friend came with and we actually went to a movie. I think that's the first time I've been to the movies in about 2 years. The only one that wasn't about evil people or killing people was 'Dream Girls.' Sorry, I wasn't a fan. Seriously if I couldn't stand all of the singing, how did the rest of you get through it?
Anyway I don't think I necessarily needed a "mom" break but more that it was just good to get out of Marghita and away from the team/ministry stuff for a day. I'm sure some of you can relate. Hey, almost forgot. Some really cool praises from this week.
1. ECC (my home church in Bloomington) is sending a team this summer! Not only will we be doing a VBS type program for the kids at Casa Alba orphanage BUT I JUST TODAY got the approval to do it in a local gypsy village the week after we finish with Casa Alba. AND, the gypsy village that we'll do it at is HOPE'S gypsy village. That's right 'my' little girl is going to be learning about Jesus this summer!
2. We have 3 people here on the team for 3 weeks who are here visiting but also huge pillars on our team. I connected with them on a spiritual level more than with anything else and to have them here is like seeing HIS hope in person. I am so thankful.
3. My older sister is coming this summer and we will be taking Caleb on his first beach/ocean experience. I got permission this week from Casa Alba's director to take him to the coast. YAY!
4. My Mom and Dad are coming in August and will be serving my team and the kids as their time allows. They may even be able to do a team spiritual retreat of sorts. It is very cool to think about. I can't wait!
5. I finally found someone to fix the big hole in my bathroom. Maybe I'll take a picture and do a separate blog about this. Anyway he came over tonight and every other sentence out of his mouth was "Did a Romanian do this? Oh my head (their version of "Oh my word."). He was so appalled at the 'work' that had been done he offered to fix stuff that I was 'fine' with because he couldn't stand to see such bad craftsmanship. Needless to say, I'm excited - especially since he said the hole will be no problem!

The 4 Little Girls

It's been a bit since I've updated you on the 4 little girls whose Mom died. If you don't know what I'm talking about look through my blog history for one titled "When a gyspy dies."
The situation has kind of been at a stand still lately so I dropped by Casa Alba to talk to Lidia, the director, about the future of the girls. She filled me in on some really cool and hopeful things this morning in regards to these girls.

1. Child Protection is going to make the father sign over all the girls, not just the younger three.
2. Lidia wants to find a foster family that will take 3 of the girls so that they can stay together!
3. The severely handicapped daughter, Alina, can go to Casa Silvia (our group home for handicapped children) if "I" can raise the financial support.

Wow, wow, wow. All of these are HUGE praises! Lidia ended the conversation with "Think you can get the money for all of this?" I went "Let me get the word out and see how people respond!" So, the word is out. I'm guessing the costs for this will be about $250-$300/month.
The three going into a foster family will be able to do this through Child Protection and Romania will pay their salary, not the foundation. The $250-$300 would be for Alina to have a spot in our group home. Casa Silvia is an incredible place for the 6 children who can live there. It's run by one of our permanent volunteers and Romanians are employed to work and play with the kids when they aren't in school. Alina's future, she's 3 now, could drastically change for the better being in an environment where people understand the depth of her disabilities and want to help improve her way of life!

The Package Arrived!

(This picture should be at the bottem so read this one last!)
And, I thought Pooh Bear was a little lonely so I propped him up on the couch next to me and I shared more pretzels with him!

Hey Grandma and Grandpa!....

I LOVE the new books you sent me. Really, I do.

I make Mommy read them over and over and over again. I'm pretty sure she loves them as much as I do. This morning the first thing I did when I climbed out of my crib was grab the one about the penguins and stick it in her face! Then I said "Read it Mommy!" over and over again until she started reading.

I love you both, THANKS!

Or, "Mesc" as I usually say for "Multumesc" in Romanian.

That's just too long to say, so "Mesc" does alright for me. I'm pretty good at saying it because every old lady I see on the street gives me something because she thinks I'm so cute and "ce dulce" (how sweet!). Last week I got a blue car and a hot dog. But then Mom told the meat store lady that I couldn't get the hot dog because I wasn't listening very well that day. That made me sad and I cried.

And, I was really good at sharing yesterday. I put my bears on the couch and shared my pretzels with them. I gave them each 1 pretzel stick.

