Telperion's Light

House of Numbers

2010-01-22T02:56:00.003+02:00

Thank God someone finally made a film about this.
I hope it gets the attention it deserves, but I highly doubt that it will.

Ministry Update Summer 2009

2009-07-08T00:53:00.002+03:00

Well, it has been almost 6 months since I last wrote a ministry update, so I figure it is about time to catch you all up on what has been going on in our lives.

We are still here in Craiova, Romania, more determined than ever to stay and continue to work with our church, Pro DEO and with the student ministry OSCEC.

As before, I have broken this update into three sections: past, present and future.

Past Projects

Raluca and I were able to go to OSCEC's evangelistic Ski Camp in February as part of the leadership team. It was a nice, small intimate group of 14 people, about half of us from the church. This event had very little structure, allowing everyone to hit the slopes as often as he liked, but we were still able to have some good group discussions, which I led in the evenings.

We also started up the weekly English Lounge again in the spring, but instead of leading just one group, we had three different types of English Lessons! We contined the English Lounge itself, which is a discussion group for students who want to practice their English. We added a Book Reading group, for anyone who wanted to practice his reading and comprehension skills and Raluca led a Beginning English class for those who were not advanced enough to be part of the discussion group. These English classes are one of OSCEC's most successful outreach programs and we love that we are able to serve the ministry in this way. A number of the students from our classes will be attending English camp this month (more on that below).

I have continued to be utilized as a speaker both at church and ministry events. These have included preaching at church, speaking at the OSCEC Easter Celebration and giving the "Remember to be Romantic" talk at the evangelistic Family Cafe.

Current Projects

As I mentioned before, the way Pro DEO is structured, we meet once every two weeks as a whole church and on each other Sunday we meet is smaller house churches.
There are a number of reasons why we do it that way. Two of the most important are that it allows us to discuss the sermon from the week before in more detail and decide together how we can apply it to our lives and it put everyone in the church into a context in which he or she can develop more intimate relationships with other members of the church. One problem with this structure had been that the three home church groups had grown too large and they were losing a sense of intimacy. Earlier this year it was decided that a good solution would be to create a fourth home group and I have been leading that since the spring. This has been a lot of work for me, since it involves not just planning and running the Sunday morning meetings, but also being directly involved in the lives of each of the people in my group, actively creating fellowship that reaches farther than our fortnightly meetings.

Next Tuesday (14 July), we will be headed to English Camp! English Camp is OSCEC's major evangelistic event of the year. They invite college students to come and take English lessons from native English speakers for a week and at the same time, they introduce them to the student organization and to the basics of our faith. I am very excited to be going to an English Camp again, since it have a long history with these events. It was at an English Camp back in 1996 when I first fell in love with this country. Raluca and I have had experience being leaders of both the visiting American team and of the organizing OSCEC team (and Raluca has experienced being a student at English camp!). Given our past experience, this year we will be asking as liasons between the American and Romanian teams, helping to ensure everything goes smoothly. We will probably help to lead some of the English classes as well. Unlike Ski Camp, where we went alone, we will be taking our children with us to English Camp, much to the delight of our English Lounge students (who like our kids even more than they like us!). After a very hectic year, it will be nice to all get out of the city together.

Raluca is directly involved in a woman's ministry which she helped to start called "The Mommy Club". This group has been important in getting the women of the church to start connecting with each other more intimately again, which is one or Raluca's passions.

We continue to be involved with planning the Family Cafe events, which happen every other month. The final event of the six-part, one-year series will occur sometime latter this summer.

As always, we have a lot of evangelistic relationships which we are developing and growing, which all take up a lot of time and energy, but which are immensely fulfilling.

Future Projects

Once the students return to Craiova from their summer break, we will be starting up our third semester of English Lounge. We're not sure how many groups we will have this time, but we expect to pick up quite a few students following English Camp.

Given my success in the past at using table games as a way of connecting with students - both in and outside of evangelistic camps - I am considering starting up a gaming club as a way of making even more connections with the university students in the city. I am still praying about this and talking it over with other church leaders, but I will keep you updated as this idea takes form.

