Fame, Wealth, Love and Health

That is what the four leaves of a four leaf clover stand for according to Wikipedia.
Shortly before Curtiss and I left Romania we were visiting some friends and we were all out in their back yard picking cherries (they gave us a Wal-Mart sized bag full of them) and after wards we were standing around talking (or rather everyone else was talking and once in a while Curtiss would fill me in on what was being said:) and I looked down and staring right back up at me was this:

A four leaf clover. It was the first one that I had ever found or ever seen in person for that matter.
I have always wanted to share a picture with you but up until now haven't been able to since it was put into one of my books to dry and has been packed ever since :)
But now we are all unpacked and all the books are on shelves and I can get a picture for you:)

One year ago today...

I got up VERY early in the morning so that Curtiss could take me on an all day date to the city of Cluj in Romania. It was a beautiful day, bright and sunny (and quite warm). Since we took the train there and back the only way we had of getting around was by foot so walk we did, while taking pictures and enjoying each other's society. There were suppose to be some kinds of ancient ruins some where around the city and since we were both interested in seeing them we decided to go looking for them. We never did find them though, part way up the hill while we were taking a break and enjoying the view of the city Curtiss asked me to marry him, and of course I said "Yes" :)

If any of you want to read more about our story or if some of you just want to refresh your memory you can go Here
or Here
if you want to see more pictures :)

KAABBOOOOOM

The other night I was busy working in the kitchen fixing our supper. We were having my Romanian version of Alfredo sauce over spaghetti with cajun flavored chicken and some broccoli thrown in for a veggie, along with some rather yummy garlic bread (even if I do say so myself:)
Everything was going quite well, I had the sauce already made, the water for the pasta was boiling (finally) and the chicken was just about finished cooking. It was time to warm the sauce so that it would be hot to put over the noodles. Since both front burners were in use I went to light one of the back burners (you have to light all of them, including the oven with a match) Since I haven't done a lot of cooking here I had never tried to use this particular burner before. I turned the burner on, moved the pot out of the way so that I could get to the burner and put the lit match next to it and..... KAABBOOOOOM!!!!! the blast hit me in the chest, Curtiss (who was in the other room) said that the windows rattled (he came out to the kitchen rather quickly:)
I don't remember ever being told not to light this burner before (but I probably was since it has been several months since I have been here to use it) but when Curtiss came out he said he vaguely remembered it not working before. Anyway, the burner itself might not light but it does get gas cause it blew. There was a fire somewhere underneath the stove top and I turned all the burners and the oven off (before Curtiss even made it into the room, I was fast:) and the fire went out. After waiting a few minutes (and after Curtiss turned the gas off completely and then back on) I very nervously lit one of the burners and supper was a great success :) But I won't ever use that burner again and Curtiss has now insisted that we get a new stove cause to quote him "That things gonna blow up one of these days!"

Picture My World

THE WATER CLOSET
Other wise known as the bathroom

is going to be the first room in the house that I tell you about.
Yes, we do have indoor plumbing (for which I am very thankful)
and we have one of the two water heaters in the whole apartment building
(at least as far as we know, something else I am truly thankful for)
The shower and toilet complete the list of things for a working bathroom
(in most American minds anyway)

The bathroom also holds the reason for this room being the first on the picture my world list.

THE WASHER

Why is it the first you might ask?
Well, because the washer is an adventure every time we use it.

As you can see from the picture it really is most interesting, this was probably a week ago when my mother in law and I were trying to get the laundry done and I opened up the washer after it had finished it's cycle and my feet got all wet.

As you can see it is a front loading washer
(which most washers are here since there isn't much extra space in any ones home and there is usually something above the washer, in our case the water heater)
and it never drained so we got to wash the floor as well as the clothes,
such a handy multi use machine :)

So we tried to find the spot on the dial that was suppose to drain and ended up with a VERY full machine.

