Well Fedi went up with Jozsef, Attila and another Attlia who is known as the man with the horse. He has a great logging horse. Fedi said at a command the horse would jump at the harness and pull with all her might. Anyway they came back at dark with nothing. They had the trailer loaded so full that it tipped over. The Attila with the tractor is back today to help haul the wood down and right the trailer. The four guys came back hungry and cold. Csilla and I scrambled to have a hot meal for them and to keep the kids (hers & mine) fed and reasonably quiet.

Now this morning Fedi first went to the town nearest us to talk to the school director about handing out Christmas packages for the kids. The request was granted enthusiastically. This is another ministry from churches in England and Germany.

Fedi and I want to visit the Nazarene church as soon as we can. It looks like though the little Baptist church where Csilla goes will be our home church here. It is much closer. We already know the people there. They are very evangelistic minded and the teachings and doctrines are sound. No disloyalty to our church in America is intended. If there was an AC church close enough, we would go there. When we return to America, I will be thrilled to go back to the Peoria AC church.

It’s in the middle of the night but since I can’t sleep and we have plenty of water power to have lights on, I might as well write.

There is one use of the donation money I feel bears further explanation. That is the $200 we spent on the couch. All the rest of the $2,300 in no way benefits us. It did not go to anyone we were related to, or anyone who did any work for us. The couch came from a desire to have a place for people to sleep if they needed it. Even in America I told some of my family that I might use some of the donation money for this. Fedi’s uncle may need a place at the end of November. He is an alcoholic who has shown improvement since he has been working at the Baptist camp where there is not alcohol to be had. Well believe me, there is not a drop to be had within five miles of us. His work runs out in Nov. The problem is, Fedi and I had no extra money to buy the couch from our own money. Even now, we need cupboards in the bedrooms and kitchen and bed frames. We are also still sleeping on borrowed mattresses but unless Judy sells a horse or something we need to wait until December for some of it. Some of these, I think Fedi can build from trees we find around here. I’m not complaining. I love it here and we are plenty comfortable. I think it is cool to slowly work on this place.

Anyway, I wrote all that because I’ve heard family and some friends are reading this journal. I actually sent the first one to Mom because I was too lazy to write a separate letter and no one spreads news like my Mom. She has spared me hours of letter writing.

Someone asked us the other day if we were homesick. Not really, though I miss my family. The kids are doing fine also. Fedi is, of course, good but I do notice that he seems to get a little lonely for other people sometimes. Of all of us he has the biggest life-style change. The kids & I do school and housework same as always.

So far Fedi hasn’t got permission to go in the prisons. Everything seems to go slow in Romania. We gave the old man all the vitamins, toothbrushes, deodorants, and soaps we brought to give to the prisoners.

Rachel let Jessica call Anni yesterday. (It was Jessica’s 9th birthday) That girl (Anni) was beaming afterwards. She is trying to make something now for Jessica for her birthday.

Rebekah mentioned again something about Sarah repenting. She just finished reading a Christian book and I think she is trying to figure things out in her mind.

The melting snow worked…we finally have enough water. Fedi and I sit at the table and watch the meter go up and up. We also can tell if there is any electricity being used from this meter and exactly how many amps it draws. So…woe to anyone who leaves a light on. We often show 0 usage. We have no refrigerator, no clocks plugged in, and no TV. I know exactly how many amps florescent lights draw (.5), the circulating pump is 2.2., the well pump goes up to a shocking 65 amps-but only for a few seconds. The lap top computer draws about 2.2. Now that the generator is buzzing we can watch some DVD cartoons that we borrowed from Csilla. It’s so fun to be all of us cuddled on the bed and treat ourselves to Tom & Jerry. The kids laugh so hard at things they were bored at 2 months ago.

Yesterday the cow rancher’s son Attila came up with their tractor. Fedi, Ryan and he went up to do some logging for our firewood. About 6 hours later they dragged in 5 big long pine trees. Fedi and Attila cut them up and the kids and I carried them to the garage. Pine is very light so Steven felt like quite a man as he carried in some big pieces. Later when Attila came in for supper he asked Fedi about Christianity. Fedi told me later that when they were on the mountain Attila at first showed him how to sneak trees off of private land and cover up the stumps. Fedi told him “no” because there is a living God who sees everything. They probably talked for 20 minutes at the table about the Bible. Attila wouldn’t take any money or even Fedi’s toolywooly for his tractor, gas and time. He said, “friends help each other”.

There is a lot of this attitude here. People go out of their way to be friendly. If your car breaks down, you better have some friends you can call on. I’m pretty sure there are no food stamp program or government agencies to bail you out of hard spots. Friends are very important.

