It is with a full heart that Mia’s Children Foundation thanks you for your love of our children and your generosity over the year! While they do not celebrate the American Thanksgiving Day, they celebrate thanksgiving every day in their prayers of thanksgiving and their prayers for us. We wish you a wonderful Thanksgiving Day and ask God’s blessings on you and your family.
Dear Friends,
My name is John Ilie, and I’m 19 years old. I came in Mia’s Children about 11 years ago. From that moment my life was so much changed. Years before I had live in a state orphanage, because My family is so, so poor that live underground, in a small place. My family is a gypsy one and it’s so much discriminated. Usually, most of gypsies children abandoned school and became delinquent because the bad choices they make. But, I had the privilege, together my other 8 brothers and sisters to come to Mia’s Children Association. From that moment, our life was so much changed.
Lord has given to me, to us the best opportunity to find a new life, to be educated, to discover the life in a new face, with new people, to pray and follow Jesus. I graduated the high school, I started to love to paint, to play soccer, to volunteer and help other younger children to grow. I found joy, dignity, I found what mean to be loved, accepted and to love, to share. My fears are left behind because I can have a future and no more I have to be afraid of people.
Right now, I can come to visit you, to meet you and I’m so grateful and proud to be together. I just wait to see you face to face, to thank you for all the support you have given to me during 11 years. I want to look into your eyes and tell you: “Thank You, from the bottom of my heart!” Thank you to our American friends, to so many brothers and sisters in The Lord!!!
Your help, support had change life to many children like me!!!
I just wait to express my gratitude to you through my paintings, to understand what mean to be surrounded by Friends, truly parents.
May Lord continue to bless you and give you peace, joy, health, strength, everything you need and deserve for the long time good work in the benefit of Romanian children and to myself!
With deep respect,
John Ilie
March brought with it a couple of art shows presenting Mia’s Children’s paintings. Here is Mia’s write up of the first show and how the art of children is transforming both the children and the society that has for many years kept them marginalized.
“On the 7th of March we had a special and blessed art exhibit with an auction . Mr. Duglas took a professional care to organized the art show , to invite people , to entertainment them and to present our association like a special place where the children are educated at high level . Everybody appreciate the way we improve the art in children’s life , a way to find the “treasure “God gave to each of them and make it shine . Dana Moldovan helped us to provide all the art supplies . We had painted over 120 paintings and sold most of them . Plus , more people found about our work and about God .”
Pray for “little” Mihaela – who is seeing a doctor for a problem with her brain; she needs a special treatment
Pray for a safe delivery of baby for Oana (Mia’s daughter-in-law) and a healthy pregnancy for older Mihaela (wife of Gigi).
Pray forRomania and for people to understand better the necessity to be involved in the good of people in need , in education .
Let’s pray together for the societies we live in , for elections and good leaders .
We thank you and praise Lord for all our work here and for your support .
Blessings ,
Mia’s
Let us acknowledge the LORD;
let us press on to acknowledge him.
As surely as the sun rises, he will appear;
he will come to us like the winter rains,
like the spring rains that water the earth.”
– Hosea 6:3 (NIV)
God we pray for the many men, women and children who do not have a warm place to live and sleep this winter. Please protect them from the cold, and from hopelessness and despair. Use us, your living presence on earth, to show them your compassion and to care for their needs. Amen.
O righteous God,
who searches minds and hearts,
bring an end to the violence of the wicked
and make the righteous secure.
Psalm 7:9
We pray for the many victims of violence in our world. Be their great comforter.
This season we glorify a God who allowed himself to be born into poverty and sadness so that we could have eternal home.
Jesus spent his childhood years first in a barn, then in a foreign country fleeing violence and terror. He learned a trade, but spent most of his ministry homeless. How many of Romania’s children can relate to such a life?
And here we celebrate his humble birth and infancy only days after Mia and all of Mia’s Children move into a permanent home, warm and safe.
Thank you for your love and support, for your prayers, time and many gifts. Some of you have been a part of this work since Mia first arrived in the United States 12 years ago, and some of you have become involved recently but are deeply invested. We are so grateful.
This Christmas, we wish you all of the joy Christ offers and a deepened awe at the mystery of a God who would be born into the slums in order to save slum-dwellers. Surely he came to save Romania’s children.
Merry Christmas.
Mia’s Children Foundation, USA
Mia and the children officially open their new home and move in to the permanent Mia’s Children Headquarters at the end of this week.
Certainly this is a dream come true for Mia and the whole organization. Thank you to everyone who has given time, money, clothing, prayers, and more over the last 14 years to help make this happen. There will be a ceremony on Friday at the new headquarters in Bucharest. (If you’re nearby and are interested in attending, contact us for more information!)
In the meantime, those of us who are very far away can pray. Please pray this week:
Please praise God with us, too!
We remember the account of Abraham in Hebrews, a man familiar with homelessness and wandering, and a man who knew well what it meant to dream with God’s help and wait on him to provide what he promised:
By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going.
By faith he made his home in the promised land like a stranger in a foreign country; he lived in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise.
For he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God.
This week we thank God, the Great Architect, who has built a city for Mia’s Children.
Sing to the Lord, for he has done glorious things;
let this be known to all the world.
Isaiah 12:5
We pray today for the people with no hope.
Show them your compassionate strength, and use us to bless them.
Mia and some of the children, ready to move!
We’re making progress!
Mia says that the house is now finished on the outside and they are beginning work on the inside!
In fact, they are hoping to move everyone in around the middle of December so that they can be in their new home for Christmas.
In order to move in fully, Mia and the rest need an incredible amount of furniture and other supplies, including:
Fortunately they already have help securing an oven and washing machine.
If you would like to help cover some of these costs, please contact us or make a donation! We will have a lot of options to give this holiday season, and we hope that you will keep Mia in your prayers and consider the new house in your Christmas gift plans!
Below we include some thoughts from Mia on the new home:
May our Lord be with you in all His glory!
The house it’s finished outside and soon will be inside!!! It’s incredible! God is so, so good!!!
The kids are so happy. They just wait to be in the new place, not because they don’t like here, but because that will be the place where they’ll continue to grow, a stable home!!!
Well, I hardly can imagine that we’ll be in such a huge home!!!
I remember when Joan asked me to dream big!!! 12 years ago, I even didn’t know to dream!!!
Day by day Lord taught me to dream and you helped me to dream and fulfill the dream!!! I pray for stable place for the kids 12 years!!! Look where we are!!!! I’m so, so grateful for all what we received all these years what we had learn! It’s a story of life, of faith, of walking with Lord, learning to dream, reaching people at the Truth for the glory of God.
It’s awesome !!!
Please, help us to purchase some furniture for the rooms, carpets, plates, blankets, everything would be possible.
The owner of the place would like to be finished everything before Christmas and the kids to sleep inside starting with the 17th of December!!!! So, we need to move fast!!!
All our love and thanks, a lot of miss for you!
Blessings from Oana and Costy
Mia and all