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Update June 2016

Dear Friends,
It’s time for me to give you and update on our lives in Romania. We had a wonderful celebration at Cati and Cristi’s wedding. It is an honor to be part of their lives.

Directly after the wedding, we had a retreat with our communities from Romania and Moldova. Our friend Danut Manastireanu, who recently retired after many years of service with World Vision, agreed to lead our morning meditations on the theme of soul friendship. It was a challenging and encouraging time together.

For three weeks during May, I led a Discovery Team of 8 students and 2 student leaders from George Fox University. We spent a week in Moldova, two weeks in Galati and a few days seeing the capital and the mountains. It was a great group that invested a lot in our communities, and hopefully we invested in their lives as well.

We are just hosted a team of 6 friends from Kingsway Fellowship in Liverpool. They made some headway on our EarthShip greenhouse, led some discussions for parents of the kids, and organized some activities for the kids.

We have also begun to prepare for summer camp. This is our 15^th year of organizing camps under the auspices of WMF Romania. So, that is something to celebrate. We are hoping to bring 50 children this year. This is the highlight of the year for the kids. Pray that all 50 will be able to attend. Pray for the funding to cover the costs ($150/per child for 7 days). Pray that God will use this week away to touch the lives of the children.

Vali, our program director who has served with us for the past 17 years, is undergoing radiotherapy after just having her thyroid removed. Pray for a successful treatment in July and for complete healing and no side effects.

Sadly, two of our educators, Anca and Eugen, made a difficult decision to migrate to Austria to live near Anca’s family. This is a significant loss to our community. Please pray for them during this transition and pray that God would raise up new staff to serve with us.

This summer I will participate in two consultations. The first is on Child Theology at which I will co-lead a working group on theology and activism. The second is with communities similar to Word Made Flesh at which we will continue to support and learn from one another. I will also spend a few weeks in the US in August. Please pray for good connections and fruitful discussions at the consultations and for opportunities to share about our work while in the US.

Betty, a mother of one of our first-grade girls recently came to us for help. She as another son, age 2, who was not legally claimed by his father. The father is involved in criminal activities. When the violence in the home was too much, she ran away with the children and moved in with her mother, brothers and sisters. They pay rent to the city for what they call social housing. All together there are 21 people living in the two rooms.

Although Betty ran away, her ex-partner continued to have her and the kids stalked. On one occasion, he grabbed her on the street, forced her into a car by knife point, and took her to his home. He gave death threats. Betty was able to escape and went to the police. The police seem to know the man and to be influenced by him. Instead of giving a restraining order to the man, they gave Betty a fine for speaking ill of him. Upon hearing this, our social worker helped her to go to the police and the courthouse in order to contest the fine and to get a restraining order. Thankfully, the court agreed. We continue to pray for stability, peace, healing and justice for Betty and her family.

We appreciate your partnering with us and prayers for us,

david and lenutsa

WMF Romania 2015 in Numbers