Prayer

2 weeks ago at our team's Monday night worship we looked at Psalm 139. We broke into smaller groups and each one had to answer some questions I wrote up beforehand. Those questions led to writing a prayer together at the end. Thought you might be interested to see the prayer the group I was in wrote.

God you intimately know us through the following ways and experiences:
service, provision and the unexpected.
God thank You for showing Your bigness in the following ways:
creation, detail, day to day living/care for us.
God cleanse our team and our work in the following areas:
serving each other/loving and care for BODY of Christ, humility/allowing God to use us in Romania's means and methods, our walks with the Lord, unity.
Thank You Jesus, lead us in the way everlasting. Amen.

Each group was supposed to end up with a written prayer but ours was the only one that actually got to it. (Note to self, Kels don't have so many discussion questions next time.)
I thought it would be awesome to write the prayers from every group and have them hanging around the volunteer house. Since only one prayer got finished, I totally forgot about this but today I found the sheet with my group's prayer on it. So tomorrow I think I'll kels-i-fy it (a.k.a. write it really big on a sheet of paper) and hang it up.

The Kick

The Kick

Okay, so there's no sound. Yes, it's a video it's just that who would have even guessed that a digital camera with a video option could be without sound. I sure didn't! Anyway, click on the picture and it'll link you up with the video. What's "The Kick" you might ask? Well it's kind of Caleb's thing, especially when he's in a really silly mood or is meeting someone for the first time. It's so random, he'll meet someone and then just start doing "The Kick" and then will end up on the floor laughing like crazy. About 2 weeks ago he just started it up as we were walking out the door, I was so pumped to get it on camera! Will definitely be showing this at his HS graduation party....

Suffering

Every Monday night we have team worship. Last night was particulary cool because of the speaker we had. She has a bunch of degrees all beginning with "psycho therapy....." and specializes with women etc... Anyway she'll be speaking next week as well and last night was kind of an intro into next week. She said she'll be talking about stress, especially how stress affects missionaries. She mentioned all of these different types of stress (new for me, just usually see it as "STRESS!") and then asked what stressed us out here (so she could get prepped for next week.) Something immediately came to mind and that was the amount of suffering. I know, how dare I say that other people's suffering stresses me out. Honestly though, I don't mean it in a selfish way. Over the past month or so I have really noticed it building up inside of me. There are more kids on the street begging here in Marghita than the years previously put together. There are no programs to help them and no one cares. The babies at the hospital still keep coming. There are no programs to help this either and no one to start them. The gypsy mom dies and her girls get split up everywhere and the oldest will remain unschooled in the trash dump with her step-father. The social workers can't fine him for not putting her in school b/c he's too poor to pay the fines. In addition there are no programs to help him/her socially or to get a new home and no one to start them either. Our older orphans who live on their own have no 1 on 1 mentorship and their lives and faiths have slipped really far backwards. There just are not enough people to have that contact with the 70 or so of them. And most of the churches in Marghita don't accept them as equals anyway so the closeness and love they felt while in our group foster homes (called transit homes - transitional period from orphanage to living on their own) isn't exemplified in the churches.
I don't know, it just wears on you. Our foundation always puts that story about the starfish on the beach and the kid throwing one back b/c "it made a difference to that one" on goodbye notes to people. But what I told this lady last night was that I can't take my eyes off from the thousands left on the beach. Then she said the word "suffering." She said that we have to learn to accept that there is suffering in the world and that God has chosen not to end it...yet.
I realized that maybe I haven't accepted that - suffering. And because I haven't accepted that it can't all go away through programs and stuff that it becomes extremely stressful. So, in response to this and the other situations people brought up last night we'll be learning stress techniques next week. I think it'll be a good night!

Cooking for 35

4 Kilos of Beef

3 Trays of Scalloped Potatoes

( 3rd is in the oven still....)

Appetizer: Veggie 'Pizza' (4 Loaves of French Bread)

Corn on the side (6 Cans)

So every volunteer is responsible for signing up to cook for the team/clean the volunteer house 1X/week. We usually sign up in groups of 3. I love doing it, and usually can't wait until the next week to try out my 'carefully' planned menu.

I don't know, I just love to cook now. I told a friend last week that I'm not in a practice room every day anymore so I needed a creative outlet.

Singing to cooking....well, it does alright for here.

Anyway, what does it look like to cook for 35? Take a look above!

