Thanksgiving coming soon?

I kinda feel like I am living a month behind this weekend... you see we are having Thanksgiving this weekend... and although i do acknowledge that it is America's thanksgiving and I have done that before... I feel like I am a month behind cause when I think about Thanksgiving I think about it in October... anywhos this week has been a stop and go week... I got back from Rosior de Vede on Sunday at about 9 pm. Then I had the baby hospital on Monday... which thank God the babies are starting to get healthy again... they are a lot happier now than they were... got home and had to pack for going to the village the next day... unloaded my stuff, had bible study and then straight off to the orphanage pretty much... stayed over night and in the morning packed up my stuff once again, went to the orphanage. After that we stopped at Carfour (which is kinda like a mall, of which I had no idea till we got there hahaha), had supper shopped for ingredients for their thanksgiving food, then finally got home where I completely crashed... I was exhausted... woke up this morning at about 7 am (God's alarm not my own), then Angela and I worked all day in the basement aka the dungeon... sorting baby stuff and giving away items to other organizations... the other girls were baking all day long and cooking for the feast for 40 + people (or at least that was the last count I had heard... tonight we watched a dvd that was sent to Kirsteen about the Duchess of York i think it was who came under cover to Turkey and Romania to look at the orphanages... had a heated debate about the program and now I am here writting you a blog... tomorrow I will be heading to the baby hospital again... and then Saturday the craziness happens... this week has been crazy and intense and it is all kind of blurred together so i really dont have too many details for you... I do have some prayer requests though... Jen is leaving on Monday for her Month "holiday" and then Jenny and Angela are also having theirs sometime in December and January so if you could pray that they get that time to rest and rejuvinate that would be great... keep praying for the health of the babies and the kids at the orphanage... a lotof the kids at Peris have some sort of flu or something... and also the staff a lot of us are coughing and so just in general pray for health.... for my visa to be completed I need to get a medical done... they claim it is just to see if i am seriously sick... so pray that when this happens it can be a healthier day or that I am healthy for it and there will be no complications... and no i am not here illegally cause i dont have the visa yet... there is a 90 day period before i am illegally here hehehe just kidding if all else fails i just need to take a train ride somewhere out of the country and come back but it shouldnt come to that... although seeing another country while i am here would be kinda cool... ya that pretty much sums things up... I will talk to you guys soon and God Bless, Lindsey Toma

Yes I am still alive, sorry it took so long to write!!!

