I can't believe it - Kenny will be 21 tomorrow. I'm finding it hard to take it in, can it really be that long since I had him? Am I really that old? Here in Romania a person becomes a "major"at 18 and all things become legal at the same time so young people usually have a big party for their "majorat". Partly because we were so busy and partly out of ignorance (we didn't realise that all Kenny's friends would be having big parties) Kenny didn't really have anything special. He would like to have a party for his 21st but at the moment nothing is planned and I'm not sure how we will manage it ... so we'll have to wait and see.
Also can't believe it's almost a month since I updated ... time sure does fly when you're having fun! The weeks leading up to Christmas were so busy that Christmas week was upon us before we realised it. We had builders in right up until the 23rd, but that was good because the electricians came on the last day and it meant we had light in the newly renovated rooms.
On the 23rd we invited all the street people to come for showers and clothes. We had a few helpers that day and as each one merged from the shower they were handed a full set of clothes, starting with underwear.
As we have done for the past couple of years, on Christmas eve we had a celebration at the Secret Garden - 42 came and we had about 10 helpers so it was a busy day. We had plenty of food for all and one lady from our church even brought a huge pot of chicken soup which was especially nice as there was snow outside and the temperature was minus 7 or 8.
When Kenneth gets time to download the photos off the camera I will post photos so you can see everyone having a good time. A couple of people called us on Skype on Christmas eve and we were able to show them the street folks live enjoying themselves (much more entertaining than Big Brother!) More about Christmas eve in the next couple of days hopefully.
Many of you will be aware that the UK pound has been steadily falling in value for some time now, what you probably won't have thought about is how this affects people like ourselves working overseas as volunteers supported from the UK and trying to run charities. Over the past two years we have had an increase in the funding which both we and the charity receive but this increase has been cancelled out several times over by the decrease in value of the pound. Three or four years ago the pound was worth 6.3 new Romanian Lei, today it is worth less than 4.2 ... I'm not good at Maths but even I can see that's a big drop by any standards.
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