Uncategorized

We have just received word that Costel, Mia’s husband, is in the hospital in Bucharest. He has cirrosis of the liver due to hepatitis. He is extremely ill and may not make it. He has been dealing with this illness for several months.

Mia had to be taken to the hospital in an ambulance this evening. We do not know what is wrong, but are in the process of finding out. As you know, they do not have any hospitalization insurance. If you should want to donate, please mail it to
Mia’s Children Foundation, Inc.
9245 Poplar Avenue, Ste. 8 #380
Germantown, TN 38138

Please pray for them. Thank you in advance for your prayers and donations.

It is a very special time for us to share with you how God in His glory and wisdom is blessing us in so many ways. Again we were reminded that no matter how hard the times are, He will never forsake us, He is with us every moment, and in this way we can look forward to fulfilling our mission here in Romania. It’s such a wonderful witness that His sacrifice created an impact over humankind, making new beginnings for the Kingdom of God.

We enjoyed having Mary-Ann and Joe from the United States here for three weeks. It was such a fruitful time for the kids, also for us, and they were so helpful and were grandparents for the children and special friends for us. We prepared meals together, studied Scripture together, fellowshipped, and playing many games with the kids brought new joy into our midst.

Our children finished this school year with good grades. At least 6 of them received national awards for different contests for painting and collages, and for creative imagination. Also, in two sports events—soccer and Romanian baseball—our children were on the team that were winners on the national level.

We built a basement storage facility for keeping food, using the cold temperature underground for preserving what our food supply. Also, we built a chicken house, starting with one lonely chicken but right now we have five of them. We look forward to finding those fresh eggs. We have already eaten the onions planted in spring, and now we have planted cabbage for the fall. We reorganized the front yard, using the wood, stones, flowers we had in our desire to teach the kids to use the resources given us by God instead of buying new things. We have to use our imagination and the things created by God for a better environment.

We want to thank you so much, for without your help there is really nothing we can do. We need all your support in friendship and prayers for:
-continuing this work that the Lord has given us
-the new home, including the official papers and all plans for it
-health and strength for Mia, and especially for Costel & the kids
-wisdom for all the decisions we have to make
-a safe summer

God richly bless you!

Lots of exciting things have been going on in the last few months. A lady has given us a piece of land about 4300 square feet on which to build a home. This may sound small to us Americans, but land in Bucharest area is very limited. She has even paid for the taxes and titling it to Mia and Costel. She works for a bank and has been so impressed with the work at the mission. An attorney there has helped with the paperwork so that the property is correctly titled so that the Romanian government cannot tax us to death. The bank she works for has been willing to help with some building plans. A group of Romanian architects have drawn up a draft of how to make the best use of the land provided, having 3 stories – 2 completed and the 3rd as a guest room with a bath.

Right after this happened, I saw that Habitat for Humanity had received a very large donation to help build homes. Habitat is an international organization, to I went to the computer and got their email address and sent them a letter asking for help to build a home for our kids. I was fortunate to reach the correct party in Habitat/Romania. They had already had an inquiry about helping Mia’s Children in March from the Rotarians. So now there is a possibility, though it might be slight, for Habitat to help. There is a couple from Arizona that have been visiting with Mia, Costel, and the kids this month. They talked with the Habitat people and something might happen!

The kids are finishing up with their exams and are excited with the prospect of summer. We have a small swimming pool that they love to splash around in and playing outside is always fun.

Please keep all the above things in your prayers as well as for strength and guidance from the Lord for Mia and Costel. God is in control!

Beloved friends and faithful supporters of Mia’s Children,

March brought to our hearts a lot of joy, hope, and again we could see that God is always with us, taking care of our needs. In many ways we could see that when you are putting your faith in the Lord, He is so faithful.

As you know, Romania is facing the crisis and many effects are coming over us, changing life in adverse ways. This happened to your country too, and to the world like a sign that everything is changing and unstable like the world itself, but at the same time this is a sign for us to wake up to what really counts. The world crisis didn’t just start, but it comes together with the moral crisis, like a result of the spiritual problems especially human vanity, pride, turning away from God, also bad leadership. Please don’t receive this as criticism or judgment on my part, but I’m just looking and trying to understand my own people and how the world is going, affecting so many lives. Everything is related with the condition in my own country.

