Dear Friends and Family,
Greetings from sunny, warm Moldova! We are enjoying a cooler day and thanking God for the rain that fell yesterday on our dry, parched land. We have been watching the news lately with threats of the end of our water supply and crops that are failing to thrive due to the past two months without rain. We’re seeing how connected we are to our good earth and praying that this rain is restorative and brings a happy harvest come autumn.
June was a busy month as you might have noticed in last month’s update. We had students, teams and friends come and go, but we have entered into a slower month in July. This month we are taking time to focus on repairs that we are having done at the school building while also focusing on our overarching goal of developing our organizational capacity. We are spending this month finalizing job descriptions and identifying our visions and goals for our ‘domains’ for the coming year. We have ten ‘domains’ or areas of focus in our work, and each of us is responsible for one or more areas. My domain is advocacy and John’s is to develop our local Board of Directors. As I settle into life with La VIA as a full-time and committed worker, I was given the gift of choosing to serve as Advocacy Coordinator for La VIA. It has been a challenge to step into this role and not feel overwhelmed by what it may demand of me. Pray for me as I seek to discern what God is calling us to in the area of advocacy this coming school year.
Another interesting update is that the school in which we are working has changed from a boarding school to a public school that provides a housing component. This may not sound like much of a difference, but it provides a couple of interesting changes for the students. The children among whom we work will remain at the school, and their lives will look relatively similar. However, the school will now be taking more students who live in the area, not just children who are socially vulnerable. Also, students who have graduated and are without a place to stay while they pursue further education or job opportunities will be able to live at the school. This is an answer to prayer for many who graduate and are not taken into a transitional living home or who are without family or an income to support them. This change has likely occurred due to the fact that many of the students have not remained at the school due to reintegration back into their families and low incoming enrollment as a result of reintegration procedures. This change will help the school remain open and continue to serve the community. Pray for the school as these transitions are finalized into the fall.
The fall brings changes that we are happy to welcome into our life. We have a man from Ukraine who is coming to serve as an intern for the fall semester. We’re happy to have another worker, someone who speaks Romanian and doesn’t have two X chromosomes! (We are currently 7 women and one man…) It’s a huge gift to be able to have another person come in to work with our adolescent boys as John and Adriana are seeing their work with the adolescent boys change a bit. Another happy change is that Adriana has announced that by mid-November we will be welcoming a new member to our community: a baby girl. We’re thrilled about the coming gift of life to our community and ask for your prayers over her as she progresses through the second half of her pregnancy.
Continuing with changes we are experiencing, each educator at the after-school program will now have his or her own group or classroom. Last year we almost always had two educators in every room, but with the growth of our program, staff and changing needs we’ve decided to make this change. Violeta who was assisting Rahela with 5th grade will be taking on the second graders. Annie who was assisting Mariana with the third graders will be starting an adolescent girls group, and she and I will begin collaborating as we will be working with some of the same young ladies. We’re excited about these changes in our programming. We feel that our evaluations in June went well and will serve us well this year as we seek to improve our existing program. We’re also excited about the repairs being made at the school and the expansion of our program. We’re all feeling really hopeful and anticipating the return of the children with great expectations.
Pray that we could fully utilize our time in July (which has passed as you read this) to be well prepared for the fall and approaching meetings in August where we iron out more details, changes and plans for the coming year. John and I are looking forward to a brief vacation in Romania the second week of August to visit the cities Iași and Brașov. We’re looking forward to some down time in a couple of beautiful and interesting cities. Continuing on with August, we will resume visiting the children at the state-run camp. It has been hard to work this summer and not be with the children regularly, so we are looking forward to our reunion. Until then, please pray that God would bring them to mind and that we’d take joy in the changes we have seen in the children over the past year.
Sending you wishes of peace and blessings as you savor this beautiful, hot summer.
With love,
Rachel & John