Thank you again for your continued interest in and support for our ministries here.

God bless.

Marriage Seminar

2009-04-06T12:16:00.003+03:00

From 24 - 29 March 2009, proDEO hosted a 4-day marriage seminar which focused on teaching couples how to have a Christ-centered marriage. The seminar was led by John Mabee, a family councilor on staff at Stonegate Fellowship, a church in Midland, Texas.

John, accompanied by two other couples from Stonegate, was here for almost a week and in addition to leading the seminar, his team also led last month's family cafe.

You can see a photo slideshow of the seminar here:

prodeo.ro/ConferintaFamilii

The pictures were all taken by Raluca and by Robert Dobre, a very talented young photographer who is involved with both proDEO and OSCEC.

Resident Alien

2009-01-28T22:56:00.002+02:00

That handsome card there in my hand is my brand new Romanian Alien Residency card. I am not officially a Romanian resident, which means that I can legally live and work here for at least the next five years.

This is a great help to us, since it means that we will not have to leave the country, apply for visas, or jump through any other hoops in order to remain here in Romania indefinitely.

Family Cafe

2009-01-28T13:09:00.003+02:00

proDEO held its bimonthly "Family Cafe" this past Saturday evening. There were about 20 couples there, with roughly 1/3 of them being friends and family from outside the church.

This was the third of six meetings, which are built around the theme of "Building Healthy Relationships", but only the first which Raluca and I have been involved in. This month's topic was "Communicating Better" and throughout the evening we enjoyed a number of activities which shared this idea. There were interactive games, music, a short message/discussion and a skit!

I wrote the skit, but the really important thing about it was that it was performed by me and my inredible wife, Raluca. This was not only the first time that Raluca has acted with me, but also the first time that she has done any acting since we have been married!

(photo by Cristi Conea)

Cat People

2009-01-27T23:18:00.009+02:00

No, the title is not a reference to the classic Val Lewton horror film, but to us: the Chase family.

Yes, we are now officially "cat people".

It all started with my brother-in-law, Iuli. He had bought a cat for his office. Actually, he did not buy it. He had gone to the hypermarket (yes, that is a word here in Europe) REAL, which has a small pet shop attached, Zoo Mania. Zoo Mania has got a pretty good racket going, whereby it accepts unwanted cats, vaccinates them, de-worms them, etc. and then gives them away for free with the purchase of X amount of cat-related products.

So Iuli left REAL one day with a bag full of cat stuff and a (free) orange tabby kitten. He brought the cat (named Flexi, after Adobe's Flex program) to his office, where it lived for a number of months. But then as Christmas approached, Raluca - who had been working at Iuli's office on a regular basis - decided that it would be cruel to allow the cat to stay there alone over the vacation, so she insisted that we house it for the holiday.

And so, Flexi came to live with us, despite the misgivings of Raluca's mother and my insistence that I did not want to have to take care of a cat. The kids were delighted of course, since they have been asking to have pets since they learned to speak (I don't think our chickens really counted as pets). I kept reminding them that the cat was only staying for a short while, but as Christmas became New Year became mid-January and Flexi was still there, it became increasingly clear that the cat wasn't going anywhere.

Then last week, Raluca finally convinced her mother to agree to allow the cat to stay for good. That very day we took a walk as a family to REAL to buy kitty litter for Flexi. While shopping in Zoo Mania, we found a beautiful young Siamese kitten looking terribly frightened. The kids (and Raluca) immediately decided that we had to take him home, too. And since we were buying kitty litter anyways, if we just bought a few more things we could get him for free! (I told you they had a good racket going.)

After a quick call home to make sure we wouldn't be disowned if we brought home another animal, we soon left Zoo Mania with a bag off kitty accessories and a cat tucked snugly in my coat.

It was a few days before we could finally agree on a name for the new boy (he had previously been called Pufuleti), but yesterday we finally settled on Smoki.

So, what's my point in talking about our cats here in our ministry blog? More than just signifying that we finally broke down and got our children the pets they have wanted for so long, the decision to adopt not just one but two cats indicates - to us and to others - that we are here to stay.