Leventa came today to work with Fedi. They are putting up shelves out of some rough wood to put our 3 big sacks of winter apples on.

Well we had a beautiful snow yesterday. It’s only about 3 inches but stuck to every branch and twig. It weighed down the trees do heavy that our drive was like a tunnel. Now this morning the kids are sled riding right outside our window on some plastic we bought for them.

Our neighbor with the milk cows moved his herd down the mountain during the storm yesterday. So, no more of that delicious, fresh milk. He sent his son back up the mountain to get a baby calf that was born. When we got home his son was waiting for a tractor to pull his jeep out. It had slid off the road and was almost tipped over.

Yesterday Fedi went with the young kids on the Friday evening village mission. Since he was the only adult, the 6 kids squeezed into our jeep. He organized them to go in 2 teams down the street handing out the tapes while he followed slowly with the car and wrote down the house numbers of anyone who was interested. Fedi said he was impressed with the kids, how bravely they did this and how well they handled rejection.

I was told there was a revival here in 1995. It seems hard now. Leventa told me that one thing about Catholics is that every sin they might commit is more acceptable to them than the sin of leaving their church. The church will forgive them for anything else. Also, in these small villages where everyone knows each other it would take a very spiritually hungry person to break out of the century old traditions. The other religion is the orthodox faith. Leventa said though, this is worse. They are more steeped in superstitions and farther from the truth.

While Fedi was there, the kids got to go to Csilla’s for some “Animal Planet”. This is about the only station that is in English. Rebekah and I went to Heidi and Edda’s apartment for a meeting on the kids program. Three couples from the church were there. Some of the meeting I could not understand but they translated the important parts and I am picking up more and more Hungarian. They discussed how to get the word out, where to meet, how to get material, (there is nothing they can buy, it has to be made up) and what activities to do. My part is hopefully draw kids in with an English learning slant to the program. Rebekah is excited to help with this. Anyway I told them we could donate $50 to help start.

There have been some break-ins in the summer cabins close to us. Of the three other cabins that share our drive, two have been robbed. We are all trying to keep an eye out for anything suspicious.

Well the problem with the pastor trying to pay the churches utility bills as well as support his family on $100-$200 a month has been solved. They had a church meeting and agreed to have special collections for this. They are such a small, poor church, only about 25 members, but the first collection was $70. I was amazed that they could give that much.

Csilla and the girls came to spend Saturday and Sunday with us. Jozsef went on a fishing trip. We had a nice time on Saturday evening playing games and on Sunday a spectacular hike up the mountain in the new snow. The view and the fall leaves and the clean snow are hard to describe. The kids hiked up like troopers and found at least one great smooth rolling-down hill.

Everything is deserted now that we have had snow. We are the only ones actually living on the mountain now. The rest of the cabins are for vacationers in summer time. Our cow rancher neighbor said he heard wolves the night before he went down. We have been warned to watch out for Gino because the wolves will try to draw a dog away with only one showing himself. Then when the dog is away from protection the pack eats him.

Our little jeep is serving us well. We slipped and slid in the mud coming home from evening church, but the 4 wheel drive has brought us through every time. I almost always close my eyes on our drive and let Fedi handle it.

The waterpower is still on and off. Fedi drains the pond we made to have enough water to charge the batteries for about 40 minutes. Then he has to close the pipe off to let the water fill back up. He spent one day working on a valve system with floats to get the rising water itself to open up a valve on the pipe and to close it automatically when the water drops. It works great…in theory….in practice though we had an unexpected problem. When the water dropped, the valve shut nicely and bounced right back open. In fact the whole pipeline jumped with every bounce. Now Fedi has something more involved in mind but we want to see first if this melting snow will take care of our low water problem for a while. Everyone who knows this creek says this is the lowest it has been in years so I think soon we will have enough water.
We are using the gas generator still to pick up the slack. I don’t mind it now that he moved it down to the shed he built. That thing is noisy and smelly. We also, after he turns the generator off in the evening, use candles a lot for light and the propane stove partially for heat.

We do have a fireplace in the living room but it is not functional. I am trying to decide what to have Fedi do next…fix the fireplace or build some cupboards. We are still living out of suitcases after 2 months. The problem with that is that our cement porch is bad, almost like gravel. It is so bad it can’t even be swept. The kids drag a lot of dirt in, which gets in the suitcases on the floor and in the mattresses we sleep on that are on the floor. So maybe I should have Fedi re-do the porch next or maybe build us some bed frames. Now that the water -power is done, the rest is just a matter of what to do first. Poor Fedi may be happy to get back to a normal job to rest.

