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.
17 April 2006
Back in the USA
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.
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.
07 March 2006
The Strengthening Lion
"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.
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.
04 March 2006
Calling "Mama"
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.
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.
22 February 2006
Our Growing Family
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.
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.
20 February 2006
Preaching in Romanian
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.
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.
15 February 2006
Laurelin's Light
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.
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.
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