Online Journal - September, 2007 Archive

September 30, 2007 - Sunday - Realized today that I haven’t written for a month now… I need to catch-up with myself…

Scott’s mom and her friend Sibby indeed visited earlier this month. We had a great time with them sharing our world with them. We spent one day at the Oaza homes cooking lunch and dinner to give the cooks some well deserved time off. It was fun sharing some American food (okay…it was lasagna…not really American) and some cookies (definitely American style..."biscuits" for our English readers). Sibby also spent some time playing hide-and-seek in the house with the younger children…thinking she would never be let out of the hiding place chosen for her…the shower! :-) We enjoyed the countryside on a couple of short day trips and ended with a whirlwind tour of Budapest before they went home. It was such a blessing to have them both here.

I have been working on developing some new informational pieces for Oaza. Our desire is to have these translated from English into Romanian and Hungarian so we may invite others to share in the ministry of Oaza. Eventually, we may choose other languages as well…Spanish…as there are large communities of Romanians working in Spain.

This weekend Scott traveled to Bucuresti to meet with leaders of a young house church to see how we may continue to be an encouragement to them. We hope the pastor of this young church, Daniel, will be able to join us in Hungary for a leadership retreat in November. With all of the flying and driving we have been doing, we are thankful for the protection we have received.

In working with the ladies of our congregation, I want to encourage periodic social events where we can develop our relationships with one another and especially with those not yet in the church. Our first event is this week as we will attend a Hillsongs concert in Timisoara. It should be a great ladies night out!

Stephen and Lydia are doing well as they are in full-swing with school. God is providing opportunities for them to spend time with other teens at the Oaza homes and at our house. Their social network on the internet is incredible through school and with other Free Methodist missionary kids around the world. God is so very good!

Next weekend, Scott and I will be participating in a very traditional Romanian wedding in an Orthodox church ceremony in north-central Romania. We are looking forward to the opportunity to celebrate with our friends and learn from a new experience! We’ll let you know how that turns out. :-)  Paula

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September 26, 2007 - Wednesday - Today was the first day of a new weekly meeting that I will be having with Lucian, the young Romanian man who is serving (along with his wife and two children) as a new house-parent for one of the Oaza homes. We're studying a book by Bruce Wilkinson, Secrets of the Vine. I read the book a few years ago when it came out in America. At the time the book's predecessor, Wilkinson's Prayer of Jabez, was all the rage in American Christianity. I read Secrets of the Vine and thought it was far better, but I think most Jabez readers missed the blessings of the sequel. The twist for me now is that I am trying to read and discuss it as much as possible in Romanian. It only took me 3 hours to read the first nine pages! :-) But I was still encouraged by the amount of words I could understand without looking them up.

As you pray for us, remember all of us as we continue to learn the Romanian language. Paula is attending classes twice a week, and Stephen and Lydia have their class once a week. And remember this new relationship between me and Lucian. Our longer-term plan is to involve more young Romanian men in similar discipleship gatherings. Scott

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September 24, 2007 - Monday - I (Scott) returned home Sofia, Bulgaria yesterday evening. Sunday morning I attended an independent church led by Bulgarian Pastor Pavel. The church currently does not have a building of its own, so they met in a large room at the National Palace of Culture. It was a lively service with well over 500 people in attendance. Pastor David Carr, lead pastor of Renewal Christian Centre in Solihul, England, was the main speaker. He spoke about the need to make room for God's miraculous to happen in our lives. At the end of the service at least 200 (my estimate) came forward to receive a new work of God in their lives.

God is clearly at work in Bulgaria. The churches there need to be held up in prayer as they seek to reach their country for Christ. And pray for our missionary colleagues who are living and working there, Al and Diane Mellinger and Mike Long. Al & Diane just arrived in Bulgaria in April and are still very much trying to get their feet on the ground. Pray that God gives them discernment and daily strength as they seek to come alongside the work that God is already doing in Bulgaria. Scott

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September 22, 2007 - Saturday -

The mountain backdrop of Sofia city center, taken from the tenth floor balcony of the Cultural Palace.  Scott