That line across the top, do ya see it?
that is where the water was.
It was so full that water was coming out of the drawer that you put the soap in.
Any way we ended up getting our laundry out (eventually)
and now every time we put a load in we wonder "what's it going to do this time???"
Today Curtiss called someone who fixes them and he is going to be coming sometime Monday or Tuesday to see what needs to be done with it.
In the mean time I have all the laundry done
(I only washed the floor one more time while using it:)
and we shall see what happens now.

All By Ourselves

Yep, Curtiss and I are on our own here now. We drove Mom and Dad to the airport yesterday and we found out this morning that they had a safe trip and are now visiting with Daniel, Whitney and of course Baby Nate for a few days. We had a safe and interesting drive through the Romanian countryside yesterday both on our way to the airport and on our way back.
Let's try and make a list of unusual things we saw, One truck tipped on it's side in the ditch, it must have gotten to close to the side when it was going up the hill and over it went.
Two VERY rusty, VERY dented 55 gallon drums being filled with gas.
I don't remember how many near head on collisions we saw, (but then again that is a fairly usual thing to see around here)
Many, Many construction sites where one or both sides of the road were closed. Romanian road construction is always very interesting and most of the time incomprehensible. Ok, picture this you are driving down a main road and you get to a constuction site and you wait your turn to go through (by a red light or a man holding a little ping pong paddle with a red and green side) Not too unusual your thinking right?
but then you go half a mile and there is another section that is all torn up and being worked on. And so on it goes every few miles or so there is another section of road with either one side or the other torn up or perhaps both are and then you have some kind of by-pass that you need to go through. One time yesterday we went through a site that had both sides of the road torn up and they had us drive through the parking lot and by the gas pumps of a working gas station. Now where do you see that in the U.S.? Life is never dull around here, there is always something happening that makes life interesting.
Today Curtiss and I are taking it easy after spending most of yesterday on the road and we are also getting ready for church on Sunday and doing a little laundry (well Curtiss is doing the church prep and I am doing the laundry:)

Our Address

I added the address for Curtiss and I here in Romania on the side panel of the blog for those of you who might want the info :)
I will add it again here so that you don't need to go looking. If any of you do send anything please make sure that you copy the address exactly or else it won't make it ;)

Fam. Archer, Charles

sat Bretea Romana

bl.1 sc. B, et.1, ap.9

Judet HD, Romania

Picture My World

I got enough "GOOD IDEA" comments from everybody that I thought I couldn't let you all down now :) After thinking about it, I decided that the best place to start would be where I live while on this side of the pond :)

THE BLOC

(pronounced bloke)

This is the apartment building where we own a small, three room apartment.
Consisting of:
one living room
one bedroom
one den/family room
a kitchen
bathroom
and hallway connecting it all.

It is about 700 square feet and is considered large for living space here.
In the picture above you can see our porch where the clothes are drying on what we would consider the second floor.

It is the only apartment building in the village and is right in the middle of the town,
it is hard to see from the picture below but the other side of the apartment building is the town park. This spring we got permission from the mayor to care for and spruce it up so that everyone can enjoy it.
In previous years the only time it had the grass cut was when someone wanted it for hay.

The people here have no idea/no desire to care for much of anything that isn't their own
(and all too frequently they don't care for that)
So it is a very different idea for them to see someone picking up and caring for something that if they don't have to.


(Next time I will move inside the building:)

A Quick Hello

Howdy from Bretea Romana Romania. I just had to share the wonderful, wonderful news.

Are you ready????

Ok, here goes.

We have FAST internet!!!!

Exciting isn't?

Well, I think it is.
Curtiss and I were so excited when we learned that fast internet was available in the village a few months ago. But knowing the way that things are here we didn't really hold our breath that it was completely true.
I mean what is fast? does that mean it is just faster than what we already had?
Which, by the way, took a good 2-5 minutes just to load a simple page
even longer if you wanted a few pictures to load.
A small video clip? forget it, it will just stutter it's way through if it does anything.
And don't forget that the connection might space out at any point and you have to start all over again.