We returned to Romania in November with the idea that we were going to try to settle here permanently, but there was a bit of doubt about whether or not that would actually happen. Right now it seems very clear to us that this is where we are meant to be and it seems certain that we will be able to remain here indefinitely. Which is not to say that we won't be coming back to the US at all; both Raluca and I have a number of freelance jobs lined up this summer and fall in America. However, it seems very unlikely that we will be moving our family back to the States anytime soon.

Which is why we could allow ourselves to become cat people.

Ski Camp

2009-01-27T22:57:00.002+02:00

We are now officially involved in OSCEC ski camp 2009.

The question of whether or not we should go was answered pretty definitively when the money we needed materialized from a couple of different sources.

This evangelistic event will he held from 23-26 February 2009 in Straja.

There will be about 35 participants at the camp, roughly half of whom will be from outside of the ministry. The purpose of the camp will be to give these students a chance to interact with us (i.e. students and leaders of OSCEC) in a fun, relaxed setting with the hope that doing so will help to break down some of the stereotypes which exist in this society against "born-again" Christians.

Right now our biggest obstacle seems to be that there is currently no snow in Straja, which could seriously affect the "Ski" part of Ski Camp.

However, no matter what type of weather God provides for us, I am sure it will be a great opportunity for fellowship and evangelism.

Christmas Banquet Video

2009-01-26T12:13:00.006+02:00

Here (for your viewing pleasure) is a short video montage of proDEO's Christmas Banquet, which was held on 20 December 2008.

This was an evangelistic event and was attended by about 50 people from the church and about 50 people from outside of the church. Everyone who attended will receive a long-form DVD containing highlights from the evening's program.

Comprehensive Ministry Update

2009-01-16T20:08:00.003+02:00

As I mentioned in the previous post, we have been back in Craiova for two months now and have been heavily involved in ministry ever since returning.

Today, I want to briefly list the different projects which we have been involved in, so that you will have a better idea of the kind of work we are doing here.

I should stress that Raluca and I are not employed by the church nor do we receive any financial support from either organizations or individuals, so in addition to being involved with these various projects we are also both self-employed.

In addition to the major projects which are listed below, we are also involved in many different relational ministries. That is, we are creating, developing and strengthening numerous relationships both within and outside of the church, since we feel very strongly that this is a major part of God's plan for us here in this city.

Past Projects

The first major project which we were asked to be a part of was proDEO's annual Christmas banquet. This banquet is an evengelistic event, intended to make our non-Christian friends feel comfortable within our community and to give them a chance to hear a scriptural perspective on Christmas. Raluca and I were both part of the planning committee for this banquet, which took place on 20 December 2008.

This event was quite successful. There were more than 100 participants at the dinner (up from roughly 70 last year), 1/2 of whom were from outside the church community.

Raluca and I were also asked to take over an English language outreach ministry in early December. The "English Lounge" was a discussion group sponsored by OSCEC with the intention of raising awareness of the ministry among the student community and involving more students in evangelistic events (similar to the English classes which I taught back in 2000 & 2001). The previous leaders of "English Lounge" were a young missionary couple who had been living here in Craiova and working with OSCEC for a number of months. They ended up leaving Romania earlier than expected and instead of allowing this program to sputter off, we agreed to finish out the remaining weeks.

The structure of proDEO's Sunday meetings is to meet once every two weeks as an entire church for community worship and to hear a sermon. On alternative weeks, we break into three smaller home groups in which we discuss the ideas of the previous week's sermon in greater detail. Over the first month and a half, we attended every house group in order to make an objective analysis of the current state of this system and of each of the smaller groups.

What we have found is that by being so separated from the church for so long (almost two years), we were able to come back into the community and see certain things from a different perspective than those who had never left. Changes (both good and bad) which had occured slowly over time - and thus went unnoticed by much of the community - were glaringly obvious to us.

I have also preached at proDEO twice in the past month. I actually gave the last sermon of 2008 and the first of 2009.

Current Projects

I am currently working on editing a DVD of the Christmas Banquet, which the church plans on giving out to all of the attendees, so that they will have something nice to remember the evening by and to serve as a reminder that they are invited to join us again next Christmas (or any time before then).

