Happy New Year!

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December 2009 Update

“For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the LORD,
thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope.”
Jeremiah 29:11

Happy New Year!

As this year comes to a close I can’t help but look back and think of all that the Lord has done. How He has blessed me, how He has worked in my heart and how He has allowed me to do so much here in Brasov, Romania.

This December was the 20^th anniversary of the fall of communism in Romania. I am honored to have been here for this. Romania has come a long way since 1989, and yet it seems that they haven’t come very far at all. In comparison to other countries which were under communism, Romania seems to be so far behind. This country still needs prayer and people to continue to support the work that is being done here.

This past month was filled with lots of Christmas fun. Cami and I decorated our section of the hospital for Christmas, which was really fun for us and the kids.

I was able to join Cami and her daughter Alexandra at a Romanian Baptist church for a Christmas Concert. It was so beautiful!

I also spent some time with Cami and another Play Therapist, Andrea out in town one night.

We had a Christmas party for our teen Roma (Gypsy) girls groups. Where we were able to bless them with food, games, clothes and fun! We read a devotional about being thankful for what the Lord has done and remembering the true meaning of Christmas. And the girls all filled out little ornaments for our Thankful Tree and wrote down what they were each thankful for. Then they surprised us by singing Romanian Christmas songs for us!

HFTN blessed all the volunteers with a Christmas dinner at a very nice restaurant which was great and full of wonderful food and fellowship!

HFTN also put together gift bags for the children in the hospital on St. Nicholas Day, December 6^th and we all walked around and passed out gifts together, it was really great.

Then I had two young ladies, Marinela (the young lady I used to mentor) and Nadia, from Oradea come up to Brasov to visit me for a week over Christmas. We joined up with the Play Therapists at the hospital on Christmas Eve and were able to sing Christmas songs and pass out shoeboxes from my friends in Germany with them. It was a great time for Marinela and Nadia as well as me! And the kids in the hospital were totally blessed!

I had a great Christmas day with Marinela and Nadia, opening gifts and reading out of Luke 2 together. We decorated my tree together and I had the girls fill out what they were thankful for and hang it on my Thankful Tree as well. They really liked doing that. My neighbor made us some traditional Sarmale which was so good! And I had some gifts for her as well. That night Marinela, Nadia and I went to church at a Romanian church service.

The next day was Nadia’s birthday and we had a lot of fun going up to Poiana Brasov and then pizza followed by bowling! It was a non-stop but fun week!

This month was extremely busy but I felt so blessed to be a part of all things going on here in town. The Lord has given me such great Romanian friends, as well as fellow missionary friends. December was the perfect ending to this year. With all that went on, and all that I was able to be a part of…it was wonderful! Something that was sort of cool, seeing how people’s hearts are changing…my neighbor donated a ton of clothes for the children at the hospital and the teen girls I work with, and Marinela and Nadia both left me with a few really nice items, a pair of boots and some clothes for the teen girls. I think it is so cool that they all want to help others!

Thank you for all of you who have supported me this past year. I am blessed because of each of you. I’m making this letter a little short in order to show you lots of pictures! And a link to a couple of videos on my youtube page from the Christmas Concert with Cami, from when we passed out shoeboxes at the hospital on Christmas Eve and a video I sent out for Christmas with a slide show of this past year.

Click here for my YouTube videos

I don’t know what the future holds for me, only the Lord knows. But I look forward to seeing what He has in store for me, for Romania and for 2010.

“Strength and dignity are her clothing, and she smiles at the future.” - Proverbs 31:25

I pray you are all blessed in 2010! Have a Happy New Year!

Grace and Peace,
Rachel

PUBLISHED!!!

I'm SO excited to finally be able to tell people about this! Over a year ago I was asked if one of my pictures could be used in a book. I didn't want to say anything to anyone until it actually happened. Well finally after a year of waiting the book has been published! woohoo! This picture above is of a Tomb Stone in a cemetery in Oradea, Romania. I'm so happy! I've had several of my photos used in online articles and on blogs, but this is the first time one of my photos has been printed in a book. :)

Just thought I would share the happy news with you my friends!


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Merry Christmas!!!

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Christmas Concert

So tonight I was totally blessed to go with Tim and Liz and to meet up with Cami and her daughter Alexandra at a Baptist Church for a Christmas Concert. I LOVE the Romanian language and loved hearing Christmas songs sung in Romanian. I went to a Christmas concert 2 years ago in Timisoara when I was living there, but it was even cooler tonight to be able to actually understand most of the lyrics and what the Pastor said!

It was a special night with Cami. I'm so blessed by her friendship and it was really neat to be able to spend the evening with her at this concert. Honestly...how am I so totally blessed!?!?! Really...why would anyone want to tell God what THEY WANT...when HE knows so much more what is best for our lives. I'm always in awe of Him and His plans...

Speaking of plans....tomorrow my girls from Oradea arrive to spend Christmas and Nadia's birthday with me! Should be a fun week!

xo



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Craciun Fericit!

I made this video for my sending church at home...but really it applies to all of you out there!

Merry Christmas!!!