What I wrote before explains why more children are trying to come to join us in the mission. For a long time we thought that after joining the EU, the problems of children in needs would be resolved or at least improved. But the reality is that, especially now, more people and children do not have any hope. Five children have asked us to be accepted, and we couldn’t give them a positive answer because reality must take into consideration the inflation, increasing costs, and in the end our capacity to work is at a maximum—24 hours in 24 hours.

But even in this very high pressure the results of our work with the kids are wonderful. Progress at school is so encourage, two children’s artwork was selected to represent Romania in an art contest abroad, two other children were selected in the school team for soccer and a national sport, oina, which is like softball

Work in the yard brought a lot of joy in the sense of affirming that hard work brings good results. Right now in our small garden space we planted onion sets, garlic, and parsley. But the most important project was building an underground root cellar for storing canned goods, fruits and vegetables, and other things. Roxanna’s father worked hard to dig by hand the hole, about the size of a small one-car garage, for this cellar. Some of the young people from our group helped him. I saw them really enjoying working together on this project.

Last Saturday we had the great honor to sing, dance, and celebrate together with invited royal guests from other countries at the birthday party of her highness, Princess Margarita. We dedicated two songs to her and her guests, then presented The Waltz of the Flowers by Tchaykovsky with all the choreography created by us. Little Gabriela was the solo ballerina and the rest of the girls were dressed in delightful, fluffy dresses having wrist corsages and little flowered tiaras on their heads, all made by us. The little girls were like delicate swans dancing, and afterwards, in English, they gave special birthday greetings to the Princess. Everyone was so impressed, especially the Princess herself.

I want to add that right now there is a strong virus affecting children, and some of our children have been sick. Roxanna is in the hospital right now, having collapsed for some seconds with no forewarning. Please pray for her and some of the other kids, who have high fevers.

Please also pray for:
Health throughout the house, including Mia and Costel.
A stable, permanent home for the future.
Financial support during this crisis time.
For spiritual and moral revival all over the world.
God to be able to open the eyes and hearts of the people, especially His own, to the truth, light, and hope that is in Him alone.

We want to thank you with all our gratefulness and respect, and wish you God’s richest blessings,

Mia’s Children

God has blessed us again this month with His grace, peace, love, but also with many trials. In everything we bring Him glory.

February went very fast. The children were extremely busy with their everyday school work for the second semester. They all have good results, but we have a lot of work to do with Maria and Dan. Because you don’t know their story, let‘s turn a life page and
tell you about them.

They are coming from a family with 4 children. Right now,the parents do not have a job. In fact, the father was only an occasional worker all his life because he has no education; the mother worked for a time as seller in a market, but lost her job like many other people. The kids are related with the Ilie family, and they were part from Mia’s Children from a long time ago. But as the family could not support them anymore, the mother begged us to take them in, especially as the parents were about to divorce.

The worst part was that the children were about to abandon the school, as their older sister did. Their educational level was extremely below expectations, then Maria failed three subjects after the first semester and poor Dan hardly can write and read. Maria is in the six grade and Dan in the third grade. We were so amazed to discover that they lacked basic knowledge. In spite of this, they came to us with a great desire to be accepted feeling that the mission is their only hope. They had abandoned school and had no hope of returning.

In spite of momentary difficulties, we could not let these two souls to be lost. So, we took them in. We fought very hard for and with them and eventually they are beginning to adjust and show a real desire for learning. Their teachers from the new school were skeptical initially, but are now beginning to appreciate their potential. We are working very hard with them and child support group is helping, so that they can succeed in this school year.

Little Maria confessed to our psychologist, Maria D., that she had to learn by candle light in the least stimulating setting and now she has received her first A in Romanian Language and Literature after she worked with Mia. She was so happy that she cried. This is the story of our new children.

The Child Protection Agency would like to place several more children with us including another sibling of Maria and Dan, but this is beyond our means at the moment.

This reflects the worsening situation in the country as well as the need that the work that we do be sustained by your help in every and each way, like a great team as we are in helping children to find The Truth, the life, the Love, the heavenly Peace.

Our hopes for a stable home are growing everyday. A lady promised she will give us a piece of land not far from here, and we pray and hope that with God’s grace and your collective help we will be building a wonderful, godly permanent home for our children! Praise the Lord!

Carol came here with her pastor and we had a special time to worship the Lord.