We are both on the organizing committee of this month's "Family Cafe." "Family Cafe" is an outreach ministry similar to the Christmas banquet, but on a smaller, more intimate scale. In general it occurs once every two months; this months will be the third of its kind. Our intention is to provide a relaxed, enjoyable atmosphere, where couples will be entertained and will also be exposed to topics which are relevant to modern families.

Future Projects

We have finished our commitment to lead "English Lounge", but we have agreed to start up a new version of the program starting in March. In addition to the English conversation group, we may also add an English Reading Book Club to the program.

Finally, we have been asked to be involved in leading OSCEC's Ski Camp this year. The Ski Camp is an evangelistic event (yes, we try to do a lot of evangelism here) to which Christian students invite their non-Christian friends. There will be skiing and other events during the day and discussions and other relevant interactions in the evening. It will be held over the course of four days sometime next month. Both of us would very much like to be involved in this camp, but the cost is fairly high (given our current income) and we are trying to evaluate whether this is something which God wants us to do (in which case, money should not be an issue) or merely something which we personally want to do (in which case, there are much better uses of our resources). We would appreciate if you would pray for us to make the Godly decission in this matter.

I believe that covers all of the major projects which we have been working on. We will provide updates to many of these events in the near future.

Back in Romania

2009-01-15T15:12:00.003+02:00

It's been a while since we have added anything substantial to this blog. The main reason for this is that we had been stuck living in the US for almost two years and - for many different reasons - the opportunities which we had to be actively involved with ministry were few and far between.

As of 5 Nov 2008, however, we are back to living in Craiova, Romania and we have plunged headfirst back into ministry, working with both our church, proDEO, and the student ministry, OSCEC.

Instead of just being here for a short amount of time, though, (yes, 6 months is a short amount of time for us) our hope and prayer is that we are finally back to stay. Ever since Raluca and I were forced to move to the US in 2001, we have felt that it was God's will for us to eventually come back to Craiova to serve him here. We believe that he has been using the 7 years in which we lived and worked in America to prepare us for the ministry which he has planned for us here in Romania now.

We'll be updating this page semi-regularly with updates on the various ministries in which we are involved here in Romania. We will also share more general prayer requests and occasionally offer up commentary on other matters of faith.

Robertson for Rudy?

2007-11-12T20:54:00.000+02:00

A lot of people seemed shocked by Pat Robertson's endorsement of Rudy Giuliani this past week, but to those of us who have paid attention to Robertson's deeds (rather than his words) over the years that endorsement wall all too predictable.

Jim Wallis (the founder of Sojourners magazine) lays out the details most clearly in an article which you can find here.

Dedicating our Son to God

2006-04-17T17:31:00.000+03:00

Shortly before we left Romania last month we had our son dedicated at our church there.

I have posted below my thought on his dedication, which were originally published in the church bulletin:

As Christian parents we are committed to raising our children to love and respect God.
We are committed to teaching them God's laws and helping them to understand that those laws were given to us out of love, since God knows far better than we do what will harm us and what will benefit us.
But standing up in front of the church to dedicate our child is more than just publicly acknowledging these commitments.
Dedicating a child means setting that child apart for God.
It means that we hand him over to God and declare that he is not ours, but he is God's.
This is not an easy step to take.
It is hard enough for us to give own lives to God and trust that he will take care of us. It is even harder to look at our own helpless baby and to accept that we are not the one who can best take care of him, but that we need to give his life to God as well.
But that is what we are doing today and we pray that over the years as we do our best to raise God's child that you will help us and hold us accountable to the commitment which we are making today to raise A as God's child.

Back in the USA

2006-04-17T17:27:00.000+03:00

Our family is back in the US for the summer.

We'll be working here through the summer and fall with the hopes that we'll be able to save enough money to spend another 6+ months in Romania come winter.

The Strengthening Lion

2006-03-07T12:45:00.000+02:00

"Lion" is the English word for Romania's unit of currency leu (pl. lei). Over the last year the leu has been strengthening against both the dollar and the euro.

