Bucharest and Family

On the train between Timisoara and Bucharest

Finally in Bucharest - and guess who was waiting for us?  Ryan and Allison, our family!  Alex's sister is Allison, so Ryan is Alex's brother-in-law while Alexa is Allison's sister-in-law and you can connect the rest of the dots :)  Allison is cold!  They flew from Texas, where it was around 70 degrees.  They are in Bucharest for around three weeks to do a mini-survey.  We are very excited about working as a team in the future to do work with orphans.  

First impressions of Bucharest - a very gray and concrete town. 

Waitin' for the bus

Inside the subway station

The man on the right is Jeremy Befort, a missionary who has been in Bucharest for around six years.  He works for FGCI (For God's Children International), an organization based in Council Bluffs, Iowa and is focused on helping abandoned children in Romania and Moldova.  He is an awesome guy, helping us with getting used to Bucharest and he gave us a lot of advice and information on how we can best help orphans/abandoned children in the future.  He is married to a Romanian and is a father of a cute baby boy.  

Apologize for the bad picture - this is us at the Dutas' house.  The Dutas are two people who work for their son, Andrei, who runs an organization called, "His Little Ones".  This organization is the one who had Ryan and Allison come over.  The Dutas invited us for coffee and dinner and they helped us to be able to visit three different children's homes.

We visited a deaf school and Allison/Alexa went on to a hospital where there were around 25 abandoned infants, but we were NOT allowed to take pictures of those places, so we can't share them on our blog.  But they were good visits and it really touched Alexa on how there were so many infants, abandoned by their mothers and basically left in their cribs.  They will be stuck there until they are two years old - which is when they will be placed in foster homes.  The system in Romania is still bad and corrupt when it comes to abandoned children.  There is a ban on international adoptions, which worsens the situation.  We really hope it changes someday.  

Urban Cemetery

Which one would you choose - this little house or the apartments?

Inside our rental apartment.  We cooked food together and used this time to get close as a group and talk about the future and possible plans.  It's only the beginning and we have not made a difference yet, but we hope that with God's help and donations from USA, we will be able to live in Europe and help abandoned children.  

View from our apartment.  Snowing.

We visited a childrens home and they allowed us to take pictures.  This home isn't a very good one, as the children does not appear to be in a good shape.  We could only observe and give them two hours of fun and games.  We feel bad for the kids, but there is really nothing we can do, we can only hope to save future children.  All of the kids are hearing.

We had a lot of fun with this boy, teaching him magic tricks. 

Finally, you can see Allison's face on the left!  The gang with the kids.  

One of the many streets in Bucharest.  Almost everything looks the same!  

The national theater house.   

Us meeting with Jeremy Befort.  He really helped us with the vision of possibly starting a foster home for the kids.  He basically laid down the truth - it's going to be hard and it's going to be a lot of work and red tape if you want to really help those children.  He talked about how he knows it's hard, but he couldn't just leave Romania because whenever he was in the USA, he would feel very strongly for the children in Romania.  His quote was, "Romania on the Braina"

A monument dedicated to the revolution of 1989.  The black cross (little one) on the left is the exact location where the first person died for the revolution.    

We found another Romulus and Remus statue!  

That's all for now.  We will be going to Sibiu next week.  This trip to Bucharest really opened our eyes on the problem with abandoned children in Romania.  

God bless!