To Romania and back to the office

Dear All,
This has been busy like every other week.  We returned Monday afternoon from from Romania where we had spent 4 days training the Francoms.  They are the new country directors for Romania, and arrived  in August in Romania, last week was the first chance we've had to visit them.  They were humanitarian missionaries in the Dominican Republic, a couple of years ago, so they had an idea of how the Church humanitarian system works.  They will be a good couple there in Bucharest, they are busy with several projects initiated by their predecessors.  Elder Francom is a causal type of guy and Sister Francom helps him a lot in being a little more formal.  While in Romania we visited a couple of their projects, one being a orphanage in Polesti.  The picture came from our visit to the orphanage.
In the office we were busy preparing and reviewing 19 projects for throughout eastern Europe.  We allocated over a quarter million dollars for these projects.  The expensive projects were a wheelchair project and a clean water project.  We support 11 couples in 12 different countries, which is a full time job if we just stay in the office.  The traveling we do is nice and we enjoy the interaction with all these couples, but it  means that we stay up late each night in the hotel trying to do our office work as best we can remotely.  Tomorrow morning we leave for Moldova which is about a 3 hr. flight to get there, even with a direct flight.  Our return flight next Saturday was cancelled so now we fly to Moscow, and then to Frankfurt, this will be a long day mostly in airports.  Moldova is sandwiched between Romania and the Ukraine.  We will spend the week with the Pinders training and visiting their projects, both ongoing and ones that they are thinking about doing.  We will also be taking some donated missionary clothing with us to Moldova, it is good when we can help in this manner.  The Pinders are in their mid 70's and they are still going strong, busy and enjoying their mission.  We hope the winter won't be too hard on them, we worry about the snow and the slippy sidewalks and streets. 
We have included a couple pictures we took at the orphanage in this blog

In the orphanage there are 2 groups of children in 3 different buildings.  These are some of the younger normal kids.  They performed a traditional Romanian dance in traditional customs for us, which was very nice.  The children in the orphanage either have no parents or have been brought there by their parents because the parents can't take care of them.  The hope is that with time the parents will be able to take them and return and take them back home.  Unfortunately frequently this proves not to be the case, which is sad.  The good thing is that the children are well taken care of here.  The Administrator of the orphanage was very grateful for the help that the church gave them.  We provided them with a large refrigerator, a food grinder and washing machine.

This is some of the hand crafts that the children in the orphanage make to generate revenue for the orphanage
The picture with the yellow frame is made by rolling different colors and sizes of paper, then gluing them onto the paper.  The other picture is made by gluing different stained grains of rice onto a paper.  The mask is of course ceramic and has been painted.  The star in the corner is made from a bunch of little folded pieces of paper that are then stuck together without any glue to hold it together, it is quite amazing.
We hope that this will be a good week for you.
We love you,
 Oma und Opa