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September 21, 2007 - Friday - Greetings from Sofia, Bulgaria! I (Scott) arrived here this afternoon after a short flight from Budapest, Hungary (we've been there the past two days with my Mom and a friend of hers'...more on that later). I'm here to attend a pastor's training event that is being put on by one of our Free Methodist churches in the U.K., Renewal Christian Centre. You can read more about the training event and the history behind it on my colleagues' websites: Al Mellinger-Sept. 13 entry (Bulgaria) and Michael Long (Greece). Or you can simply read this brochure:

Mike Long has two of his daughters with him, so while Mike and Al had meetings, I went with the Long girls to wander around the city center area of Sofia. I snapped a few pictures of and around the National Palace of Culture where the pastors' training will be held tomorrow. It is interesting to see another country trying to recover from the effects of Communist rule. The struggle seems more evident here than even in Romania...maybe it is because I live in Romania so it doesn't seem as evident to me anymore? (I apologize for the photo quality...I'm using my new cell phone to take the pictures because our regular camera had to go to a camera doctor for repairs).

In the next day or two Paula will be writing more about my mom's visit over the last week. We had a great time with Mom and her friend Sibby! For now I'll post these three pictures: Mom & Sibby enjoying a sidewalk cafe, learning how to make Romanian sarmale (cabbage rolls), and the finished sarmale (yum!).  Scott

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September 9, 2007 - Monday - I had the opportunity to preach yesterday at our local church here in Arad. The Lord led me to an interesting comparison between the two opportunities the Israelites had to enter the Promised Land, first in Numbers 13 and then 40 years later in Joshua 1. How do you respond when the Lord gives you a direction in life that is full of challenges and difficulties? Click here to download my notes and a small PowerPoint for visual enhancement (right-click on these links and choose "save as" to save the file on your computer).

My Mom (Maggie) and a friend of hers (Sibby) will be arriving on Thursday for an 8-day visit. They fly out of Columbus, Ohio on Wednesday, so if you think of it, pray for their safe travel. We're all looking forward to their coming. It means a lot to us to be able to share our life in Romania with those closest to us from our home culture in the USA.  Scott

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September 2, 2007 - Sunday - A couple of days ago I had the privilege of going with Laura to a town north of Arad to experience a family visit for one of the Oaza children. This child has just recently been in contact with the biological family after many years of no contact. It was a difficult environment and awkward at times.

This is the current goal of the Romanian government for children’s services…to reunite children with their birth parents when possible. Oaza is working to provide assistance in this process (although we have few children who have contact with their birth families) through home visits, on-going counseling and other means as we are able.

I am working with Laura and other Oaza staff to develop promotional materials for Oaza. Costs continue to rise here in Europe, especially in East European nations like Romania that have recently joined the European Union. And yet donations are decreasing. If you have not yet heard about our new sponsorship program for our Oaza children…please send me an email at frankee85@gmail.com.

For our family:

1. Stephen and Lydia have begun school again through Northstar Academy. Believe it or not, both of our kids are in high school now. I cannot believe it! Please pray for them and their studies. Friendships continue to develop here locally. They enjoyed a youth group gathering out in a nearby village yesterday evening.

2. I begin language study again this week in Timisoara. So, I will be driving twice a week on this dangerous road. Please pray not only for my safety but especially for my ability to learn and desire to learn. This is very difficult for me.

3. Scott will be traveling again at the end of the month…two weekends. One weekend he will be in Sofia, Bulgaria, and the last weekend he will be in Bucuresti, Romania.

4. I had the privilege of having my parents and aunts with us in May. In two weeks, Scott’s mom and a friend of hers' will be visiting us for a week. We will be thrilled to be able to share our world with them! Please pray for their safe travels.

5. I led worship today...which is very stressful for me...but God was very good. I must concentrate so hard on the words to sing that it makes it difficult to really worship from my heart. Because of various schedules, I may be leading a couple of times this month. So, I would appreciate your prayers in this regard…I just want to be able to worship from my heart!

6. This year of 2007 has proven to be quite stressful…and at times we feel the stress more than others. Please pray that God will fill our spirits with His peace!

Thanks for praying! Paula

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September 1, 2007 - Saturday - After several months of design, busyness, and procrastination, we are finally releasing our first major revision of our website. Believe it or not, we had 11,600 total visits to our old site...that's almost 600 visits per month!