Last summer I tried several times to have voice chat
(don't even bother with a webcam)
with my family and we got it to work a couple of times,
(that was after trying for an hour and a half)
and then it would die and we would have to try again or just give up and type everything.
(which isn't the easiest when you are trying to plan a wedding:)
Don't get me wrong, we were very thankful that we had any but that doesn't mean that we won't celebrate now that it is even better :)

Curtiss and I are like kids with a new toy,
we'll just smile at each other and say "did you see how fast that went???"
We can't wait to get on the computer.

Anyway, I thought you might all enjoy a small glimpse into some of the way of life here
I was thinking of having a special (maybe weekly) post called
"Picture My World"
where I would have a post about some aspect of life here that might interest all of you.

Whether it be some kind of food, what traveling is like or maybe what it's like to cook on a stove that has no temperature gauge.
What do you think? Would it interest you?
Let me know and I start working on it.

We Made It

Hey everybody! I thought it had been long enough for all of you to know whether we made it safely or not. Obviously since I am writing this I must still be alive :)
Curtiss and I had a good but very tiring trip. We left our home in S--- last Tuesday morning and met my parents, siblings and friends in B--- to have a goodbye lunch at a local diner. From there we headed south so that we could spend a couple of days with Curtiss's brother and family. They live near D.C. so Wednesday we all headed to the subway and spent the day sightseeing in the city. We had a really good time going through a couple of the museums there, we went to the Haulocaust Museum and half of the American History Museum.
Thursday we headed t0 the airport about 1:30 in the afternoon and made it through checking in and security fairly quickly. We loaded on time and thought we were going to be leaving on time until the co-pilot came on the speaker saying that we had to go back to the gate because of some mix up with luggage. We got back to the gate and they took a few peices of luggage off the plane and then we headed out again only to be told that no planes were taking off (atleast not going the way we were) due to weather in N.Y.C. SO we ended up sitting on the ground in the plane for two hours before actually getting in the air. After that everything went well, we had a long enough lay over in Germany so that we didn't miss our connecting flight and we got to Romania at about 1:30 Friday (that would be Romanian time, which is 7 hours ahead of the U.S. east coast) we then had a three hour trip from the airport to the apartment. By the time we got here we were both beat and were in bed by 9:00 and slept (for the most part, I was awake for a couple hours in the middle of the night) until 11:00 the next morning.

Now we are slowly but surely getting adjusted to the time change and getting settled in.
I have to go now, as we are going into the city this afternoon to get a few things done that we need to do. I'll try and update again soon.

Brain Power

This last Sunday Curtiss and I were scheduled to speak about Romania and what our plans are for returning there at a church about half an hour from our home. So Saturday was get everything ready day. My husband and in-laws spoke at this church once last year so the folks there knew a little bit about Romania and the work there but not near as much as some of the other churches that we have been to so we wanted to be able to bring a little bit extra in the way of "show and tell" so to speak. People love pictures and that is the best way on earth to help people understand some thing that they have never experienced for themselves.
So while Curtiss worked on a slide show I started digging around for some poster boards that my mother in law had made for previous churches that they had visited. And I found some, slight problem though, all of them were several years old and the village that was shown in them isn't even the same village that we work in now. "No biggy" I thought, "we just got some pictures developed from this last summer, I'll quickly make a new one" HA,HA,HA. Have you ever noticed that whenever you think some thing will be easy and quick it ends up being just the opposite?
I have worked on several different picture boards in the past and they aren't hard so whats the big problem?
Well, I am not one to just take a few pictures and tape them on some card board and call it done.
I don't like to go some where and hope that no one finds out that I made "THAT" horrid monstrosity. In order to have some that that you're not ashamed of is to have some materials to work with that give subtle but dynamic details and that is exactly what I didn't have.
after looking around for a little while I found a good sturdy box that would work well for a base, now all I needed was some paper to cover it and give me a nice background.
We only had white paper. I didn't have anything to use for a background or for backing the pictures themselves, no crayons or markers nothing to add some contrast to the board.
I started getting visions in my head of an "asylum" picture board,
white walls, white clothes, white everything except a little splotch of color here and there where you saw the hands and face of the doctor :)
So I started thinking, there had to be something around that I could use. And this is what I came up with...



