Vio, Estera, and Dani!

One of the highlights from my trip to Romania, was meeting Vio and Estera and their son Dani. This is an amazing couple. I absolutely love the Kids Church where I serve at church, it's a lot of fun, the kids learn a lot about Jesus, but we are so blessed that we have a building, and the kids come TO US. Vio and Estera make kids church happen in Romania, by bringing the church TO THE KIDS. They travel to different villages, sometimes hitch-hiking so they can split up and reach more. The villages, I can tell you from experience, are not that close, the roads are horrible, gas is over $8.00 a gallon, and they usually have a lot of car repairs on a very regular basis because of the road conditions. But they pack up their crafts and lessons every day and head out to teach the kids about Jesus.

On top of all that, they run a camp in the mountains of Romania. It costs about $70 to send a kid to camp for a week. They have no commercial dishwasher so they have to wash each cup, plate and fork by hand, for every meal. They reach hundreds of kids every summer at camp, but they could reach more if they could afford more.

Anyway, they came here on vacation, so it was nice to get to spend some time with them away from the camp. I know they needed the time to relax and regroup, this was their first vacation in 3 years! And it was a miracle that they got a visa for Dani since they are in the process of adopting him. Anyway, we had some good times with them at our friend Scott's house. Dani doesn't speak English, but he really loved Riley, Regan too, but Dani and Riley really hit it off! He's 5 years old and they played tag, and he could tell Riley "stop!" but that's it! At one point he was walking around clapping and singing in Romanian and having Riley repeat after him, follow the leader style, it was so cute.

I will miss them when they leave, but David and I are planning to go back this year, and spend some time with them at the camp. You can email me if you would be interested in sponsoring a kid to camp. You can also click HERE to see my post on the first day when I was in Campulung and there is a video of Estera teaching the village kids about Zachias.