Its been a little too long since I last posted. I am doing well. Looking forward to the start of a crazy summer (the next couple months). One intern coming tomorrow and will be here til the beginning of August. My cousin comes for a month which I am really looking forward to.  I am excited to spend time with the kids at Children of the Promise and with my friends from church.

I am in Timisoara right now and have had a wonderful couple days down here. I love my friends here and am so thankful for them. I have been spending the majority of my time with my friends Steve and Kristi who have returned for two weeks from the states to pack up and sell their stuff then move back to Arizona. I am sad to see them leave but I know they are being obedient to the Lord. I have had lots and lots of time with their new little boy Andre. He is such a sweety!! 

It's going to be a great summer and I can't wait to see all the Lord is going to do!!!

This past Sunday we celebrated Easter here in Romania. We had a wonderful celebration service at church. I met 4 Americans there that invited me for lunch. I was so thankful because I had no plans for the day and was going to be alone. I ended up spending the whole afternoon with them. They were a huge encouragement.

The whole week leading up to Easter, the kids were out of school. So we had them from 10-5 at the center. They had so much energy. We took them outside to play one day and another day they were quizzed on the facts about the resurrection. On Wednesday we had an Easter program where each group from the center either put on a skit/drama, sang a song or read a poem. I was amazed when I watched all the kids come in the room. We had about 92 kids. What an amazing time. We sang together and watched each group perform. After the program, each child that attends school received a pair of shoes, bag of candy and ice cream.

If you want to see some pictures and videos of the Easter program, check out my picasa site
http://picasaweb.google.com/kellyjames13

Rome

Well I had the wonderful opportunity to spend my bday in Rome. How crazy is that! I traveled with my friends, Anna, Amanda and Lynn for the weekend. We had a blast! Even with such a short time there we saw everything that we wanted to. We saw so much and so fast, I think I am still processing it all. Like Sunday morning we were walking through the Colosseum then Sunday night we were back in Romania. It was almost like it didn't happen. I love Rome! There is just something about the city. It's hard to put into words how the trip went since I am still processing it myself but I wanted to share a few pics with you all.

These are just a few of the pics. If you want to see more check out my picasa site! http://picasaweb.google.com/KellyJames13

Walk through the park!

Today we ventured out to walk throught the park in the snow. It has been snowing the past couple days and since being here I have not seen this much snow. I hope you enjoy the pics!

Do I have a story to tell!!!

My friend Rachel is back and staying with me until she moves to Brasov ( a city about 6 hours away) at the end of the month. So Sue, Rachel and I went to Budapest for one last hurrah all together. Sunday we walked around the city and went and checked out the Labyrinth of the Buda Castle. It is a 1200-meter long system of caves and cellars with historic walls and mysterious attractions, as the brochure says. Well I was scared for most of the time we were walking through the tunnels. It was barely lit and there were parts that were completely dark, not my idea of fun but I do have a few pictures. Sunday night we went to a Calvery Chapel church service which was completely in Hungarian but thankfully they had traslation. It is always a blessing to me to be among other believers even when we don't speak the same language but we have one thing in common and that is Christ!

Monday we did some shopping then headed back in the afternoon. Along the way, I kept saying I don't remember this or I don't remember driving through Debrecen at all. Well when we came up to the border crossing and realized that it was not the one we normally crossed through we began to look around. Then we realized after looking at some of the license plates that we were getting ready to cross into the Ukraine. No one there spoke English and we sat there forever so I finally got out of the car and tried to find someone to give us directions. Well we did get directions but they were given to us in Ukrainian. So they let us turn around and we headed back into Hungary to try to cut through to get back into Romania. We had to stop a few other times to ask for directions and finally we found someone who spoke English and after that we didn't have any problems. It just took forever with the roads that were really bad. We finally arrived home at 3 am. It was a long trip but so much fun!!

I am so thankful for friends and good memories!

The other day I visited some of the homes of the girls I have been working with at the center (Children of the Promise). I was a little nervous but the girls had been asking me for awhile to come visit them. It was an eye opener for sure. The first family has 9 children and they all live in one room together. The kitchen was separate but still it is such a small space for all of them. The second family that I visited has 4 kids and its the same, there is one main room where all the kids sleep. Both families were very kind to me and wanting to know about me and I was able to talk with them. It was such a great experience. I feel so blessed with everything that I have after seeing how little they have. But even with how little they have, they are happy.

I hope everyone had a great Christmas and New Year!! I sure did!

For Christmas I headed south 3 hours to Timisoara to spend it with my friends there. Christmas Eve we went to Anna's church for a service which was full of singing carols, a short message and the kids did a little program, it was so cute. After the service about 20 of us piled into cars and headed all over the city to 10 different houses/apartments and Christmas caroled. It was so much fun. At most of the places, we crammed inside to sing and we treated with some snacks, drinks and a little bit of money. We were out til 3 in the morning. I was so so tired but I had lots of fun and learned some new songs too. Oh yeah, around 2 that morning while we were out it started to snow. It was so cool and after we had went to bed it continued to snow so we woke up to a white Christmas. So on Christmas day, we headed outside to play in the snow. There wasn't a whole lot but enough that it covered the ground. So we threw snow balls and even attempted at making tiny snowmen. We then had a big afternoon meal which was so much fun. I cracked a bon bon for the first time which was full of candy and a paper hat which in Australia they wear during the meal. So of course I put it on. It was kinda of funny wearing this crown of a hat during the meal but nice to experience a new tradition. For our Christmas meal, there were 3 girls from Australia, 3 girls from Finland and Anna from New Zealand and me. We then later headed to church for a evening service. It was nice to see friends there and then afterwards we headed into the center of town to take pictures of the lights. It was so cold that we ended up in McDonalds just to warm up before heading out again.

The rest of the time that I was down in Timisoara, we spent watching movies and on Saturday night we went to Camelot, a medieval restaurant. It was a great time with my friends!

I headed back on Monday and I was so thankful to be home but boy did I have lots of laundry to do.. I spent the next couple days just getting the apartment back together and doing some major cleaning.

New Year's Eve, I went to my friend Sue's place to watch some movies. It was fun cuz in the middle of the movie we kept hearing this booming sound. We opened up the window and everyone was outside setting off fireworks. Those who were either too lazy or too cold to come outside were setting them off from their apartment windows. We ended up going outside and walking around the block to see as many as we could. It was so loud but it was an experience at that.

So that was basically my Christmas and New Year! I am so thankful for the friends I have here because they made it a great time even though it was my first time away from my family.

Here are some pics!!!

To see more pics from my Christmas please check out my Picasa site.

picasaweb.google.com/kellyjames13