The background is a table cloth that was made in Romania that I taped to the card board.
The picture of Romania that is in the center my wonderful Husband printed for me and any of the backings that you see I made myself with a red pen and a permanent marker. O and a red envelope that clashed with the red in the table cloth but if put next to the picture and then put with another layer of white it didn't look to bad.
I was like completely brain dead by the time I finished but it was done, simple but done :)

We Made it!

Hi everybody! We are safely on U.S. soil. The trip went very well, it was long but everything went well and we made it in on time. We are all rather tired because we got an average of two or three hours a piece over the course of 48 hours from the time we left the apartment until we went to bed last night. But now we have at least all spent one whole night in bed resting if not sleeping the whole time and we have a nice day ahead of us with no scheduled activities. I am looking forward to seeing all of you soon!

TIck, Tick, Tick......

That my friends is the sound of the clock that is ticking down the minutes until it is time to leave here and head for home. Let me give you an over view of what the next two days is going to look like for me. Curtiss has informed me that I am getting up at five tomorrow morning so that I will be sufficiently tired by tomorrow afternoon to sleep, so that is when my day is going to start. At some point in the early morning Curtiss and I are going to head to the city of Hunedoara to do a couple of things that have to be done before we leave and then we are coming back to the apartment to pick up Mr and Mrs Archer and going to one last sight seeing spot all together (we are going to go and see some Roman ruins). After coming back from that we have to go to a couple of church families homes to say goodbye. We hope to get some sleep after that and at one am Friday morning we climb in the car to drive to the airport.
We fly our of Romania at six Friday morning and land in the USA at 2:40 in the afternoon doesn't sound to bad unil you remember that isn't counting the seven hour time zones that we have to go through or the five hour lay over that we have in Vienna Austria. Actually it is kind of funny, because Curtiss didn't get his ticket at the same time the rest of us did it was more expensive for him to go the same flight as we are so we are all leaving Romania on the same plane and going to Vienna from there Curtiss has 25 minutes to make it to his next flight to Munich Germany and from Germany he goes to Washington. The rest of us sit in Vienna for five hours, well, even with Curtiss's extra plane trip he makes it to Washington an hour and a half before us. I personnally don't think that that is fair:)
So until I am in my homeland "Goodbye!". I will try and let you all know as soon as possible that we have made it safely. Please keep us in your prayers as we travel home. See you all soon!!!

Lions and Tigers and Bears, O My!

The summer is drawing to a close and we are in the process of closing everything down and getting ready to leave. Today we had the final English class of the season and we had a slam bang finish.
Instead of having the kids come in three different groups to sit in the living room learning English grammar we had all the kids meet us out in the soccer field and had them learn American (English) games. Last weeks we handed out little slips of paper telling them that this week classes would be different, everyone together and going from two to four in the afternoon. The kids all thought that the little pieces of paper were tickets and all week we have had different kids knocking on the door asking for a ticket so that they could come and play:)
The first hour we split them all into three groups and had relay races with a candy bar prize for the team that won the most races. We named them the Lions, Tigers and Bears. We did everything from run out around that rock and back to three legged races (Curtiss and I were honorary members of the Bears team for the three legged race (yes, we won:) The Tigers won the day though with the most wins over all. We then had a short break for ice cream bars for all, then came the second hour, American baseball. Well, actually you should call it "Try and get them to hold the bat right while they try and hit a tennis ball" there are no bases or players, just a bunch of kids all wanting to use the two bats we have at the same time and since almost none of them have ever even seen baseball before let alone play it, they don't even know how to hold a bat. But they all had a blast and we had fun too. So English classes are over for another year and I would say the students were all very happy with the finish:)

Say Cheese!