Although the Romanian economy is still very weak, this trend is positive for anyone who makes a living within Romania, since it means that any money which they earn has a greater value in the rest of the world.

This same trend, however, is disadvantageous to anyone who lives in Romania but who earns his money elsewhere. Even though the value of the leu has gone up, prices of goods and services have remained the same (or even gone up). That means that anyone whose income is in dollars or euros has less buying power in Romania now. This has obviously affected us a little, but it's not a huge problem. Where we have seen it become a problem is for leaders in churches and other Christian organizations who receive all or most of their income from the West. This income is usually fairly low anyways ($200-$300/month), but given that the dollar has dropped in value 10% against the leu over the past year, they have been forced to make difficult financial choices. For example, should the shortfall be taken out of family expenses or ministry expenses? Some have even had to consider giving up full-time ministry in order to take a job with a salary.

Calling "Mama"

2006-03-04T22:12:00.000+02:00

Our son, who is now 13 months old, is very good at understanding things we ask him to do and he is usually good about actually doing them. He had gotten into the habit of crying every morning when he woke up until one of us went to get him. A couple of weeks ago, Raluca told him that instead of crying he should call "Mama" and she would come and get him. And that is exactly what he started to do.

It was very sweet to hear our little boy calling out "Mama" first thing in the morning (although we would have prefered that he do it at a later hour).

But now he has gotten into the habit of calling for Raluca all the time. Whenever he wants any kind of attention at all he calls out "Mama!" over and over again until he gets what he wants.

It's not so cute anymore.

We're hoping he learns some new words soon.

Our Growing Family

2006-02-22T12:42:00.000+02:00

We are very happy to announce that our family is adding a member.

Not our nuclear family (for once), but our extended family. Raluca's brother Iuli and his wife Geanina are expecting their first baby at the beginning of October.

This is particulary exciting for me, since this is the first time that I will get to experience the birth of a nephew or neice. (By brothers have already experienced this twice and Raluca has once when her older brother's son was born ten years ago.)

Unfortunately we will be in the US when the baby is born, although we should be back in Romania before he (or she) is a month old.

Our living situation will be intersting, since we live with Iuli and Geaninia (and my mother-in-law) in a four room apartment here in Criaova. Come next winter there will be 5 adults and three children aged four and under living here.

Preaching in Romanian

2006-02-20T16:03:00.000+02:00

One of the responsibilities which I have in our Romanian church (proDEO), is that I am part of the preaching team. There are three of us on this team, Adrian Lauran (the senior pastor), Doru Tiulete (one of the associate pastors) and myself. We are currently preaching though the book of Act from start to finish.

At proDEO we generally meet as an entire church body every two weeks. On alternate Sundays we break into three smaller house groups where we can discuss the message from the week before in more detail.

As we plan to get through the book of Acts in about a year, but we are only preaching from the book twice a month, each sermon has to cover a chapter or more. This is not usually a problem since our Sunday morning sermons are usually ah hour long and you can say a lot in an hour.

My problem, though, has been that I have been preaching in English, which effectively cuts the amount of time which I have to preach down to 30 minutes or so. For our study, half an hour is not really enough time to flesh out a whole chapter. To eliminate this problem, I decided last month that I would finally start preaching in Romanian.

I have been speaking Romanian for more than five years and I really do not have any trouble at all conversing with someone in the language, but there is a lot of specialized, theological vocabulary which I still do not know very well which makes it daunting to speak at length about Biblical issues. Romanian is also a very complex language grammatically and so I will often find myself in the middle of a conversation and realize that I have no idea what the "right" way is of completing the sentence I have already started. This is not a problem in a casual conversation, but it is obviously not the ideal situation to find oneself in when preaching to 70 people.

It was those issues that kept me from attempting to preach in Romanian in the past. But it just did not seem right for me to keep preaching in English. I finally became a member of proDEO last month and we are working towards living here year-round. This really is our home and I felt that not preaching in Romanian was the last big thing which set me apart as an outsider here.

