We're Still Alive!

Hey everyone!  This is to let you all know that we are STILL ALIVE!

Right now, we are enjoying our time with our family in Iowa and visiting with Deaf Missions.  So far, we've had two very good meetings with them.  

The first meeting was informal - more of us getting "up to speed" with them.  

The second meeting included us giving a PowerPoint presentation and we told few of the Deaf Missions staff - which included Chad Entinger, Mark Lowenstein, Jose Abenchuchan, and Joseph Josselyn - all about our mission trip, taking about Romania, Poland, and Ukraine.  

The next project for us is to update our website, now that we are in the States and we've had some research completed.  We would like to put in the information that we collected in an organized manner and make it easy for you to understand what the situation is.  

We are currently focused on trying to establish a summer camp for deaf orphans/abandoned children in Romania.  We hope that this will be a successful project and we would be able to implement this concept into camps in Ukraine and Moldova in the future.  

Alexa's green card application/process will take up to three months.  We are debating on whether it's a good idea for us to go back at the end of the year, or if the research that we have done is enough for us to  actually start doing ministry.  

Our goals before we went on the trip were to: 

1. Research/Document the situation with Deaf Orphans

2. Work with Deaf Orphans 

3. Meet/Collaborate with Leaders of the Deaf Community

We have done a lot of #1 and #3 in Romania, but not so much in Ukraine, because of the schools closing in the summertime and our trip coming to a halt.  #2 was difficult since we couldn't commit to a single school, because we were always moving from one city to another - and that's not including the government hurdles that one has to make before one can actually work/volunteer at a school/orphanage.  

Right now, we are leaning towards finding a stable job in the U.S. to support ourselves financially and for the future, but for that job to give us freedom during the summer for us to organize a mission trip to Romania to start summer camps there.  We would also be able to fundraise and channel the funds directly to the camp and orphans' needs, rather than for us to use the funds to support ourselves while we are in Romania.  

The #1 goal right now for ODO is to start a summer camp in 2012 in Romania!  We are going to contact a few organizations and people that are already involved in Romania, and we will update you all on our progress.  

That's all for now!  We need your prayers as we are in a time of transition and confusion - it's not that easy to get back into the U.S.A. after you've been gone for more than five months!  

Thank you all for your support!  

With Love,

- Alex n Alexa