Parents (and Aunts) Learn to Teach at Home

How many kids live in your house? Enough to start a club?

A couple we know have that many in house, though they only have two children themselves. We'll call them Silvia and Eduard. Before Eduard married, he helped in his own Romany village with the first field trial of the Parent-Child Club. Now that he is a parent, he and his wife have started doing Parent-Child Club activities . . . in their own house.

This house has three rooms. A different family lives in each room. All together, there are 9 children roaming around, ages 13 to infant (Eduard & Silvia have two, under the age of 2.) So Eduard and Silvia were very open to trying out Parent-Child Club activities in their own home. Eduard's sister Aliona helps.

And in between the Friday afternoon activities, the children go on playing the games themselves!
Interested in learning more? Check out the Parent-Child Club activities in English or Romanian. (Dutch language version available upon request.)

And even though there are a lot of people in Silvia & Eduard's house, they need even more help. We are looking for prayer support, 3-9 people, who will regularly pray with them from now until Easter. Children don't have to live in your house . .  . for you to be part of their family.

The Winter Wind Still Blows

The wind is really blowing here in the Netherlands today. We can feel it through the upstairs windows, which are only single pane. But we are pretty snug in this sturdy brick-and-concrete row house with its clay-tile roof.
Imagine living in this mud-plastered house when winter winds blow! Our partners in Moldova visited this Roma neighborhood last week. They decided to use some of the remaining firewood funds here--not only for firewood, but also to fix windows or doors. So that less firewood is needed in the future.
In the meantime we pray about long-term, sustainable solutions. And we pray that through this small demonstration of Christian compassion the Spirit will begin to blow through these homes with warmth and hope.

Still praying,
Mary

Worth A Thousand Words

I love this picture. No, it's not great photography. But what a story it tells!
The two ladies in the middle had fixed a feast for us in an old Dutch farmhouse. They are sharing the building, with its 11 bedrooms, with about ten other Romany from their village in Moldova plus a few Polish workers. These Poles and Moldovans have temporary contracts to pick tomatoes and other vegetables in the vast greenhouses of North Holland. The days are long, the work is hard, but there is no work in Moldova.
They prepared a feast for us. You can see the remains still on the table:  plates of chicken, bowls of potato salad, fresh cheese, fresh tomatoes, and platters of stuffed vegetables--cabbage, grape leaves, sweet peppers.
We had driven 2 hours from Arnhem, where we live, to this place, on the very tip of the province of North Holland. To be more accurate, the young man in the photo had driven all two hours there (and later all two hours back). He and his wife are also Polish, also guest workers, but in warehouses for the import and export of clothing. Over the past several years they've become like adopted son and daughter to us. They met the Moldovan Roma when the group visited our church in Arnhem, and they wanted to visit with these brothers and sisters in Christ again.
The tall lady on the left made five trips to Moldova for the same purpose. She and other Dutch volunteers stayed in the Moldovan village, visited especially women in their homes to encourage them and pray with them, organized ground-breaking day camps for teen-aged girls.
We broke bread together. We prayed together. We sang together. We shared photos of our families. And we made this family photo.
Still praying,
Mary