So, last month I gave my first sermon in Romanian and I preached the second yesterday. Reactions to my Romanian-language preaching have been mixed. Most people really appreciate the effort which I have made to prepare in Romanian, which obviously requires much more effort on my part than preparing a sermon in English. There are some people though, who have found it to be distracting when I occasionally butcher the language, although there seem to be far fewer members of this group.

It has been good for me to prepare sermons in Romanian, since it has forced me to learn some of the Christian words and phrases that I really should have mastered years ago. It is also good for me, since over time it will improve my ability to speak Romanian in all contexts. Practice makes perfect. In fact, I have already gotten feedback from church members that my sermon yesterday was delivered much more naturally than the one before. That was encouraging and I hope the pattern continues.

We'll find out soon enough. I am preaching again in two weeks.

Laurelin's Light

2006-02-15T11:59:00.000+02:00

As my father predicted, I have caught the blogging bug.
I have created a companion blog to Telperion's Light, called Laurelin's Light (bonus points awarded to anyone who understands the connection between the names), which will be devoted to my thoughts and comments regarding the world of film.
I had originally planned on adding such postings here, but I really want to keep this blog dedicated to our family and our ministry. This blog should just be of interest to those close to us personally, while I hope to eventually be able to attract a larger audience for Laurelin's Light.

This is actually something I have thought about doing for a while, it just took the creation of this family blog to get my off of my e-butt and actually do it.

Dance of the Penguins

2006-02-14T16:51:00.000+02:00

Just for fun, I put together a silly trailer mixing together elements from the trailers of two different penguin-related movies.

It can be found at the link below.

Section Added - Prayer Requests

2006-02-14T16:04:00.000+02:00

We have added a new section to the blog.
At the top of the right-hand column you will now find a short list of prayer requests.
If you are so inclined to pray for our family and our ministry, this list should give you a good idea of what to pray for.
All of the items currently on the list are long-term issues; we are not anticipating immediate answers to any of these prayers.

Whenever we add an item to this list, we will post a blog article better explaining what our prayer request is. And, of course, whenever there is any change in the status of these requests we will post an update here.

Here are our first three prayer requests:

To Live in Romania Year-Round
We really feel that it is God's plan for us to eventually live and work in Romania year-round again. Right now that is not feasible (for a few reasons), but there are a number of opportunities which may be opening up in the not too distant future which may make this possible. Just pray that God will give us the wisdom to know which opportunities to pursue and the patience to wait for his timing.

A Building for proDEO Church
Right now our church meets in a rented room in a large house. Although we appreciate the significance of gathering in an "upper room" to worship God, the space has become very crowded and it is not the kind of building which most people who are seeking a church would gravitate towards.
proDEO has also been blessed with many young children over the last few years, but we have no space for most of them on Sunday mornings. Thus, Sunday school classes are spread throughout the city at different homes, which leads to some obvious logistical problems.
We are praying that God will eventually provide us with a building which will have enough space for our entire church family and which will be welcoming to seekers.

Resources for proDEO Media Group
One of the projects which we have taken on within the church is the development of a Media Group. Our three-tier goal for this group is to:
1) create media for use within proDEO
2) create media for use by other Christian organizations in Romania
3) create media for the general population of Romania

We have a lot of raw talent within proDEO, but in order to train these people to create professional media, we need to have professional equipment.
Right now only Raluca and I have professional equipment and we are only here 3-6 months/year.
Our prayer is that within the next couple of years the church will be able to acquire a decent digital SLR camera and a small Apple Computer.

Finally Joining My Church

2006-02-09T20:43:00.000+02:00

On Sunday 28 January, at the annual meeting of the 4th Baptist Church of Craiova, Romania (better know as pro DEO), the body voted unanimously to accept four new members. Pro DEO was founded three years ago this month with 22 members; the addition of these four brings the total up to 50.

I am very proud to be one of the four new members accepted into the church.

In truth, I have always considered pro DEO to be my church even before it actually existed as a church. Pro DEO came into being as a natural outgrowth of the student ministry in Craiova (OSCEC). My first contact with OSCEC was in 1996, which was the first summer that I spent in Romania helping to lead English Camps for university students. It was at one of these camps that I first met students from Craiova; people whom I now number among my dearest friends.
My relationship with these people grew stronger in 1998 and 1999. Those were the first years that OSCEC organized English Camps on its own (instead of simply attending the camps organized my OSCE Timisoara) and its US partner was my home church, Rye Bethany.
After four summers in Romania leading camps, I was led by the Lord to serve here long term and he brought me to Craiova, where I worked directly with OSCEC for two years (2000-2001).