We want to ask you to pray for :
-Everyday bread, milk, medicine, bills–as the costs are so high that we hardly can cover them;
-Our health and our childrens’security in health, school, needs;
-The wellbeing of our sponsors, supporters, friends, co –prayers;
-For the dream of the house to become real and God to bless all those involved;
-For all the kids who need special care and attention to receive it;
– For the world crisis to end and for a new revival to cover the world and to bring everybody to a spiritual level and to such a prosperity to resolve all conflicts and misunderstandings.

We thank you from the bottom of our hearts.
Mia’s Children

Romania’s prime minister is living in a rented apartment two months
after starting work because the state can’t find permanent housing for him.
Romania has no official residence for the prime minister or
president. And the government says former public officials aren’t moving out of the few high-quality state-owned homes and apartments in downtown Bucharest, the capital. They are required to leave two months after their terms end.
State Secretary Daniela Andreescu said Friday that she hopes to avoid taking legal action to remove a former dignitary from the state-owned home where Premier Emil Boc wants to live. She did not identify the official.
Meanwhile Boc, a former mayor in Transylvania, is living in a rented apartment not far from the government offices.

The original article can be found on SFGate.com here:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgibin/article.cgifile=/n/a/2009/02/20/
international/i04 4456S94.DTL

Dear Friends:

In times when the whole world is affected by the current crisis, your country has celebrated a new beginning, which we followed with great interest; it provided our children a great lesson in civics and history. We hope and pray that this historic moment will bring you and the rest of the world peace and renewal. May God continue to bless America and to bring to the world a renewed sense of grace!

As you probably know, Romania is also suffering the effects of this world crisis; many, many people have lost their jobs, businesses have closed down. Meanwhile, the cost of living continues to increase.

In spite of all of this, we continue in our efforts to better the lives of the children in our care, and strive towards the goal of raising them as moral, caring human beings, responsible little citizens, and motivated learners.

The holiday season brought us many joys and gifts from many different people and organizations, for which we are forever grateful. We appreciate the generosity of all of our friends and people of goodwill for the way in which they offered our children joy and hope, besides all the gifts.

This month saw the arrival of two new children, who had been living underground, and were at great risk of school abandonment. They are Maria, age 12, and her brother Dan, age 10. Due to the special care given to them by us as well as by the community of children, they have integrated smoothly, and are making excellent progress, showing great motivation for school and catching up rapidly their former educational delays.

We try to manage many troubles who are coming in every day life . This was our electric water pump , who needed to be changed and replace . It’s just an example to let you know that the life here ,like everywhere it’s not just joy , songs and paintings , but real life .

Other recent events: Nicoleta underwent surgery for her knee. She is now recuperating at home and continuing with her school work.

Coca, our 3 year old, was also re-evaluated for her eye problem, and surgery is possible in 2 or 3 months.

Many children were affected by the flu and colds, but now, after proper treatment, they are all well.

Prayer request:
*Pray for the lady who promised to give us a piece of land to start building our own home.
*May God provide us with a safe home for our children
*Pray for the recovery of Nicoleta, and for Coca and Costel’s health.
*Pray for the end of the economic crisis and for those affected by it.
*Pray that the American and Romanian leaderships be guided by God to value people’s lives.

We love you and thank you as always. God bless you

Two new young school-age kids at Mia’s and again she is so good at nurturing them, bringing them up out of defeat and hopelessness into vital little souls with potential for doing well. Mia is tired but otherwise doing well, and Costel, since his check-up is on medication and strict diet and looks healthier than he has for some time. We had a good visit last week.
From Carol Schulz, missionary in Bucharest

Hello from all of us !
Nico is doing well , she’s so brave and in this night Claudia will stay with her in hospital .I’m doing better and Costel also ,so we try to make everything to be Okay .Carol will go at hospital tomorrow morning , too. She’s so precious , a truly sister , a blessing for us .Maria went to hospital with some soup . Everybody is so nice .I wish you’d be around .
Love, Mia & All

Upon discharge, I will take her to my apt., bec it’s close to the hosp., & she will have to go there every day/2days for checkups, changes of dressings, etc. She seemed quite happy w/ the arrangement, I have to speak to Meda so she can arrange it w/ the Dr. to approve it. I have presented myself in my best finery & most respectful but haughty attitude as THE American MD,and payed off all the nurses, as is the custom (Mia evidently can’t afford to do that).
Maria