Oh the Swedish People.....

Yes, I purposely titled that to get 2 people who I don't know how the heck got ahold of this blog's attention! For those of you who don't know, the team I'm on is majority Swedish.
I will withhold the stories for now but will say this. Today Caleb learned his first Swedish word. I was wondering when he would start picking up some Swedish.
So far all he's learned are phrases including things about Sweden. For instance, my GOOD friend taught him "Mommy, I want to go to Sweden." I taught Caleb to say back "The heathens live in Sweden." Unfortunately my phrase didn't stick, only the other. Thankfully this friend is gone now and Caleb has STOPPED saying "Mommy, I want to go to Sweden."

Today though Caleb began saying the Swedish word, "Snälla", which means "Please."

My Swedish phrases are little more advanced than Caleb's. They include:
I like Swedish cheese.
Swedish meatballs cook in warm water.
I need a man.
I need a mug.
Do you want a wedgie?

Plus I know a few Swedish worship songs.

Kind of a random collection, but it works. Kind of funny to blurt out the random sentences when you walk into a Swedish conversation!

I think I'll let Caleb stick with "Please" for the time being : )

Pre-School

There are 3 of us on the team who have pre-school aged kids. This past summer we decided to start a pre-school co-op deal (did I spell that right?) with our boys.

It's been pretty awesome and I thought I'd let you see some of the fun we had today (I teach every Thursday morning.) The theme of the week is "butterflies." So the boys, for the last activity of the morning, got to be butterflies all around my apartment. I put one of my headbands on them to secure the antennea (did i spell that right?) and then they used 2 couch pillows for the wings.

Today's lesson also included the letter "P" which, by the way, is an interesting letter to teach 3 pre-school aged boys! I was surprised there weren't more jokes or laughs from them actually! We learned that "P" is for pasta, pig and piano. They loved making pig noises the whole morning and we glued pasta all over construction paper. I also hooked them up with a little blast from Kelsey's past by putting on some Mozart piano sonatas and having them recognize it as "P is for piano."

$2 Haircut

Okay, so it's not even quite $2 for a kid's haircut. It's just that I hate numbers so I rounded up.

Imi is one of the boys who has moved his way through FCE since he was a young teenager.

He was trained as a hairdresser by someone who used to be on our team and now works at a Salon across from the volunteer house. He has been cutting Caleb's hair for a long time now.

This haircut though was monumental so I had to photo document it. Caleb has moved through many haircutting stages. Props to Imi for having the patience through all of them (which, is why he is the only one who 'can' cut Caleb's hair). We went through the wiggle stage, the screaming stage, the crying stage, the screaming & wiggle stage, the 'i have to have candy or else i'll scream some more stage', the 'i'll cry if i don't get to play with the water bottle the whole time stage', the 'there's no way i'm wearing the sheet around me stage' and the 'i refuse to sit down while getting my hair cut stage.' YESTERDAY though not only did he NOT have candy but he didn't shed one tear or let out 1 scream the entire time. AND, he SAT DOWN WITH the sheet around his neck the ENTIRE TIME. Whew, Caleb. Way to go buddy!

Mărţişor

What is this? Well wikipedia can help you out. Just do a quick search.

Quickly though, it's this deal on March 1st in Romania (and Moldova). Guys give girls one and whoever wears it with the red and white string will (as wikipedia puts it) be "powerful and healthy for the year to come." YES just what I was hoping for.
About 2 weeks ago the sidewalks of Marghita started filling up with the vendors who sell these things. There are so many kinds, it's almost impossible to choose one without just closing your eyes and grabbing at the first one your hand reaches. They can be as cheap as 30 cents but go up in price depending on crafstmanship etc... To be honest I think China supports this industry the most (sorry Dad). The one you see a picture of is the one I received today. Today is Thursday so that means I head to Ciutelec to help with the worship service. Apparently the church in Popesti that our foundation is quite close with had a group of ladies hand made some of these for all of the residents. Very cool. Ghita, told me he wanted to give me his. Ghita is almost completely paralyzed and is almost impossible to understand. Yet I am sure his mind is very clear. Today, after the sermon on the Fruits of the Spirit, he was the first to begin praying. I couldn't understand a word he said but I know God did. Anyway, just thought I'd snap a photo and show you all. Happy March 1st!