(Song: God of this City, Chris Tomlin)
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My Utmost...

from My Utmost for His Highest this morning:
:)

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"Study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth." 2 Timothy 2:15

If you cannot express yourself on any subject, struggle until you can. If you do not, someone will be the poorer all the days of his life. Struggle to re-express some truth of God to yourself, and God will use that expression to someone else. Go through the winepress of God where the grapes are crushed. You must struggle to get expression experimentally, then there will come a time when that expression will become the very wine of strengthening to someone else; but if you say lazily - "I am not going to struggle to express this thing for myself, I will borrow what I say," the expression will not only be of no use to you, but of no use to anyone. Try to state to yourself what you feel implicitly to be God's truth, and you give God a chance to pass it on to someone else through you.

Always make a practice of provoking your own mind to think out what it accepts easily. Our position is not ours until we make it ours by suffering. The author who benefits you most is not the one who tells you something you did not know before, but the one who gives expression to the truth that has been dumbly struggling in you for utterance.


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Trip to Cali in the Spring!

Hello friends and family!
I am so excited I found a good deal on a ticket home for vacation this coming up spring, so I went ahead and purchased it today!

I will be home in March and April. I hope to see many of you while I am there, while I know that some of you don't live in Cali, I hope to as many of you as possible!

I do also have a prayer request, as I did last year, I would like to work for a couple of weeks while I am home to pay for my ticket and the cost of being in Cali in general, for spending money, etc. If any of you know of a job I might be able to do in March please contact me. I am even open to house cleaning, house sitting, office work, organizing, etc....I would just like to do something to earn some money while I am home. If you know of anything please let me know, otherwise please just keep this in prayer that the Lord will provide something for me!

Ok, that's it for now! See you all in a few months!

Grace and Peace,
Rachel



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30 Days of Thanks - November 30

And the twenty-four elders who sat before God on their thrones

fell on their faces and worshiped God, saying:
“We give You thanks, O Lord God Almighty,
The One who is and who was and who is to come,
Because You have taken Your great power and reigned.”
-Revelation 11:16-17

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30 Days of Thanks - November 29

But thanks be to God that though you were slaves of sin,
you became obedient from the heart
to that form of teaching to which you were committed,
and having been freed from sin,
you became slaves of righteousness.
-Romans 6:17-18

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Rachel's Romania Update - November 2009

You have turned my mourning into dancing for me;

You have put off my sackcloth and girded me with gladness,
To the end that my tongue and my heart and everything glorious within me

may sing praise to You and not be silent.

O Lord my God, I will give thanks to You forever.

-Psalm 30:11-12

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! I know I am a couple days late, but that is ok, there is always much to be thankful for! This month has been so packed with amazing things that I think it would take a novel to tell you all about it. So I am going to have to just give you little pieces of my month, with lots of pics…sorry about that! Remember you can always follow me on my blog (www.rachelsromania.blogspot.com) or on facebook if you want to know details!

Well, let’s see here, in general it was a very busy month, I think maybe the busiest month since I moved to Brasov, but it was a blessed one. The weather was actually really wonderful considering we received our first snow in October, the first week into November the weather warmed up a bit and it was a lovely month. The kids at the hospital were full of a lot of energy this month! It was pretty exhausting, but those children are always worth the energy!

Probably the biggest thing for me this month, was on November 15^th I celebrated 2 years since I moved to Romania! It was such a huge blessing and a time of reflection, for all that the Lord has done for me and blessed me with. I was overwhelmed with thankfulness when I thought of all that the Lord has brought me through. It has been a great 2 years, but there have been some really hard times, some sad times, some times of hurt and some times great joy! It’s funny, I seem to mainly only remember all the good that the Lord has done, and that is a blessing, those times that have been difficult seem so far away, but I can see how the Lord used each of those times to help me to grow and to guide me. I would not trade a single day over the past 2 years for anything!

November 1^st was my friend Sarah’s birthday and we had a fun party for her. We celebrated my friend Liz’s birthday this month as well!

Steffi, Sarah and I on her Birthday! (it was a "pig tail" b-day)

Liz and I

The first week of November my dear friends from England, Rebekka and Stephen came out. They brought their 2 children and 2 friends, Matt and Eva. We had a great week. We went shopping for the gypsy families that Rebekka and Stephen sponsor, then were able to drop the food off in the village the next day. They visited the hospital (unfortunately this was cut a little short due to the swine flu drama here in Romania), hung out with one of our gypsy teen groups, we also made packages of warm clothes out of donations for families in the gypsy village and had a great time of fellowship together, walking around and just spending time together. They were here for a whole week and while it was not nearly long enough (too short for me!) we had such a blessed time.

Stephen, Rebekka and I

Sarah, Steffi and I in the village when we passed out the food we bought

Cute little girl in the village

Then one Saturday Steffi, her kids and I got together and made sugar cookies, LOTS of sugar cookies for our second gypsy teen group to decorate. We had a great meeting a few days later with the girls. It was lots of fun to see them decorating the cookies. Then we had pizza together and asked them some questions to get to know them a little more. This was our newest group of girls and so we have spent a few months getting to know them and then in December we will begin a Bible devotional and memory verse with them.