Well, yesterday we finally got around to visiting Fedi’s aunts, uncles, and cousins. Driving there we passed two different parades. It is the time for the grape harvest festival. Matching horses were ridden 2 by 2 through the town. One horse wagon carried the girls in their colorful national dresses and another carried the guys in their outfits playing instruments. An elected king rode one of the white horses. Later we passed a wedding. They marched through the town bride and all, 2 by 2 in their best clothes.

When we approached Fedi’s grandma’s town, we had to drive carefully through a gaggle of geese going somewhere. And there were the cows. They are so interesting. It’s pretty much the same in every village. A herder takes the cows from the town to pasture in the morning. Then every evening takes them back to the edge of town but that’s it. After that they are on their own. Each cow makes her slow way to her own gate and stands there waiting. Rebekah got the biggest kick out of one young impatient cow who started to butt the gate in when the owner was slow to open it.

Fedi’s relatives were nice. They all made a big deal over the kids.

We’ve had a couple of things happen that I wanted to write about. The evening of my last journal entry Fedi and I were pretty discouraged. We got around to finally measuring the flow by bailing the waterfall from the dam out of a big tub, as fast as we could with 2 - 15 liter buckets while Anni held a stop watch. We came up with 120-140 gallons per minute. That is too low to even charge the batteries. I felt I was looking at a winter with using only the outhouse (the water pump takes electricity) and a cold house, since the circulating pump takes electricity and the house is heated by a radiator system. It scared me a little. The gas for the gas generator is expensive. That evening though, Fedi read in the Bible about Paul and Silas being thrown in prison. His footnote for this Bible passage said, “Sometimes obeying God means giving up some securities.” This changed my whole outlook. The next morning I woke up with such a sense of wellbeing. Fedi came up from the creek and said it had doubled in size over night. It actually charged the batteries for about 6 hours. There was also snow on the mountaintops.

While Fedi was adjusting the water generator to get the maximum output, he also, by experimenting found out the end of the draft tube was supposed to be in the water to create a vacuum. This was nowhere in the manual and though it now seems logical, before there were things that made us think the water was supposed to free fall from the tube.

Fedi’s birthday dawned too early for me with the kids bringing coffee and cream of wheat for him. They had made cards, poems, and made up a song for him. They also decorated the house with fall leaves, plastic bags blown up and tied for balloons and a big Happy Birthday sign. He did get 1 present. We went in town and bought a $43 car radio.

Oh yeah, the donation money is pretty much spoken for. Leventa’s wife told Csilla (they are good friends) that after paying their utility bills they only had enough for 1 loaf of bread. They are operating in the deficit every month. That’s why their utility bills got so out of hand. They have been paying the church’s utility bills, which needs to stop. Fedi is going to give them $70 per month as long as the money holds out, which should be enough if they are careful.

Leventa is the Pastor of the little Baptist church we are attending here. He is paid a small salary for this. He is in one way kind of shy and insecure but his sermons seem inspired to me (after translation). He is also enthusiastic about the village evangelism they do every Friday. He and his wife do a lot of good deeds for people so I feel it is money well spent. In any case their five kids need food.

Fedi also plans to give from our current donation money, the old man with the prison ministry $30 per month for now. I think Dad will send more for him though.

Well, Fedi was able to adjust the generator to put out about 230 watts. ( I found out it’s not just the volts that count but the volts X the amps which equals the watts.) But now the creek is not giving us enough water. It is a drought year and the neighbors say it is unusually low. So we will probably have to make do with a combination of the gas generator and the water generator to charge the batteries and pray for rain.

On the other hand, last night I was laying in bed thinking how much I like it here. It’s not just the beautiful mountains, quietness, and nice people, it’s the secure feeling of knowing I am in God’s will. I didn’t feel this secure in America with all those insurances (health, life, house, liability) and with my family and church close by. I used to worry a lot. Now that safety net is somewhat gone. I don’t know how far the nearest hospital is or the quality of care. There are a lot of poisonous snakes here. Our health insurance has a $5000 deductible per person, which would about do us in financially, BUT, I feel that God’s safety net is better. The kids and I went on a walk one morning. Anni stepped right over a poisonous snake and a big dog was stalking us for awhile. I thanked God for His protection. I was frying up some French fries when the oil bubbled over into the flame, for some reason it didn’t catch fire. Again I felt God’s protection.

Heuni coming up here for 5 days was a big blessing to both us and him. His parents are Christians but he is not. He and Fedi got along great and Fedi had several opportunities to talk to him about God. I know he liked it here because we offered to take him home a couple of times but he wanted to stay.

Hueni is still here. We found out he is 20 years old and knows something about electricity because his father is an electrician. Anyway he has been a valuable help to Fedi and an easy houseguest. He and Fedi have been running up and down hooking up the waterpower and doing wiring.

