November was a busy and full month!  So much praise to begin with –

My beautiful Ioana passed her exam for her medical degree!!  Praise God!!!  She was tested over everything she had learned in her six years of medical school.  She is now D-na Doctor Arbanas (Pirvu) Ioana.  I am so proud of her.  It has been a joy to watch her on this journey – to watch her depend on the Lord – and to give Him the glory and honor for every step.

Praise God for Alina’s stem cell replacement having gone well.  It was a valley none of us would want to enter, but she is beginning to feel that she is alive once again.  Our Great Physician’s hand was on her and saw her through.  Please continue to pray for her complete recovery.

For the next two and a half months, Robert, Alina and their children will be living in my flat in Brasov.  It was impossible for Alina to leave the hospital and go back where they were living into a rather a moldy situation.  It gives me joy to know that Love From Above Ministries can do this for the Tompi’s – such a precious and godly family.   Since Alina needs full-time care making it impossible for Robert to hold down a job, please pray that the Lord would raise someone up to help them with rent for a few months as they will need a place of their own by mid-February.

I am praising God that dear ‘old Ana’ is safe and without fear that her son will again beat her.  The converted shed the men from our church, Canaan made, will serve her well.  Also, Luminita is in a safer situation protected from her son beating her.

PRAYER, please – because of the government’s taking the money designated for our orphans, our ‘kids’ at Barza Mica have been with out heat and have literally huddled together for warmth.  Last word that I received, I was told that most of them are sick and in bed.  The ministry just doesn’t have enough money to provide them with the wood that the orphanage needs.  PLEASE pray that God will provide – maybe that the Lord will use you to help provide.

Please pray for precious friends from our church, Canaan, in Halchiu.  In the night of November 29, Puiu and Daniela’s house burned down.  I don’t have any more information at this time, but PLEASE pray for these godly, Gypsy-peasant friends.

Also, Ovi has been holding very short Sunday services at Canaan because of very little wood for heat.  And, many of the people from our church are suffering from the cold at home not being able to find the money for wood.  If you remember last winter I sent a picture out of a family who had dug a hole in the middle of their floor, taken off their inside doors and bed racks to chop up for firewood, lit a fire in the hole and then slept around the hole in order to not freeze.  This is common among many in the villages.  We need to wake up!  America needs to wake up!! – and stop ‘tearing down our barns and building bigger ones’ – and share with others – with our sisters and brothers in Christ.  Christians in America have a problem!!

Sorry to end so harshly, but it is beyond difficult for me to see suffering in the world while we amass and hoard.  Perhaps this Christmas could be a new start for some of us.  How about giving a Christmas present to Jesus?  Matthew 25.40 – “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for ME’”  Let’s give our Jesus a very ‘happy birthday’ this Christmas!