I have what I would consider very exciting news that I know you will all be highly interested in:)
We found cheese that tastes good all by it's self!!! amazing I know.
All right some of you are saying she's like kidding right? Well, actually I'm not. Some of you may remember sitting in my family's living room the night before Dad and I left for Romania asking questions about how I was feeling and what I was thinking and not getting much info from me, I might add:) And some one asked me this, "Other then people what is the thing that you are going to miss the most while you are gone?" and I replied "Cheese".
Romania isn't very high on the, where to go when you want good dairy products list, in fact it would be close to the bottom.
That being said it isn't surprising that I the person who's idea of a good meal is, a piece of pizza with the cheese oozing off of it or a good lasagna that you have to twist the cheese around and around on your fork before it will break and you can put it into your mouth or maybe some alfredo with some grilled chicken or a cold glass of milk with a plate of spaghetti with cheese sprinkled on top...
All right I have to stop now I am making myself hungry and I think you get the idea why I would miss cheese while staying here. And also why I would be very excited to find a cheese that I can pick up, cut a piece off and eat it with out having to cover the strong flavor up with something else or feeling sick when you smell your hands after touching it. Most of the time that we have cheese here it is in or on something and not by itself, and if you do find something that you are willing to eat by itself (or if it has to be with something) it may be there for a short amount of time and then disappear of the store shelves forever.
I don't what kind it is as it is German made but it tastes good and we enjoy it. Curtiss and I were talking about it the other day and we said that if we were in the states this wouldn't necessarily be our first choice in cheese but we would still eat it there without complaining. And that my friends is saying something considering we have eaten it in Romania:) Life is good;)

Yes, this might be a silly post but I thought that it would be good to tell you a little bit more about life in Romania and not do another "Well, this week we planned this for the wedding..." :)
Things for the wedding are coming along nicely and we on this end are starting preparations for flying home in a couple of weeks, so everyone is busy and doing well and we all look forward to seeing you soon!

My Week

Hello everyone! I suppose you all think that I have abandoned you in this most exciting time, well if I have then I think you will pardon me as I have been what you might call busy. I think anyone who had a week like mine would be called busy, lets give you a run down...
As you all know Curtiss asked me to marry him last Thursday and after getting back from that and telling family and friends we got to business picking out a wedding date, "No prob!" you all say? Well lets just say it is harder then it looks. We spent three days trying to decide on the best day for everyone. First we considered the first of January but that didn't work very well for Mr and Mrs Archer coming back to Romania for the winter and it left the apartment here empty at the worst possible time not to mention all the elderly people that they help take care of here in the village. So our next option, the first part of December, cool time to get married but my sister in law is due for her second baby right around then so even if she hadn't had the baby yet she would be quite uncomfortable to be a bridesmaid and if she had had the baby she probably wouldn't be there at all so that was out. Then we moved to the first day of November that sounded good for about twenty four hours and we thought it was set and then we found out that Curtiss's nephew would most likely have surgery right around then, not sure when but some time in there, so out went November. Then we moved to the middle of October and after talking with my family and Curtiss's parents and brother we all thought that sounded good. Then we called the church and the date that we had thought of wasn't available but the week before was did we want it??? After a little talking and some prayer! we said "YES" and we had a date! Whoo that was easy:) After we said yes Curtiss told his mother that I was breathing for the first time in three days, I personally don't think that I was that bad but I was thinking about it quite a bit:) the wedding is on October 11th in Seneca Falls NY, in case any of you were wondering:)
Since then the emails have been flying back and forth between me and Trina (my wedding consultant, florist, and bridesmaid! Please give up a round of applause and if any of you see her before I do please give her a great big hug!) me and Elise (my maid of honor, the one who gets to answer all the questions about what I would like in my absence and the one that I email and say "Hey Elise could you do this for me? or could you look this up?" more applause and hugs please)
Plus emails to my other sister Bethany who has lots of good ideas and is handling (along with another friend, Thanks Jen!) my wedding favors. SO my week, three days of indecision where we at least got to talk about what we wanted after we had a date, and four days of emails sharing those ideas and answering all the questions. And now we have the whole thing just about planned. I think that I have to give a warning here; WARNING: Do not try this at home unless you have my wedding planner team behind you. I am going to give you a copy of part of an email that Trina sent me this morning that sums up what they have been doing for us.

