I celebrated Thanksgiving with around 50-60 of my fellow missionary friends at my school. We had all the traditional goodies and it was a lot of fun. I was so happy to be out of the hospital to do that! I had told the doctor she had to either release me on Wednesday or give me a pass to get the building ready.

I also got a pass out of the hospital on Nov. 18, the day Ionut and Cassandra's daughter Caroline arrived! Cassandra's mom is here from Texas which is a real blessing. Cassandra had an emergency C-section but all is well and Caroline is gorgious!

I am behind on getting the Orphan Sponsor letters done. Adina Luca has done them for me for several years but she is now in the States working as a Nanny. I am going to try and get as many done as I can via e-mail. I hope this works for everyone. If you are waiting for your letter - I will get them all done, I promise!

I am so blessed that I have so much help for this Christmas season. I came out of the hospital feeling very much behind the power curve. Then I realized Christine and Peter were here until the 10th of Dec. and Wayne and Irene and here until the 17th.

This year Irene did all of the Christmas shoebox gifts in Wales and they arrived here by truck weeks ago. I think we have around 350 to distribute this year. Peter is doing most of the driving so that really saves me!

We will celebrate our family Christmas the 19th. The family that has helped me with the girls and other work for years, Vio and Ionci, are unhappy we will not be home for Christmas. Elizabeth and Sarah will be spending Christmas with their father and his wife's family. I will be accompaning them to England on the 21st and then going on to Wales to spend Christmas with Wayne and Irene. So...that means the girls want our tree up next week....

I will try and start putting more pictures in the blog (it's on my list of things to do).

Thank you for all of your prayers, I got out of the hospital yesterday! I am feeling much better and I am trying to balance playing catch up with not over doing it. I have so very much to be thankful for!!

This evening is the Thanksgiving missionary pot luck. I have the turkey roasting as I type. I think there will be over 60 people attending which is awesome!

Irene and Wayne arrived late last night from Wales, it will be so good to see them again. They will be here in Romania until around the 19th of Dec. They collected and packaged more than 300 Christmas shoebox gifts which arrived a few weeks ago.

I had better go and baste the turkey - just wanted to say Happy Thanksgiving!

Yesterday was our day at Mocrea. Mocrea is the State mental hospital. We now go once a week and have amassed a lot of craft supplies, puzzles and games. I am hoping to find more volunteers to go with us, even once a month would help.

George is a patient there and has been for around 7 years. He was involved in an work related explosion that has left him with only one eye, cranial damage as well as other injuries. George does not receive compensation as he was working "black" - not legally employed. He doesn't need to be housed in a mental hospital. When I met George he was a very glum dour man - he has no hope for a better life. He is not interested in hearing about the Lord.

I talked to him about the possibility of a group home with maybe 4 men living there. George said he can wash dishes and clothes. This may be a really worthwhile project in the future, a group home. The administrator and I have discussed it and she said I could get all sorts of State help once I acquired the actual house.

George looks forward to our weekly visits. He will sometimes play chess with me. He does stay and socialize which is a big step forward for him, he is not always in the deep depression.

Today I am headed to Hunedora and Maranatha orphanage. This is the first project I started when I began working here in Romania in 1993. It is an orphan sponsor program. I have not personally done the sponsor updates in about 5 years. A lovely young Romanian woman, Adina Luca, has been doing the twice yearly letters and pictures. This relieved me of some work and helped her with her college tuition as I paid her a little to help. Adina is going to the States for a year so I have had to take this back over. I am looking forward to seeing the children and that facility again.

I am going to try and do most of the sponsor updates and pictures by e-mail. I hope this will be OK with the sponsors. My work load is requiring some reorganization and labor saving plans. Right at this time I do not have the help I did last year and also I have had some health challenges but Praise God everything is getting done!

I wrote about Elizabeth saving to buy a house dog. Following that posting I discussed with Elizabeth that if we go to the States next year we might be able to pick up a puppy and bring it back in a little carrier that would fit under our seats in the plane. Elizabeth thought that was a fine idea and would continue to save her money. Elizabeth's money has been stolen from her piggy bank. I have had several thefts in the last year but this one from Elizabeth effected me more. Who could steal from a child's bank? This theft robbed Elizabeth of more than money. I said I would replace the funds but it is not the same anymore. No one broke in to our house, it is obviously someone that we openly allowed in. How sad is this? It seems to me that it is only a betrayal when it is someone we trust - people we do not have a relationship with can not really betray us. Elizabeth feels betrayed. I now need to work on her forgiving the thief and putting this behind her. That is the path we all must take in life.

Switzerland

This gorgeous view is one I was blessed to have on a recent 6 day trip to Switzerland. We only had 3 days in Switzerland the rest of the time was spent in travel, but it was worth it. A ministry from the States, Bill Kaiser Ministries, has a Time of Refreshing every year for missionaries. I went once in 2003 when it was in Cluj but have not been since. May the Lord richly bless all those involved in making these available to us (at no charge to us by the way!) Who can't use 3 days of being blessed and babied? I like hearing about the ministries of the others. All of them have their struggles too.

Elizabeth's Birthday

It is hard for me to believe that Elizabeth is 10 years old! We had a party for her at McDonalds. That is Sarah in the red dress on the right, she is 8 1/2 now.

Elizabeth is saving her money for a dog. I do not want another dog. We added dog #3 to our menagerie this summer. The new addition, Rocky, just keeps getting bigger and bigger. He is only 7 months old now but is already HUGE, I think we should have named him Clifford. (For those of you who do not watch videos with kids or grandkids, Clifford is a house-sized big red dog.) Elizabeth wants a house dog, a pure bred at that. She saw one at a pet store and it is almost $800! When she asked for it I said what any sensible adult would have said "sure you can have it, save your money". If you know Elizabeth you know that it is a possibility!