It was during our last year here (2001), that members of OSCEC started talking about founding a church. Raluca and I were invited to be a part of the group which met on a regular basis to talk and pray about the pros and cons of undertaking such a project. This group met for over a year and tried pursuing a number of other options before finally coming to the conclusion that it was indeed God's will for us to start a new church here in Craiova. Unfortunately, by that time Raluca and I were no longer in Romania, since circumstances had forced us to return to the United States.

Even so, when pro DEO was officially founded in 2003, Raluca was one of the founding members. I would have joined at that time as well, since we considered pro DEO our home church from the beginning, but this was not an option for political reasons.
Now that we are living in Romania for more than half of each year (and hope to eventually be able to live here year-round) the time was finally right for me to join pro DEO.

It makes me very happy to finally be officially recognized as a member of the church which I have always considered to be my church.

Bad Translation

2006-02-08T19:31:00.000+02:00

While members of my family were visiting us here in Europe over the holidays we found ourselves being amused by how horribly some translators had managed to mangle the English language on printed materials, such as menus, hotel regulation pamphlets and toy packaging.

After they had all left, I came into possession of what may well be the most mis-translated piece of packaging which has ever been printed. My mother-in-law bought L a really cheap toy laptop which supposedly teaches children Spanish, but which actually has many keys which produce sounds and words that have no connection with the letters and numbers printed on them.

Anyways, the instructions on the box are in "English," but only in the sense that the words are recognizable English words. The grammar and the sentence structure seems to be from a wholly unearthly language.

For your viewing pleasure, I have typed out the instuctions below. I have also tried to reproduce the punctuation and formatting as faithfully as possible, but some stuff I just couldn't recreate using a standard keyboard.

Keep in mind that these instructions were written in English by someone in China wanting to sell a Spanish speaking toy in Romania. Something was bound to get lost in translation somewhere.

Characteristics
Work Electric voltage:DC 4.5v
Altogether 45 keys
26 letter of alphabets key, A- Z
piece character key, 1-10
4 Melodies key, an animal key.
1 tone color key,1 Demo Melody key,
1 animal sings a song the key
3 Modes key
Two.The function says all:
Melody Key. Under any mode the function is constant namely:
A. Press animal key, have the “Di” a musical instrument for.
at the same time Mode3 key tone color change for dog
B. tone color key, the hair” Di” a musical instrument for.
Mode3 key tone color changes Piano tone color.
C. the key of Demo Melody, continue to sing 2 Melodies song.
D. the animal sings a song the key. Singing the 1 head :Speech Melody.
2. Mode1:
Here the mode is next, pressing letter of alphabet.
arithmetic figure key, reads aloud the letter of alphabet.
arithmetic figure.
3. Mode2:
Here the mode is next, pressing letter of alphabet
arithmetic figure key. The side reads aloud first the spelling.
then read aloud to should of word.
4. Mode3:
Here the mode is next. Pressing letter of alphabet key to then read aloud first the word.
again the hair is a rightness of should of sound effect:Press arithmetic figure key.
Then play the key with the current tone color.

Special Phoneme:
Bell Telephone
Piano Violin Xylphone

Bono's Remarks at the National Prayer Breakfast

2006-02-03T13:36:00.000+02:00

Alright, this has nothing to do with our family, but I could not help but post this.
Yesterday Bono spoke at the National Prayer Breakfast and he challenged his audience, which included the President and First Lady, to increase the aid which America gives to the world's poor by 1% of the National Budget (it is currently below 1%).

No matter what your faith or political leaning, his words are worth heading, but to those of us who share his Christian faith they hit particualry hard and cannot be ignored. (And if any of you doubt that Bono has faith, you should listen to his words here, which - backed up by his actions on behalf of the poor - put most high-profile "Christians" to shame.)

