Praise the Lord!

On being sent out...

This past weekend was the last service at our home church, Radiant. Over the course of two days, we had six send-offs (in six services). This experience gave us new appreciation for Pastor Lee and the staff that each week go through the six-service routine. Wow... hats off! Going to lunch with the pastoral staff afterwards was a wonderful treat, even more so since it was Pastor Lee's treat!

So, now that we've been officially 'commissioned' to go, we're in the final home stretch. This week will perhaps go so slow that we wish we could just go NOW, and at the same so very fast that we wished we had more time.

On a praise note, we finally found a short term furnished apartment we will be renting for the first month in Bucharest - at the price of 800Euros (approx $1040). We had hoped to not have to pay that much, but we figured out we'd much rather pay a little more in the beginning so we can take our time to look around for a long-term rent without feeling stressed.

Praying for us this week:

• to be able to sell our minivan ('96 Mercury Villager)
• to successfully say good bye to all of our friends and relatives
• for a safe journey to Romania!

Peace!

-C

Day after...

We had a great Thanksgiving, surrounded by family and friends. Played some pool, ate some turkey, played some more pool, ate some more turkey, played a game of cards, had a cup of coffee with the pumpkin pie... Life was good. Then I don't know how discussion came to the amount of waste in our culture. Which reminds me of a little experience I had in Romania last August:

After meeting with a missionary in Bucharest, and before meeting a real estate agent to look at rentals, I had a few minutes to grab some lunch so I sat at an outdoors cafe and ordered a pizza (which hardly resembles the pizza we're used to here - all thin crust and an invisible layer of cheese on it). Out around the tables I noticed a sad-looking eight or nine year-old paper boy, so I waved him over to get some newspapers to look at the rental section. As he came and I asked him how much the newspapers cost, he gave me one of these answers that no one could ever forget: "Sir, I don't want money for the newspaper, I want some food - I haven't eaten in two days and I am really hungry. Can you please buy me some food?" Wow... There I was, enjoying a good meal and his words punched me out cold and withered my appetite. Under the surface of the world that flashes before us there is a lot of pain and suffering, but we often don't see it because it seldom jumps out right at us. Of course, I got him a big meal to enjoy and left him going away wondering where his parents were and if he had any other siblings. He didn't look like the other glue-sniffing kids I had seen coming out of sewer holes and from below the bridges, but his life was perhaps no better. The glue the others sniff at least numbs the brain, but hunger keeps gnawing at you until satisfied.

-C

Giving Thanks

Happy Thanksgiving!!!!

This being our last Thanksgiving in the US for a while, we'll be spending some time with our extended family, and tomorrow we'll celebrate... Christmas. Why not? After all December 25 is an arbitrary day anyway, so we chose to move it up a month - it seemed more convenient to do so this year; besides, the kids were eagerly waiting to see what they're getting for Christmas. :)

So, this year we'll have two Christmases, one here and one in Romania. One with sunshine, one with snow. One in English, one in Romanian.

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The second part in the saga of the nasty apartment situation, we got an email from the 'agency' with a second offer, except this time they sent nice big pictures showing everything in the apartment. No price yet, but it wouldn't be surprising to hear it's about double than the other because it is in great shape. We'll see.

Praying points

If you wonder how you may pray for us, please read below for a couple areas needing 'some intervention':

Short-term rental from 'down under'

• "This apartment was so bad, no one would ever want to stay there!" said a friend of ours in Bucharest whom we've asked to go see the furnished, short-term rent apartment we've been considering. The 'agency' renting this apartment was trying to lead us to believe that this was a 'deluxe' apartment and was worthy of premium price (asking $850/month). According to our friends, there was hardly any furniture in the bedrooms, no kitchen furniture at all, and it was all very dirty and unkept. Unfortunately, this type of unscrupulous activity is not at all too rare in Romania, where small-time thieves are at all corners. As a buyer, one has to triple check everything in order to not be had. Last summer, while we visited Romania, I bought a few CDs with Romanian Christian music and didn't open the sealed cases until we got home... which was too late, as one of the cases was empty inside.

"No life insurance for you!!!!"

• A while ago we applied for new life insurance, given that we no longer had my coverage through Mayo Clinic. After a while of no reply from the insurance carrier, we found out today that the insurance denied us coverage because of our overseas traveling, but forgot to inform us... So, we're now moving out to plan B... which is under development. Nonetheless, I should say that we still have life insurance through another company, but is only half of what we'd want it to be and the premiums go way up in 5 years (10 -year fixed).

The "Packing Team"

Bucharest photo/video clip

Here is a short clip (1.5MB) of selected Bucharest photos. This is a trial clip of what we'd like to post once we arrive in Bucharest. Click here.