Other changes will hopefully be coming in the near future, but we finally had to make a decision to publish what we have now and then add our other desired features at a later time. So here it is! We've tried to sharpen our graphics, improve readability, and include some of God's beautiful creation in Romania in our headings (the current picture is the street where we live). The heading picture will be changing with each new journal posting. Eventually we will be setting it to change automatically while you're visiting the page.

Everything that was available on our old home page is still here...somewhere, so take a look around. And if you are reading from a computer with a narrower screen (we've chosen to optimize for 1024x768 screen size), don't forget to scroll to the right to see what's over there.

Let us know what you think! This is still a work in process.  Scott

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September 1, 2007 - Saturday - It has been just over a week since Lydia and I returned from camp with the Oaza and Emmanuel church kids. I’ll try to give you some of the highlights.

We traveled about an hour northeast of Arad to a place in the hills called Casoia, which is not to be found on a map of Romania. Oaza rented a nice facility for 10 days out in the country for about 44 kids and adults. Each day was filled with activities: devotions, singing, crafts, eating, hiking, napping (when we could), and games. In the evenings, several would gather around a picnic table and just spend time chatting and singing.

Laura is a very good cook…so I (and my friend from the States, Cyndi) would help out in the kitchen cleaning up before and after meals…but I was watching Laura all the time to see how she made this or that. Cyndi and I were in charge of crafts each morning and then in the afternoon I would take a small group of kids into the kitchen and we would make some American treats like chocolate chip cookies, corn bread, and even no-bake cookies. The cookies went over really big but the corn bread was very different. They usually eat corn meal in a dish called mǎmǎliga (similar to corn meal mush) so being baked into a bread was rather strange for them.

Cyndi and I also roomed with the teen girls which was a lot of fun! Lydia and a friend of hers' from England, Josie, assisted with the younger kids at camp. We also enjoyed the company of Noel and his wife Jan, from the Penzance Free Methodist Church in England, and Kate also from England, who came and served “brilliantly” with outdoor activities. Susan, a good friend of mine and Oaza, was also there from England to help with children, activities, and in the kitchen. I so much enjoy picking on her British English...and she loves picking on my American English!

One day, Noel led a group of us into the woods for a day-long hike. We hoped to hike 5 hours over the mountain, visit some Roman ruins, eat a picnic, and hike back to camp…all before dark…well, maybe before dark. The camp administrator assured us that the trail was clearly marked and we would have no problems. After about two hours of hiking, we reached the top of a mountain during a downpour of rain, really not sure where we were, but knowing we were not on the correct path. So, we enjoyed the shower (did I forget to tell you we had little water at camp which meant no showers…), hiked back down the mountain, enjoyed our picnic and walked back to the camp. In spite of the misdirection and the rain, we had a great time in the woods!

About the water…well…basically the pump didn’t work in the well. So, for a couple of days we had little water…only enough to drink at meal times and wash dishes. Finally, we were able to have water in the kitchen for drinking, cooking and cleaning and we sponge bathed the littlest children. The teens and adults took very quick cold showers one right after the other. The water was incredibly cold! And since we had no water…we had no flushing toilets. Finally, on the last two days of camp, we had warm water for showers in the morning and the evening! To be honest, I’m not much of a “roughin’ it” kind of girl and this rather stretched me. But the best thing to watch was the kids…even the teens. They didn’t like not having any water but no one complained… I have some lessons to learn from them! :-)

Another thing we did with the teens at camp was attend an outdoor Christian concert called Drumfest. I believe Scott already wrote you about this (see August 16 entry). We had a really nice time that evening!

On the last day of camp, we spent the afternoon in the forest collecting wood for a campfire. After dark, we gathered around one of the largest camp fires I have ever seen under a beautiful, star-filled sky to enjoy roasted marshmallows (from England). I stayed up with several of the teens late into the next morning just enjoying the fire and the quiet of the beautiful night. It was a perfect ending!

I was not able to take very many pictures at camp…our camera stopped working...so I have few to share. If I can get some from one of our friends, we’ll put them here. Paula

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