Steffi her kids and I making cookies!

The girls decorating their cookies

The group of us! (Minus Sarah and Mary who were in the States on vacation)

Then one weekend my friends from Germany, Cees and Anne came out! They brought lots of donations and Christmas Shoeboxes for our children at the hospital, the gypsy families we support, and the teen girls we work with. Cees’s wife Andrea, along with Anne worked so hard to go through every single shoebox to make sure there was not anything in it that should not be there, and to put in a scripture verse in Romanian. They gave so much it is an incredible blessing! Aside from the great donations, Andrea sent Christmas gifts for me and some decorations for my home! It’s amazing to have such good friends from all over the world. It was so much fun to have them out those 2 days. We went out to eat and walked around, and then Anne treated us to bowling and my friend Alisha joined us. This was my first time bowling in Romania and my first time bowling in years for that matter…it was so fun, just to do something “fun”. Their last night with me we stayed up late talking and praying together. It was really a wonderful time of the Lord blessing the 3 of us.

Cees, Anne and I loading the Christmas shoeboxes into my closet

My closet full of shoeboxes!

We had a wonderful International Thanksgiving here in Brasov on Thursday. People from all over the US, Canada, Germany and Romania were there. It was a blast! Everyone brought some food, and the wonderful ladies from the states volunteering with us this week brought STUFFING and CRANBERRY SAUCE! Yum!!! We had turkey and I made mashed potatoes, a pumpkin pie (wasn’t too good) with fresh whipped cream and some fabulous pumpkin spice cupcakes with homemade cream cheese frosting. It was a good time to get together and eat and celebrate all that we are thankful for. We really do have so much that the Lord has blessed us with and provided us with, there is truly no end to the reasons we are thankful.

Our Thanksgiving Feast!

Then on Friday, Cami and I had the day off from the hospital so we met up in the city and had a great time together, walking around, looking in stores, talking, and then a great lunch together. I am very thankful for Cami and her friendship and her heart for the children at the hospital as well as her fellow Romanians in general.

Cami and I in the center of town

Tomorrow (Sunday) we will be meeting together to put together Christmas gifts for the children in the hospital. I will post pics of that next month.

As I said it has been a very busy November, but one of totally giving thanks to the Lord for all He has done. I know I left out some things from this month, like my craft night with my friend Alisha and our Mexican Fiesta Night with my friends where we watched The Sound of Music together, or the couple of times I baby sat for a friend, and cat sat for another friend.…..and I’m sure there is more. But all in all it was such a good month. I feel like I need to sleep like a month to get my energy back, but that will have to wait until January because December is promising to be just as eventful!

Thank you all for your prayers and support. Nothing that I do here in Romania could be done without the way the Lord uses each of you to encourage me, bless me, support me and pray for me! I am thankful for each one of you!

Please keep December in your prayers, I will have some guests staying with me the week of Christmas, I am very excited about this and we will be doing lots of things for the kids at the hospital and in the gypsy village as well as a Christmas Concert at a teen orphanage and lots of other things! Please keep all of our health here in your prayers, as the flu season is in full swing here and we are all working very hard, long hours. Please also keep all the missionaries here in your prayers as none of us will be returning to the States for Christmas or New Years and that can be hard.

Sorry this turned out to be a novel anyway! But at least it was full of photos!

Grace and Peace,

Rachel

30 Days of Thanks - November 28

Sing to the LORD with thanksgiving;
Sing praises on the harp to our God,
Who covers the heavens with clouds,
Who prepares rain for the earth,
Who makes grass to grow on the mountains.
-Psalm 147:7-8

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30 Days of Thanks - November 27

A sensible thanksgiving for mercies received
is a mighty prayer in the Spirit of God.
It prevails with Him unspeakably.
-John Bunyan

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Happy Thanksgiving!

It seems more true this year than ever before that I am truly blessed and have so much to be thankful for. The Lord has kept me from harm, He has guided me on the path that He has for me, He has blessed me beyond belief with this life here in Romania.

Tonight we had such a great time, it was a big group of us from America, Germany, Canada and Romania.

We had such a wonderful turkey dinner, the food and dessert were fabulous! The time spent talking and hanging out were great. The community of friends here in Brasov is such a blessing. Everyone is such a servant here. Sure we are all human and no one is perfect, but honestly I can’t believe how great the atmosphere is here. It’s great to be surrounded by good friends who want to serve the Lord and the kids here in Romania and who give so much to make Brasov feel like a Home and like family.

It’s always a little sad to be away from friends and family back in the States on holidays, but today was truly blessed for me, and I am thankful to my Lord and Savior for all He has done to bring me to this place and to this point in my life.

Truthfully I almost feel most thankful for the fact that He has not left me alone, that He did not allow me to settle for a different life in Cali, but that He drew me here, that He kept prompting me back to Romania, and that He has provided for me all the way, and has shown me the goodness of who He is….such a loving Father we serve!

Anyway friends, just really resting in how great our God is tonight…

I hope you all have a great Thanksgiving as well!!

Grace and Peace,
Rachel






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