The first results were disappointing. It was a measly 9 volts, not even close to enough. Fedi went to town and got a taller tub with a lid for the pipeline to drain in. This put more pressure on the turbine and whizzed out about 50 volts. This is still low power but acceptable. Soon though a new problem developed. Leaves clogged the input filter on the other end of the pipe. So Fedi lowered the overflow of the dam to help the floating leaves to find their way out and made a better wire mesh filter. The next morning guess what? We had about 10 unhappy frogs stuck to the filter. For some reason we have a lot of frogs. Now Fedi is eyeing my laundry basket as a possible solution. It is tall and might make a larger filtered area so the water will keep flowing through the pipe even if it gets partially clogged.

School is going well. The kids have been cooperative and have given it good effort. I think the lack of TV and toys has them actually enjoying school. The girls and I cook together and do dishes together. It’s nice.

Today my refrigerator is working good. That means it is cool outside. We have 3 windows with big ledges that face the North downstairs. They open like a door with hinges on the sides. So I open the window, grab the milk & shut the window. It works great in the winter.

Saturday-no school, which means more relaxing and time to catch up with laundry and cleaning. It’s raining on and off which might hold up Fedi’s work
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Yesterday evening Fedi dropped me off at Heidi and Eddy’s apartment while he went evangelizing. I had a chance to use their internet for some e-mailing. It is always rushed though as I didn’t want to be rude and Rebekah was waiting her turn. She (Heidi) talked to me again about having a kids program for kids in the city. I think I will go for it. The hesitation comes from my lack of energy. I don’t want the kids school or the house work to go downhill. I see where this could be a great open door for a single girl. I’ve had several people tell me that kids ministries are effective here. We would have room to keep someone or maybe there is a Romanian girl in the church here.

Fedi’s door-to-door evangelism is interesting. He said they counted 15 houses where they were happy to receive the audiotapes of the Jesus film. They gave them in 3 parts, only handing out the 2nd and 3rd when they had listened to the previous one. The one house that stuck in his mind though was the one where the guy, his wife, and his daughter all scolded Fedi’s group for being useless and not knowing what work is, and doing something that was not worth anything. People are hard at work harvesting in the fields now and they are tired. You see big groups of people in the fields harvesting potatoes. It was a bit hard for Fedi as he grew up with a value put so high on physical labor.

We have had so much help setting up the waterpower. People are generous with their labor. Some we have paid, others we will find other ways to thank. I never get the feeling that people are helping us because they want something in return. I always feel it is friendship they want, which is great with us. There are some ways we can repay all the kindnesses we have received. Transporting people around is very valuable. Plus we have our couch now for anyone who needs a place to stay. We have some other thoughts that we will see if they work out.

Fedi gave the guy from Hungary $100 from the donation money to buy lice shampoo for the prisoners. He is going back to Hungary where it is available to buy.

I also plan to use some to start the kids ministry, maybe around $200. I’m not sure yet what I need for material and to rent a place. That would bring the total used to $1,310.

We haven’t yet given the guy with the prison ministry any money, as we haven’t seen him. Fedi really wants to finish this waterpower before it gets cold.

One great testimony of God’s grace to the saved and unsaved, Fedi’s brother-in-law Jozsef was being shipped out for a month to another city to work. He hates going away from his family like that. He tried to find another job and stewed around for a week or so. He wanted to quit but was afraid to. This job pays $150 a month. He asked Fedi if he should quit and Fedi told him to talk to the director. Fedi also told him that he wouldn’t go out on a limb like that himself unless he had God to help him. Jozsef is not yet a Christian. Csilla (Jozsef’s wife) on the morning he was to go pleaded with him to talk to the director. She prayed with him first. I guess this guy can be hard. Anyway Jozsef talked to him and the results were so good that he acknowledged that the prayer must have helped. They let him stay in his own city, dropped his hours from 10 to 8 a day and gave him a raise. Praise the Lord!

Yesterday Leventa and two guys showed up to help Fedi, then this fellow from Hungary, Hueni came. Hueni is staying for 3 days. He is a young guy. His family raises rabbits. He brought one (alive) with him for supper. I put it in a box. When I served them supper he asked where is the rabbit. I think I was supposed to butcher it and cook it up. Fedi said they would do it the next day.

We let the kids have a baby kitten. She is darling. She just fell in the dog’s water dish. Earlier we got the camcorder because she crawled up on Gino and fell asleep. Gino looked very uncomfortable with the situation but didn’t move.

Anyway the extra help is encouraging. Hueni was the first to sleep on the new couch. Fedi thinks Saturday we’ll try to hook up the waterpower.