Halfway to Heaven

Since today is Tuesday and we have teen club tonight, I thought I'd fill you in on "Halfway to Heaven." That is the name that the group of 12-15 year olds have chosen to call themselves, although it's still normally referred to as "teen club." Every Tuesday night Timmie Capusneanu watches Nolan and Liam while Karen, Maurice, and I head off to club. Usually we pick up Dragos and two of the American students (Courtney and Rebecca) and we all pile into our car and drive together to the Baragan apartment block school.
All of the times I have gone, there are already kids waiting outside the school doors for our arrival and once they spot our car, there are big smiles and some waving of hands exchanged. We greet them and as a whole we all file into the school and head straight for the Chemistry Lab. Moving the tables to the side, we grab all the chairs (which are really small stools) and sit in a circle-like form and wait for instructions on the games of the night. The games are always a riot and it's actually fun trying to come up with different ones to play. Some we've played include: "Shuffle your buns" (which does not translate well), body-part musical chairs, pickle spitting, snowball fight, the human knot, pass the tongue depressor (without hands), and more...
Many-a-time directions don't translate too well and we end up playing a "regular" game with a new twist on it, which is pretty funny.
This past weekend we had "gym day" and on Saturday, the whole family went over to play in the school gym with the group. Not very many showed up (about 5 "regulars" of 25ish...10 total), but we still had a blast playing soccer for two straight hours!
Over the past few weeks we've begun to have mini "talks" included with the club. Karen usually leads them and has led the group through some very interesting discussions already. Since all of the group, with the exception of two, are Orthodox...talk time is always interesting. The first week of talk-time the fact that we are Protestant came up (and that's usually not seen as a good thing here in Romania). We praise God that these kids are still interested and excited about coming to teen club and we are excited to spend the rest of the year building relationships and learning from them. The year with them is certainly unpredictable!
A specific prayer request for this group is our upcoming (well, I guess it's now!) "project". We want to do a food drive with the group and collect food from their neighboring apartments to give to the less fortunate. Since this is a foreign concept to Romanians, it has met some resistance and the kids are unsure that they can do it. We hope and pray that God will work through their doubts and build them up as a team through this project!
Thanks for all of your prayers and support!