-C

challenge...

In his book The Winning Attitude, John Maxwell describes how our attitude contributes so much to the success of what we do.

One of the challenges he issues early in the book is this:

"For one week treat every person you meet, without a single exception, as the most important person on earth. You will find that they will begin treating you the same way."

Anyone up for the challenge?

almost done...

loading up the truck...

empty house

It's done!!!! Our home has been packed and shipped and is now on its way to Romania. Under a 2-hour time crunch, along with 7 other muscle men and woman (more power to you, Teuta!) we managed to load ALL of our belonging in a 40-foot container and close its lid exactly 2 hours and 5 minutes later.

This past week has a been a week of blessings - from additional support coming in, to finishing packing, to getting a van to use for the next two weeks until we depart, to renting our house (YES!!!! Thank you, Lord!), and to all the little blessings that have come in to encourage us.

My prayer is that we will remain thankful to Him, the Provider, in good moments as well as in challenging moments. It's easy to forget how good He is when things don't quite go our way.

Peace to you!

- C.

shrink-wrap

What does 'normal' feel like? That's something we couldn't answer for you right now because our lives are anything but normal. Half of our house is taken up by boxes. We slalom between half-empty boxes, empty boxes, and things needing to be boxed up soon.

If you have a moment, please take a minute and pray for us: pray for normalcy.

- C

Camping in... our house

Time mercilessly flies by us and we're now only a few days away from putting our furniture and the rest of the earthly belongings on a truck to have it shipped to Romania (in case you're wondering, the truck is not going to Romania, just the container that is on the truck :). After Friday we'll literally camp in our own house until the end of the month when we get on the plane with one-way tickets in hand. Pray for us during this time of transition.

Checking out for now.

Catalin

Arizona's War Dead

The cost of FREEDOM. Never small. Thank God for veterans!

Visit website.

Extreme MakeOver

The show Extreme Makover:Home Edition is having an incredible success with its drastic home remodeling projects for families with certain special needs, be they physical challenges, economic hardships, and/or any other issues.

Tonight, the show had a special project: remodeling the house of a family in which both parents were deaf and their younger-of-the-two boys was both blind and autistic. The entire show was a very emotional story and it captured both the impact on those performing the service for the family, and also of the entire family at the end of the project. There was joy and there was happinness, no doubt.

Couldn't help it but parallel this to a spiritual makeover. Wouldn't the joy and happinness of coming to knowledge of Christ produce an even greater and more lasting effect than the material things which quickly become mundane no matter how fancy and wonderful they are?

Save the Planet

Got time? Want to save the planet from destruction?

Tell others about Christ. The world needs it!

The will of God is that mankind be in His eternal presence rather than be eternally separated from Him. As witnesses of His power in our own lives, we choose to be forces of redemption and love so that others will Him as we do.

Dollar Plunges to Record Low Against Euro

Yahoo! News - Dollar Plunges to Record Low Against Euro: "Dollar Plunges to Record Low Against Euro

20 minutes ago Business - Reuters

by John Pary

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The dollar dropped to record lows against the euro on Friday, succumbing to negative sentiment and erasing all of the U.S. currency's earlier gains following a robust U.S. October employment report. "

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Wow and OUCH!!!!

It seems the dollar needs a miracle! Hopefully a cheap dollar would equalize the import/export imbalance by making imports more expensive due to reduced buying power and making our exports cheaper to the world (particularly Europe). Unfortunately, this could also translate into higher prices in stores and at the pump, given the high volume of imports flowing into this country!

What does a weak dollar mean for us personally? It definitely means less money in our pocket at the exchange office. Roughly $300 out of every thousand is lost, so our money will have to stretch even more. I guess it really is sort of like what the Canadians have had to put up with for so long.

Ceao for now!

Marathon Packing

Today we booked a 40' container to ship to Romania, taking along our household belongings and some supplies for the Christian school in Bucharest.

The crazy part is that we have only two hours to load the container when it arrives on November 19th. Otherwise we'll have to pay $100 per hour - talk about "pressure." So, to not pay any extra, we hope to get some muscle men to help us load the container in this extremely short time.

Got some free time Friday, Nov. 19, and can help? If so, stop by, we'd love to see you!

The power of Grass Roots

I'm sitting here watching the elections outcome flipping TV stations and checking out several network web sites at the same time. It's just plain wonderful seeing those numbers go up, up... up.

Yet something caught my attention - political pundits credit the great voter turnout to the "Amway-style" grassroot networking done by both political parties. It is the 'grass root' comment that caught my attention. There is tremendous power in grass roots activities. Christianity grew exponentially through its early years grass roots activities, much more so than with any other modern marketing strategy or ploy.

Would we ever learn and put into application what really works?