Well. we had a great retreat with our volunteers, about 30 of them showed up. We did 2 sessions on “Lying and truth telling” and then one on getting a job and writing a resume’. We also learned some new songs and performed them at the Baptist church in Iris. It was a fantastic time with oour many volunteers.

 We also had the opportunity to do some planning with Dina and visit the orphanage in Ilisua to bring fruit that was donated by “the friends of Mike Rains” and a friend of Gary Sharpe. This was a blessing to distribute fruit to children who receive very little in the way of nutrition…. having said that, I spoke with the doctor at ilisua and he happily informed me that the vitamins that were collected by the Christmas Team ‘07 made a big difference as he notice less cases of “respiratory infections” and a general “healthier look” amongst the children. This is very good news to many of us!!!!!

 Finally, we put an offer in on a big house to rent for a year to begin our “mentoring home ministry” to our orphan volunteers… The offer was accepted today!!! We move in on March 1 with Monica and Emi Florea as house parents!!!! More news on this to follow….

See you soon friends!

Bob 

Hello From Romania!

We are all doing well. I must apologize because I can only send e-mails from my cell phone right now and cannot do pictures. Here is a summary of our last few days. We started on sunday at an elderly care center where we gave out some chocolate and fruit. The 90 plus seniors were in various conditions of health ranging from good to very sick. Our team of 20 sat and talked with many over the course of 2 hours listening to their lonliness Monday and tuesday we were at a special needs school and the prichindel orphanage. There we did crafts, singing, and gave out the gifts that we brought with us. The team did a wonderful job and brought some joy to many children. Today, we travelled by train to the city of Beclean where we ran a program for about 60 orphans. The team did more crafts, gave out christmas gift bags and 2 people spoke about their lives. One team member, Dan Scott, talked about how he had grown up as an orphan and how he felt. Tomorrow, we go to ilisua where we will do much of the same except here we will make christmas dinner. Thanks for your support of the team. I hope to get pictures up soon! Bob Fukumoto

Our Romania Christmas team is packed and ready to go. We will have left by the time you see this picture. 12 of us have left minus Jan, our team leader who has done so much to gt us organized. Thank you to all who have encouraged, supported, donated to this project. Hopefully this will translate into orphans feeling that someone loves them and that they are not alone… thank-you for helping us continue to communicate this message. I hope to have something on the blog again early next week… Bob, for the team

Greetings again from RomaniaThe team here is doing very well after a day with 40 orphans from an orphanage located in the very small village of Ilisua. We rented a bus and took them to the big city of Cluj which is 2 hours away. Most had never been to a city of any size. We had a tour of the city, a picnic in the park, and finished with a swim in a public pool. None of the children had been in a pool but had only swam in the local river. The children cried when the bus pulled away from us while we stood at the entrance to the pool. It was very sad. Sorry that I didn’t get pictures onto my laptop in time for this but I have included pictures from yesterday when we ran some programs in Ilisua.