Here are a few quotes from the speech, with a link to the entire text at the end of this artice:

"Let me repeat that: It’s not about charity, it’s about justice.
And that’s too bad.
Because you’re good at charity. Americans, like the Irish, are good at it. We like to give, and we give a lot, even those who can’t afford it.
But justice is a higher standard. Africa makes a fool of our idea of justice; it makes a farce of our idea of equality. It mocks our pieties, it doubts our concern, it questions our commitment."

"A number of years ago, I met a wise man who changed my life. In countless ways, large and small, I was always seeking the Lord’s blessing. I was saying, you know, I have a new song, look after it… I have a family, please look after them… I have this crazy idea…
And this wise man said: stop.
He said, stop asking God to bless what you’re doing.
Get involved in what God is doing—because it’s already blessed.
Well, God, as I said, is with the poor. That, I believe, is what God is doing.
And that is what He’s calling us to do."

"And while the law is what we say it is, God is not silent on the subject.
That’s why I say there’s the law of the land… and then there is a higher standard. There’s the law of the land, and we can hire experts to write them so they benefit us, so the laws say it’s OK to protect our agriculture but it’s not OK for African farmers to do the same, to earn a living?
. . .
God will not accept that.
Mine won’t, at least. Will yours?"

Where are the Kids' Names?

2006-02-01T21:21:00.000+02:00

You'll notice that we will not be writing the names of our children in any of the posts, nor will we be posting any pictures of the children on this blog.
The reason is privacy. This blog is intended to be a way for us to let those close to us know what is going in in our lives, but by posting this information on the internet we are making it available to anyone in the world. Those who are intended to read this blog already know our children's names. It you ever post any comments on the blog, please respect this decision and refrain from referring to the children by their names.

Even more importantly, we do not want pictures of our children floating around randomly in cyberspace for anyone to do whatever they want with them. If anyone would like pictures of our children for personal use then please feel free to request them via e-mail.

Thanks,

Ti and Raluca

Celebrating Our Son's First Birthday

2006-02-01T21:14:00.000+02:00

Today was our son's first birthday.
It was pretty nice and laid back. I didn't work today, since we decided a couple of years ago that we really want birthdays to mean something in this family and so we try as hard as we can to keep those days free so we can spend them together as a family.
It was one of the first nice days which we have had here in Craiova and we wanted to all take a walk together, but A was completely exhausted today and we were not able to work in a walk around his nap schedule.

L and I made a birthday cake for A this morning (she loves cooking with me).
Once it was cooked, I cut and rearranged pieces of it so that it looked like a car and Raluca detailed it with coconut. Then I cut an orange in half and put each of the two halves on the bottom as wheels.
A is completely crazy about cars, so we knew that he would like that.

The funny thing was that when we put him in front of his big car-shaped chocolate cake he didn't touch it. He is usually crazy about sweets and L dove right into her cake on her first birthday, but A didn't seem to know what to do with it. Even when we gave him a bite of the cake he was more interested in the orange tires than the chocolate.
That boy knows what's really healthy for him . . .
He actually loves fruit. He can eat an entire orange all by himself and will then beg for more.

Since A loves cars, his mamaie bought his a toy truck with a flatbed which carries four little cars. He loved it, or course, but so did his big sister, who didn't want to share his toy with him. She started to build a garage for the cars with her Duplo blocks and then got really angry with A when he dared to come and take his cars to play with.

All in all it was a nice peaceful day, although it would have been much nicer had we not all been so exhausted (and of course we missed having A's American uncles and grandparents here).

Welcome to the Light

2006-01-31T10:38:00.000+02:00

Well, we finally broke down and joined the league of bloggers.
The idea behind this blog is first of all to provide a place where we can easily update all of our friends and relations on how our life is going in whatever part of the world we happen to be in at the time.

We especially want to use it as a way to keep grandparents, uncles and other close relatives up to date on the lives of our two rapidly growing children.

I'm sure we'll also end up commenting on other events that go on around the world, but we'll have to wait and see about that.

If and when any of you happen to read this page, we'd love to hear your comments.

God bless,

Ti and Raluca