At the beginning of the summer I had a sense that God was preparing us for a summer of harvest. And when I looked at all that we hoped would happen over the summer I knew without a shadow of a doubt that we would only be able to accomplish this summer if God showed up.  He Did.  It was an amazing summer.  To look at the summer in numbers I would say that we had 15 different camps in 4 different locations at different times throughout the summer.  We had 6 different teams come to help us out and we made around 30 trips to the airport to get everyone in and out of Romania.  I won't even venture a guess at how many miles were driven, meals prepared, or beds made and remade in all three of our houses, but it was many! But this summer was not about numbers-it was about faces, it was about decisions made for Christ and quality time spent with the children and teens that we love so much. 

I can't telll you about everyone of my favorite moments, because there were so, so many.  I'll show you some of the ones that were captured on film.  However the moments of telling kids about Christ and watching them make decisions couldn't be captured.  I believe every kid that came to camp this summer received love and they each heard and had the opportunity to respond to the love of Christ. 

Here are a few of my favorite pictures (thanks to all of you from the teams that I borrowed these from!):

Do you remember my frog boy from a few years ago?  This is Alex.  We had a zipline at 2 of our camp location, which was a favorite for many of the kids.  I'm holding one of the bean bags at the end that he is going to slam into--all with fun teeth he got out of the pinata.

We spent a lot of time in the pool this summer!  It was hot and of course one of the kids favorite activites.  I did a lot of lifeguarding and it was so fun to see some of the kids learn to get over their fear of water!

We spent lots of time outside playing!

Pigtail lineup!

I know you are jealous!  Matching hairdos!

The best part of the summer was loving on the kids.

I can't believe that it is the end of June already.  We've had a very full but great month.  We had a team here from Clarksburg Christian Church out of California and they were a great group!  Some of the highlights of the last couple of weeks are below!

-We had the last day of school celebration at Peris.  This year we've been studying heros and characteristics of heros and so we ended the year with a heros celebration.  All of the kids got to dress up like a hero.  We had Biblical heros, superheros, fairytale heros, sports heros, historical heros, etc.  Do you remeber when you were little and played dress up?  Well, our kids don't get to do that often--so thanks to some fabulous dress up clothes donations we had a great time dressing the kids up like different heros! 

The Clarksburg team helped us make a hero's tunnel as the heros entered the carnival!

our supermen!

Heros of every shape and size!

-We had a baptism at our church.  What was special about this baptism is that one of the young men that was baptised came to our church as a result of being invited by one of our transition graduates.  What a victory!  When our graduates get to a place that they are ministering and bringing others to Christ, that is a full circle of ministry!

-We celebrated the finale of another year of tranistion ministry.  We graduated 4 girls and 5 boys from our program.  We had a nice ceremony followed by a swim party for all of the current and past graduates.  Jenny and I were life guards for the entire time--can you say water logged! We also moved the girls into an apartment. They are settled in and doing really well.  The boys were almost all hired with a construction company and are receiving housing as part of their salary. 

Our 4 female grads--Catalina, Mihaela, Silvia, and Andreea

-Regular ministry continued with the team, at the baby hospital, at the orphanages, and with the tranistion kids.  We are starting occasional ministry in another orphanage that is close by that has smaller children (ages 3-8).  We took the team to play one morning and had a great time.  We are praying for open doors to start a full-time ministry in this location!

Play day at the potential new location

-Today I celebrate my 11th anniversary in living in Romania and my 13th anniversary in ministry here.  What an adventure and a journey that God has brought me and continues to bring me through!

A visit to the Black Sea--Vic and I

We've been blessed by having many Canadians here over the past four weeks to help with so many projects.  You read about a few in my last 2 blogs, but the most recent was the paint team.  They came to give the inside of the team house a new look.  The mint green that covered the entire house is now gone as well as the huge curtains in the dining room.  We repainted all of the bedrooms and hallways as well.  It was tons of work, but with the team, the BTH boys, and the staff we got a lot done!  My room also got a face lift.  Since I no longer have a roommate, we took down the top bunk and it makes my room look so big.  I also got a red wall, which I love (it goes along with my new haircut!)!

The Canadian team with Corni in our dining room.

Me in my room.

Another glimpse of my room.

As part of the Canada team, we also got to do 2 field trips with special groups from the orphanage.  We visited the Children's Puppet Theater followed by a trip to McDonalds and the park with the young music class.  (We call them the monkies, which should be self-explainitory!).  We also took the Art class to visit Cotroceni Palace.  This would be the equivilent to the White House in the US.  It is where the President of Romania lives and part of it is a museum and can be toured.  It has a lot of beautiful art, items, and history.  As we were walking up to the Palace, I was walking with Iulica.  I asked him if when he is president of Romania, if he'll remember me and give me a special tour to show me the parts that we wouldn't get to see.  He gave a small grin, but when I relayed the news to another staff, Lenuta, that we'd get a special tour he was beaming.  It was fun to plant seeds of dreams into his head and watch him become thrilled with possibility.  Most of our kids don't dream or think much about the future.  When you ask most orphans what they want to be when they grow up they can't answer you, they are too focused on surviving the present.  But when we can dream and imagine together it is an amazing thing.  Will Iulica be president some day?  Only God knows, but with Him all things are possible!

Iulica with Mariana, one of the H2H Staff

I spent most of April preparing for the wedding.  Wedding coordinator and planner can now be added to my resume list!  The wedding was held on May 8th and it was a special time.  The night before the wedding we had a short rehersal here and we had a nice time talking with Robi and Alina about the future.  They'd found an apartment to rent 2 days before the wedding and we talked about that for the first time in their lives they have their own home.  They can make it their space and decorate and set up house.  It was fun to see them start to realize that this was real and they were really getting married and starting their own family. 

The Wednesday before the wedding we had a team from Canada arrive.  They were a tremendous help and everything came together.  It was a beautiful day outside and there were many special moments.  One that will always stick in my mind is helping Alina get dressed and then having Jim come in and walk her down the aisle.  What a true honor it is to be family to the fatherless and help fill in those roles in whatever ways we can!

Alina and I getting ready

The cake and punch with the couple, Jenny and I

The H2H staff all dressed up!