October 2009
Our dear friends and family,
We finally have a baby! As most of your know, Lukas Thada Fowler was born on August 26th, 2009 at 1:50pm in Crawfordsville, IN. He was 8 lbs 3 ozs and is doing great. He is three weeks old tomorrow and we have enjoyed every hour with him. Sure we are getting few hours of sleep every night between feedings and sure he cries sometimes seemingly for no apparent reason but we love him so much already. We knew that becoming parents would change our lives. But we didn’t realize how much joy and love we would have for this little guy not even knowing him and him not returning anything back.
Thank you to all of you who prayed for Lukas and for a safe delivery and for us as we are making this transition into parenthood. Thank you.
We have been in the States for over two months now and have enjoyed our time with our families. I (Josh) have been working on some WMF Romania material for new staff and have been keeping up on my Romanian. At the beginning of our time I was also able to work with Byron, Robin’s dad, at his place of work to make some extra money. It has been good to work, get dirty and get a paycheck for the job.
Robin has been nesting here at the house and planning for life with a baby in Romania. We calculated that she is with Lukas feeding him or getting ready to feed him or burping him over 8 hours a day! This doesn’t even include diaper changes, rocking him, reading him books (Yes, we have already started reading him books.), and just being with him while he is crying or sleeping. It has been one of my greatest joys watching Robin be with Lukas, nourishing him, loving him, singing to him and holding him.
Here are some things we have enjoyed while being back in the States: laughing and hanging out with our families and friends at their homes, in coffee shops and restaurants; spending time with our two nephews, Preston and Gabriel, and our niece, Cadence; working outside cutting grass and in soybean fields; going to the library and checking out books; hot showers; good coffee all day long; a mild summer in Indiana; Indiana storms; driving down county highways (Thank you, Mr. Stuffle!); and good food.
Our return date was originally set for October 9th, but because Lukas came two weeks late and the process for Social Security numbers and passports takes such a long time, it looks like we will have to push back our return date a couple of weeks. We are hoping to get his vaccinations here as well. The extra weeks will also ensure that Robin is more fully recovered from her surprise C-section. So around October 21st looks like when we will make the long, tiring trip across the Atlantic. Please pray for this trip, for Lukas that he will do well.
We have already had one baby shower and were grateful for our family and friends who showed up in honor of Lukas. It is an honor to see already how one innocent life brings together so many different people in one spot for one celebration. Thank you for those who gave to help us buy a washing machine when we return to Romania.
Speaking of a washing machine, last week we found out that we no longer have an apartment to stay in when we return to Romania. The owner of the place we recently moved in to needed a place to live and forced us out breaking the contract that we signed with him. Our dear friends in Romania helped moved out all of our stuff one day last week and put it all in a safe location. We have been upset about this surprise situation but we know we can’t do anything right now about it. Our friends in Romania are looking for us a place to live. Please pray that something would come up that would be close to the center, be reasonable in price, have hot water, and would become a home of hospitality and love.
Even though we are hundreds of miles away we still can’t stop thinking about our friends in Galati. We thought about them as they went on their usual Friday outings into the city this past summer. We thought about them as they went up in the mountains for one week of camp. And we thought about them and prayed for them as they started school this past week. Their lives have so much entered ours and have left such a deep impression in us. Please continue to pray for Elvis, Daniel, Cati, Eleni, Alina, Cristian, Mircea, Marcela, Lavinia, George, Ionela, Geanina, Silviu, Valentin, Florin, Cristina, Cristi, Mihaela, Vasile, Aurelia, Madalina, Alin, Robert, Adi, Dorinel, Florin R., Daniela, Victor, Recard. Pray for a good school year. Pray for good relationships at school. Pray for good relationships at home. And pray for all of us staff in knowing the best ways to love them, help them with their school work, and just knowing how to be good friends to them.
Before we came back to the States, we ended our responsbilities of Servant Team Coordinators with our last team. We had three teams in total in the last two and half years and enjoyed meeting and being with each of the members of each team. In total there were 14 Servant Team members that came through Galati Romania and stayed for four months, learning with us what it means to serve Jesus among the poor. We are still in contact with most of them and it has been great to see where God is leading them.
So ending these responsiblities we are trying to discern what our time will look like now at the Community Center. Robin will be extra busy with Lukas for the first several months and so will be with him most of the time but she still wants to keep up on the little health clinic we have at the center. This often means giving out pain medications or bandaging scraped knees or talking with the children how to better take care of themselves. She is also the field community care facilitator which means that she is in charge of trying to gauge the health of the community and making the necessary adjustments to get the community as a whole into healthy rthyms. I will most likely be working with the middle school aged children with their homework and spending much of my time with them. I will continue working with the children in the garden area and will continue my duties at play time with the children. Please pray for us to know how to best help out with our new different schedule.
Well this has been a long enough letter but gives you a glimpse in what has been going on with us and what we have been thinking about. Again, thank you for your loving support and encouragement. We cannot express our gratitude enough for your prayers and support. We look forward to sitting at the table with you more talking about what God is doing in Galati, Romania.
Love,
Josh, Robin and little Lukas.
Books I’ve been reading and recommend:
-Where is God: Earthquake, Terrorism, Barbarity, and Hope by Jon Sobrino
-Jesus Christ for today’s world by Jurgen Moltmann
-The Way of Jesus Christ by Jurgen Moltmann
-Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy and Fairy Tale by Frederick Buechner
-Jesus through Middle Eastern Eyes by Kenneth E. Bailey
-The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
-Clearing poems by Wendell Berry
-The Mad Farmer Poems by Wendell Berry