I wish you could have been a fly on the wall when we were discussing this all with the salesman. :) Just telling people we're planning a wedding in 7 weeks is enough to get stares. Then you tell them the Bride and Groom aren't even in the country, and you have been doing most of the wedding planning over IM - that's when they begin to gasp. "IMing? you've been IMing?!" the salesman was astounded. But we really got a reaction when he heard I was the wedding planner, the florist, AND a bridesmaid. When he asked whether I had anything else going on, I just had to mention I was expecting my second and that I had a two year old at home. Elise said that's when his eyes started popping out of his head.

Oh, then, there was the part when he was filling out the forms and needed addresses. Mom and Elise and I are bent over the sample book looking at vest color options and he asks, innocently enough, "Are the bride and groom living together?" Mom's resounding "NO!!" could have been heard through the entire store! :) We tried to explain all at the same time - "Well, technically, no - " "But they are in the same house" "But their not living together" "you see - oh, never mind!" and so on. Very, very funny.

Well, that about sums it up! Curtiss and I laughed so hard reading that:) So if anyone else has to plan a wedding in eight weeks time with the bride and groom out of the country I could definitely recommend some people but they might not appreciate that:)
So I hope that you all forgive me for neglecting you, things should start slowing down now and I might have more time for posting. Yesterday Curtiss and I got out for a little while and walked down to the river that runs by the village here and stuck our feet in and spent three hours with each other without talking about the wedding! (exciting:) and today we went shopping for gifts to give to all the people who are making our wedding possible.

The Lord has been very good to us, he has shown in so many small ways that the date that we have is his date and he has allowed all the details to fall together at an amazing rate of speed. There is no doubt in my mind that we are in his will.
I would still ask for your prayers though as this is a major adjustment time for anyone who goes through it and my family and I are no exception, I have a nephew who has told me repeatedly that I couldn't ever get married because then I wouldn't be at Grandma and Grandpa's when he came to visit. and he is having a hard time with the thought and I think that he is an extreme case of what all of us might feel at some point or other. And I have been gone for the whole summer and when I get back I will move out for good less then a month after returning. Some hard but good things that we all have to go through. Well, I guess that this post is long enough, I don't want to bore all of you:) O I think you might all be interested in this piece of news,
Curtiss and I went back to the gypsy man today while we were in the city and I now have a ring that fits my ring finger! I'll send a picture sometime. Hope you are all doing as well as I am:)