Bună Diminanață, Ce Faceți? Sunt foarte bine!!!! Îmi pare rău că nu ăm mai scriu... I have been learning Romanian as you can see... let me translate for you... Good Morning, How are you? I am very well!!!!! Sorry I haven’t written.... I am writing well and understanding the language better than I did before but I still have a hard time forming sentences properly... That is why I stopped where I did in the writing... anyways, I am truly sorry that I haven’t written, I have been meaning to but I just get so busy or distracted, you know me... anyways, I have been informed from a source that I should try writing in proper grammar so here is a shot... if there are any slip ups between languages (or grammar) I will make sure to translate it for you... So the last little bit has been a little crazy... I have been hanging out with the babies in the hospital... there were a couple occasions where Corny and I were on our own... that was crazy but fun... one of the occasions was a couple weeks back where Angela and Jen were on a “rescue mission”. They were picking up a missionary family that they knew from another village because the family was not feeling comfortable there... I can’t go into a lot of details but that was either the last week or the second last week of October. Anyways back to the story... so Angela went on that mission and Corny and I were left to chill out with the babies which was our own mission right there... They were not happy that day... in the room I was working in there is a little swing... so I stuck one of the girls, Sara in the swing that kept her happy for most of the afternoon... Marius was sick so there was really no helping him... Taylor the other little girl was taken home that day!!! That was exciting in both senses because she was taken home and also because there was one less attention seeker... she was the worst out of the room for that. Then we had a new one, his name is Alexandru, He was the only one that actually slept that day and to complete it I had the two smallest, Adrian and “Elfred” (he doesn’t have a first name right now that we are aware of, that is another story) in my arms. It was a crazy day!!!! So to expic pre nume thing, (oh sorry that would read explain the first name thing), Elfred came in with no first name, which probably means that he was left here pretty well at birth. But we named him Elfred because Angela thought he looked like an elf, his ears look like elf ears. Anyways, He will eventually get a first name because in the Orthodox religion, when the baby gets baptized they receive a Saint Name... so people either keep the Saint name or they keep the original name they received from their parents, some people will respond to either of the names depending on who they are talking to. This family that Angela and Jen rescued lived with us for a week or two... time here passes so slowly that I can’t remember all that well, but Halloween day the family came with us to the baby hospital for 2 hours and then for the last two Angela took them to a Halloween party that another missionary family was hosting for missionary kids. The family has an 8 year old boy so that is why they went. Anyways that night Corny and I stayed for the last two hours alone... the babies were all asleep and good while Angela and the family was there, but then as soon as they left for the party all of the babies woke up again and it was still another hour away from feeding time for them so we had 6 babies of each of us once again to keep happy. So I had one in the swing and Marius in a walker, 2 in my hands and one I was singing too just to keep them happy... Corny although she didn’t have any devices to keep them occupied she was dancing around the room, singing, making faces, if I had a camera it would have been awesome to video tape... she loves working with the babies though... she is really drawn to the severely special needs kids. Some of the team members in the past that were physical therapists and stuff like that taught her little exercises to do with them so she tends to be drawn towards them... We have a 2 month old in the baby hospital now; he has been there for about a month I would think. He also doesn’t have a first name but his last name is Daxton, the name reminds me of a little boy that I used to babysit so I think I am going to start calling him Dax. He is the cutest thing ever, but man is he huge!!! For those who knew Aunt Emma’s doll Emily, He looks like her and weighs about as much as her. It was so cool to see him the first time because I instantly thought of Aunt Emma and you guys at home. There is now a 8 month old boy named Paul there he is tiny, weighs about 10 pounds and we think might have FAS but you never know with the kids that come in because they don’t really get a background on the kid or if they do they don’t really tell us. That pretty much sums up the last couple weeks at the baby hospital, now on to the orphanage... Oh the orphanage what to tell you about it!!! So much has happened... we have started our program and it is going well... they have 3 or 4 groups that come in and work on the computers, typing... for those who know, it’s kind of like the home row program... the kids love it and have so much fun with it where I remember us learning it at school and we always considered it as kind of a chore... I appreciate it now though. If it were not for that I would not be able to type like this and write about my experiences here as well... Thank God for the tedious learning experiences... anyways back to Romania... The older girls are learning Home ec type things... their first class they learned how to make pancakes and their class last week they were starting to make table clothes so that is really cool... by hand too which makes it even more exciting cause I was learning with them too... Some of the girls know English well enough to communicate with me so that was good... I am starting to be able to help the kids somewhat in what activities they are doing. Lenuta is really great with planning the program!!! We are so grateful to have her there! Mariana, Sanda and Jenny are really good with leading and helping as well. Jenny is teaching an arts and crafts class for the kids who signed up for it. Mariana is leading sessions with the different classes on friendship. Sanda teaches the home ec kind of program, and Amy and I started a dance/ sign language class. As Jeremy pointed out to me in an email... it is drimes basically. Amy unfortunately is not going to be coming back... God is leading her in a different direction but she has been working in Romania for about 2 or 3 years and when the Lord tells you something you do it... anyways, Amy and I were teaching the kids a drime to Oh Holy Night by Barlow Girl. She taught the Tuesday class which was really good she taught them most of the song so I basically just had to review it with them on the Wednesday. I was really nervous about it, which I shouldn’t have been because as we learn here God is the best and if it’s something He wants done it will get done and He doesn’t call the Qualified, He qualifies the called!!! The kids at the orphanage can be so nice some days and others they are huge brats... we had kids that were angels and helping us out and sitting on our laps one minute and the next they were ripping windshield wipers off the vehicle and taking the air out of our tires... I don’t know if I have said this in other blogs but most of the kids in the orphanage in Peris are special needs kind of kids. We have some that could be schizophrenic while others are developmentally slow, many behavioural issues but they are all great and a lot of fun to be around. The language lessons are going alright... I am getting a little frustrated because it is taking a while to learn but anything worthwhile learning will take a while right... as you could see from the beginning of the blog it is starting to come together but it is a slow process. We are in rosiorii de vede this weekend that is why I am writing this before actually posting it. In Rosiorii we don’t have internet connection so I will forewarn you next time if I am going out there. Most of the kids out here are older which is cool but also frustrating because of the communication barrier but they are amazing kids. The apartment is having heating issues so we hang out in the living room a lot of the time because we have a space heater in there. This weekend has not exactly gone the way that we were expecting but it has been good....Thursday we got here about 4 or 5 and then we moved all the tubs and stuff that we needed to sort out for the kids. Then we went shopping for some stuff to eat and came home.... had snitzel and frozen veggies...if you can you should try and find frozen veggies with red pepper in it!!! IT IS SOOOO GOOD!!!! Friday we did some errands, went to the market and other shopping, sorted stuff in the afternoon and the girls went to a prayer service while I sorted some more... When they came home they brought some older ladies from the church with them they were sweet even though I didn’t know what they were saying... Today Saturday Nov. 15, we worked for the morning on this blog... 2 weeks of missing info takes a long time to write... and then the kids came over around 1 or 2 we taught dance and hung out... they were teaching me numbers and were completely shocked at how well I could speak Romanian... the accent I guess I don’t know really...but it was fun... we attempted to play a game of Uno but the kids were cheating all over the place and so it didn’t really work all that well... I was not as stressed out to see them this time which was a good sign... so between 1 and 5 they were here and now we are finishing our blogs and newsletters and whatever else they were working on. The guy came to look at the heating system (sentrala) but he left and will come back but we didn’t put it together right when they did it this summer. So hopefully we will be getting some heat in here soon which will be amazing... Anyways I should finish this off so that we can do more sorting and organizing... I hope all is well at the home-front send me an email or something telling me how you are!!!! If you don’t have my email address it is trumpet_girl_lindsey@hotmail.com... I would love to hear from you!!!! Noapte Buna everyone!!! Lindsey Toma