La Multi Ani!

I hope you all had a wonderful holiday season and that your new year is blessed! I have certainly had an interesting year and continue to be so grateful for the opportunities that I have had. The chance to come here to Moldova and live in a new culture for these past seven (almost eight!) months has been such an experience.

Spending Christmas and New Year's here was definitely different than what I’m used to but I really enjoyed being somewhere new for Christmas. It was really nice not being bombarded with Christmas commercials and tinsel every two feet. One thing that I mentioned in one of my past posts was that Christmas here is mostly celebrated on the 7^th of January because the majority of the population here is Orthodox and therefore follow an older calendar for holidays. Only some Christians that are Protestant celebrate on the 25^th so for the most part it was just a regular work day for everyone else. I spent Christmas Eve and Christmas with my roommate Shauna and the American family that she teaches for. It was so nice to have a family to be with and I really appreciated their hospitality and amazing food! New Year’s Eve is more of a holiday here than Christmas…I spent this night with some missionary families and then went downtown to see what it would be like. It was one big crazy party going on there with kids running all over the place and fireworks going off left and right.

At 12 there was a big firework show so that was fun to see. I don’t think there are any sorts of fireworks regulations here because there were fireworks going off everywhere and little kids shooting Roman candles in the middle of the crowds…. definitely not my safest New Year’s Eve! My favorite part was coming home to see these huge fireworks right next to my apartment and all the car alarms in the parking lot going off because of the noise and commotion. One Christmas/New Year’s Eve tradition that Moldovans have is caroling for money or other goodies. On the major holidays here, some of the children go around knocking on doors to carol for the people there. The only catch is that you have to pay them money or something else if you open up your door to listen to them. There are also a lot of Christians that go around too but don’t expect money in return...here are some that came on Christmas to share some Moldovan Christian carols.

(here I was “vacuuming too hard” in the words of Shauna and completely knocked over our Christmas tree…at least it was a good time to take it down anyway) One of the interesting things about the holiday season here was that the government declared a ten day break in which no one had to work if they didn’t want to. There were some places open still because the workers get paid double if they decided to work but still most people didn’t work at all. On the 6^th of January which is Christmas Eve here, a lot of people go to church and I read somewhere that mass at the Orthodox churches can go until two and three in the morning. Many also go to church on the 7^th and generally celebrate as we do by getting together with family and eating large meals. I went to mass a little Orthodox Church on Christmas here and it was definitely interesting to see the dedication of some of these people. These masses are generally three hours long and everyone stands the whole time...I came way late so I didn’t end up standing for three hours but I was definitely dying to move around after a while. The choir at this church was amazing and even though I didn’t understand anything that was going on, it was very beautiful to just be there and pray on my own.

The organization that I work for, Invest-Credit, recently had an employee get-together to celebrate both Christmas and the fact that we now have 300 active clients. This means that there are now 300 entrepreneurs/business owners who are currently repaying the business loans that they have taken out from Invest-Credit. The organization has grown very rapidly in the past few years and it is very exciting to reach this number of clients. For the celebration the entire staff along with their families went bowling which was certainly an interesting thing for me to see since some had never been b

owling before. Some of them would just pick up any ball no matter how much it weighed and throw it down the lane! Some of the techniques for getting the ball down there were very unique and it made for a much more interesting time bowling than I would ever have in America. When I got up there for my first turn, they all starting chanting my name for some reason and I ended up knocking down seven or eight pins or something like that and they just went wild. I’ve never felt so encouraged in my bowling skills in my whole life! I started giving little bowling lessons in between turns and I think that I could definitely be a professional bowler here or at least a bowling instructor!

Shauna and I recently went to a traveling wax figures museum that they have set
up here in the city and overall it was pretty fascinating. It was actually creepier than I thought it would be because so many of the figures looked so real and they kept the lights a little to low, I kept expecting them to move or something. A large amount of the figures were popular Russian rulers and military people that I had never heard of before but some of the others were more well-known around the world. Definitely worth the $1.25 we paid to get in!

I finally posted the video that I made for Invest-Credit on youtube. Here it is in case you are interested in seeing it.

I’m now working on two shorter videos for Invest-Credit that will focus on the microloans and the spiritual impact of the organization and am definitely a little stressed about the whole thing. I will be coming home at the end of February and I really don’t know if I’ll be able to get two more videos finished. I never realized just how much work goes into producing videos…just watching the news I’m just amazed at how good some of the camera angles are and just how much research must go into everything that they say…these projects have definitely given me a new appreciation for communications and media, I can’t even watch anything anymore without trying to figure out how everything is done. Please keep me in your thoughts and prayers as my time here is coming to a close and as I am struggling to get things going for these projects. Also I am trying to figure out what’s going on job-wise when I get home so please pray that I will be guided in the right direction! Thanks for your emails over the past few months, I hope you all are doing great! Let me know if you have anything that I can pray about.