My Engagement Story

Hey everybody! I know that most of you have already heard the news. I was going to tell all of you myself even if it was just through the blog but news travels faster then I do;) But I wanted to tell you all myself so here goes. I am engaged!!! Curtiss asked me to marry him yesterday while we were in Cluj and I said “Yes!”. I know that you will all want to hear the story and I’d love to tell you all in person but this is the next best thing so here you go, I will be as explicit as possible without grossing you all out;)
You all know that we went to the city of Cluj a few weeks ago to take Sora Aneta and her daughter Mina to a hearing clinic and that we went back a second time with them to pick up the parts of the hearing aid that had to be special ordered. The city looked like it would be nice to actually get to see it as a tourist place so it was designated as our next destination for a date. August is vacation month around here, almost everyone has the whole month or more off so the roads are crazy to drive on (well they are crazy anytime but when you add people from all of Europe to the crazy people already here it gets very interesting, I won’t tell you too much because I want all of you to come and visit me;) and since both of us are the adventurous type we decided to take the train. Curtiss went online to find the train schedule and since we didn’t want to have to get up too early we decided to take the latest departing train that left the station yesterday, it left at 5:51am.
All the other ones left at one or three something and that seemed a little early;) we got up at four and left the apartment at five with Mr. Archer driving us to the station, the train was on time and was much nicer then what we were expecting. The trains here just about all look like they were made a hundred years ago and haven’t been taken care of during that time, but this train was one of the new ones and it was quite nice with lots of leg room and not too dirty (a Romanian once told Curtiss that if he travels on a train to make sure that he buys a newspaper to read so that after you read through the first page you can put it on your seat and have someplace clean to sit) It was a three hour ride and we had a good time just chatting and watching the scenery go by, enjoying one another’s society. We got to the city at nine and walked from the station to the part of the city that we had been in before. When Curtiss had looked up a map of the city he had seen that there were ruins somewhere close to where we had been the first time we were there and since we knew that it was suppose to get quite hot in the afternoon we decided to find the ruins first thing and then when it got warm later on to find some place indoors or shaded to visit. We only had a general idea of where they were so we started walking that way not really sure what we would find, we didn’t even know if they still existed.
We came to the base of a hill where we could see stair and walkways where people were walking and thought that if we were going to have a fortress that is where we would put it so we decided to go and check it out. It looked like the main stairway up the side of the hill was on the far side of the hill but we found a little trail leading up the side of the hill and decided to take that one. The trail had definitely seen better days, where there were stairs they were kind of broken and parts of the trail looked kind of like a washed out goat trail but we had fun climbing it;) part way up we came to a level spot with a little wall that we sat on to take a break as we were a little winded and there was a good view over looking the city. While we were sitting there Curtiss handed me the binoculars so that I could get a good look at the city and while I was very happily looking through them he started rustling through the bag he had carried our supplies in.
I finished looking and handed him the binoculars so that he could look too and instead of looking he hands me a little wooden box and says that he has something for me. I went to open the box and the lid wouldn’t budge and after watching me for a few seconds Curtiss finally said (with a smile) “it’s a puzzle box you have to figure out how it opens” So I started looking and with a few clues along the way finally got it open. While I had been working on it Curtiss had gotten down from the wall and stood in front of me. I opened the box and found a beautiful pearl necklace and a letter and as I held them in my hands Curtiss says “before you read that (referring to the letter) I have a question to ask you. Joanna will you marry me?”
(Now I have a question to ask all of you, Curtiss is under the impression that he is not romantic what is your opinion?)
I said “Yes” and after that I eventually got to read the letter;) It was from Mrs. Archer telling about the necklace, The necklace belonged to Mrs. Archer’s great-great aunt who had gotten them from her father in law who had been a sea captain and he had gotten the pearls on a voyage that he took to the South Seas.
Lena Curtiss Freeborn (who was the original owner of the necklace) had a daughter named Faith, which happens to be my middle name. So the whole story is very cool and I love them. A little while after I got the pearls on Curtiss told me that to make our engagement official I had to keep looking in the box and so eventually I found the hiding place of the ring. He has told me that he will get me a diamond ring once he get s to NY but for now I have a little silver gypsy made ring with a heart on it. It is very small and only fits on my pinky so he is going to get me another one, so by the time I am married I will have gotten three engagement rings plus a wedding band, not bad huh? ;) I think that I am one of the only girls alive to receive an heirloom necklace and a gypsy ring for my engagement tokens, O, and we can’t forget about the puzzle box;)
I know that many of you have already sent your congratulations and we both thank you for them. We would also like to thank all of you who have been praying for us, it has meant so much to me to know that I haven’t been alone during this time. Now I have to go as we are discussing wedding plans;) I am sorry that it has taken me so long to post this, I was planning on doing it earlier today but the Internet wasn't working for both computers and Curtiss was looking at plane ticket prices so that we could work on what date works best for a wedding.
I will post some pictures later for all of you romanticists

Pictures

There have been several people asking for pictures of Curtiss and me so I thought that I would oblige you. Hope you enjoy!

All right...

I'll take pitty on you and share a little bit about what we did. We left the apartment this morning just after nine and Curtiss drove to a little side road asked me to get out close my eyes and hold out my hand and he gave me... O the suspence is killing all of you, I can hear you groaning;) binoculars;) and told me to look at a distant hill where there was a small white dot that ended up being a huge cathedral and he said that that was where we would end up, eventually.
First we headed to Hunedoara though to do some computer shopping. A couple of weeks ago Curtiss's laptop died:( and he has been trying to figure out what he is going to do to replace it so that his Dad can take his laptop back to the states in September and Curtiss can have one here too. So we went to get some prices and ended up going into five different stores, got price sheets (which we later lost and have no idea where they are) and had fun walking all around the city stopping for ice cream and soda. After finishing with that we stopped at the grocery store where I sat in the car while Curtiss went and bought lunch (I wasn't to know what we were eating either:) then we headed to the hills. We stopped when we came to a nice little wooded area and Curtiss covered my eyes with his hat and made my sandwich. It was really good, other then being really big, it was perfect (he only had eight pieces of meat and two slices of cheese on a kaiser roll;) After eating we walked in the woods for a little while and then continued on our way. We made it to the church and took a few pictures and then drove on, the scenery was beautiful all along the way and we stopped a few times to take pictures. At the end of the drive we stopped to give the poor little car a rest (it gets kind of over heated going up the hills) and climbed a small hill and took some more pictures. After that we headed back to the apartment. Now you all have to understand I haven't told you half of what happened, only some of the things that we did and you are going to have to be content with that;) It was a wonderful day, and I can't wait until next time!

Howdy Ya'll

Well I thought I should check in and let you all know that I am still alive. We really haven't done all that much this last week as Mrs Archer and Curtiss have had some kind of stomach bug, they are both much better now but other then a few trips to the store and the regular stuff like English class not much has happened, well stuff has happened but even though you would all be highly interested I'm not sharing so there;) Yesterday we had the eighth English class of the summer, that means that I have been here for seven weeks as they had the first class the week before I came. Does it seem that long to any of you? It doesn't to me.

One other thing that we did this last week was the second trip to Cluj, last Friday we made the trip back to get the rest of Mina's hearing aids and get them fitted to her. It was a good trip and we went out to get pizza to celebrate. The pizzaria was cool with a very old world Europeon look. When you walked through the doors into an alley way with a high arched ceiling and after going through that you came on a side walk cafe type atmosphere. Lots of fun, I never thought that I would ever make it to Europe let alone live here for three months so to go some where like that for me is very cool. Well I think that brings you up to date and lets you all know that I am still very much alive and kicking;) Curtiss might say that maybe I am to much alive and kicking:)
Tomorrow we are going on another date and I might share some things that happen, now remember I said might, I don't even know where we are going or what we are doing so I'm not promising anything;)

Obedience is the very best way...

I thought that I would take this time to share with you what the Lord has been teaching me recently. I suppose that you would call me a goal oriented person, if I have some where to go or something to do I like to go and do it and not leave it for later, which in most cases I would say is a good thing but when it comes to life and the process of God's work in me it can be frustrating.
I mean if I'm on A and the ultimate goal is Z then lets get through all the other letters as fast as we can so that we finish. That is not God's idea though, he has all those other letters in there for a reason and they are just as important to him as A and Z are.
I was reminded of this truth the other day while reading "My Utmost for his Highest" in my devotions. Oswald Chambers says, "We have an idea that God is leading us to a particular end, a desired goal; He is not. The question of getting to a particular end is a mere incident. What we call the process, God calls the end.
What is my dream of God's purpose? His purpose is that I depend on Him and on His power now. If I stay in the middle of the turmoil calm and unperplexed, that is the end of the purpose of God. If we realize that obedience is the end, then each moment as it comes is precious."
So let me encourage you that no matter what you are going through to give it to him and let him lead you as he wills. Stop and enjoy the process of life and don't always want to rush ahead and get onto the next thing. Well that what I have been learning, I hope that it helps you as much as it did me.