Below is an excerpt from the Dana and Brandi Bates’ most recent newsletter featuring a big thank you to CTR and the team who traveled to Romania on a mission trip this summer. The entire letter is also included if you’d like to read more about the Bates family and the great work they’re doing.
Excerpt:
Meanwhile, we were blessed by a long-awaited visit from our friends and partners in ministry from Christ the Redeemer Church (Danvers, MA), led by our long-time friend, Father Tim Clayton (his last visit was the very first week of the very first Viata Program, 17 years ago!) and Allegra and Peter Smick. This team fundraised for and began work on the Viata Program’s new ropes course! They also participated in a Viata week, along with youth from IMPACT clubs around Romania, and found time to Read Together with us at the library, and to deliver and begin the process of automating our library’s holdings with a new software program.
Allegra and Briana entering books into our newly gifted Library Cataloging Software Program. Thank you CTR!
The Ministry of Visitation: Christ the Redeemer church with our friend Father Tim taking the picture.
Their entire newsletter is printed here:
Dear friends and partners in ministry,
We are still here!
We want to thank you for continuing to support us in prayer and provide for our ministry, despite not receiving a proper update in quite some time.
Please forgive us!
If you’ve been following us on Facebook, then you have seen some glimpses of the amazingly full and bountifully rich summer we enjoyed. And if you haven’t, we’ve attempted to more properly catch you up below.
We trust this finds you well and we wish you a gorgeous Autumn. As the year and earth turn inward, there comes a quiet deepening and a stilling. We pray you find the peace of Christ waiting there for you.
And, in this quieting, we will surely be better at keeping in touch.
With His loving blessings,
Brandi, Dana, Briana & Gabriel
In Venice for our early summer holiday, then on to hike in the breathtaking Dolomites.
Knowing the busy, bustling summer that awaited us, we flew to our vacation the second the children got out of school. We learned that we are not a beach family, but mountain people through and through. The Dolomites were the perfect place to explore by boot and bike, and we were thrilled our children thrived on 8 hour hikes. (And no one minded a spaghetti lunch served on an outdoor patio at 8,139 feet either.)
In July we welcomed a service team from the Santa Barbara Presbytery, where Brandi attended church herself as a high schooler many years ago. We just love hosting Santa Barbara IMPACT teams, as they are so prepared to serve, selflessly and with great humor and grace. This team, largely made up of Orchard Community Church’s High School youth group, was no exception. They participated in the Viata Program, and also led Reading Together events with our Children’s Library. What a joy to read Max Lucado’s “You Are Precious” to the children of the Baptist Church Orphanage, and then to give them a small library of beautiful books. Then the team led the “Kick Off!” event for our first-ever Summer Reading Program, a program we hope to help replicate in libraries around Romania in the future.
It’s so wonderful to give away beautiful books – the “books that love children” – to children who have rarely ever seen one.
Reading aloud to children who have rarely experienced it is such a joy!
Kicking off our first ever Summer Reading Program.
Santa Barbara IMPACT Team Launches our Summer Reading Program
“It’s reading season” by Livia Coloji, commissioned by us to launch Summer Reading Programs in Romania.
If you don’t know much about how important Summer Reading Programs are, research shows that they are immensely effective in helping students avoid Summer Reading Loss, also known as the “Summer Slide”: the academic losses that occur when students do not read at least 6 books over the summer holiday. This Summer Reading Loss most affects children with lower socioeconomic status, and the accumulated losses, summer after summer, are nearly impossible to recuperate. (This video nicely explains Summer Reading Loss.) Summer Reading Programs are virtually unheard of in Romania. Our children’s library, “Din Loc in Loc”, ran its program as a pilot, with hopes of replicating it in libraries across Romania in 2017.
Mihai doesn’t like to read. But he read 400 pages in 4 weeks during our Summer Reading Program. His teacher-mom was amazed: “No matter what I’ve tried, I’ve never been able to get him to read.”
When asked, “Who read more these past 4 weeks than all of last summer?” most every hand shot up.
A Summer Reading Program success!
Whew, August was a busy blast!
IMPACT Credo (IMPACT adapted specifically for the Romanian Orthodox Church) continues to blossom.
It started with the second training of IMPACT leaders through the Romanian Orthodox Church, which Dana attended with New Horizons Staff and our new Young Life supervisor, Al Anderson, visiting from Ostrava, Czech Republic.
Dana then traveled to Buenos Aires where he was invited to present IMPACT at one of the most important (non-US) service-learning conferences in the world: Seminario Internacional de Aprendizaje y Servicio Solidario organized by CLAYSS.
Dana presenting IMPACT in Buenos Aires at a world-wide Service-Learning conference held at the Catholic University of Argentina.
Dana presented New Horizons’ unique “theory of change” that centers on a vision of Education as Transformation understood as the 3C’s: Character, Competence, and Contribution, the latter dimension being the community service projects, the former two dimensions being what is “learned” in service-learning. This approach fits well with both our desire to transform the public educational system with Kingdom values, and also to work with the Orthodox Church.
Upon returning to Romania, Dana led a project to build the first dedicated Mountain Bike Trail on Straja Mountain, where our Viata Program is located.
From Dana: “As many of you know, the Jiu Valley where we live is in serious economic decline because of the closing of the coal mines, and the only viable economic future is ecotourism. There is incredible potential here, but much of it remains untapped. While the Jiu Valley has become a fairly well-known ski destination, with a substantial infrastructure of chair-lifts, skiing is not enough to sustain a region. Eco-tourism diversification is needed.”
How did Dana jump from finishing his PhD to mountain biking? “After receiving a nice PhD graduation present of a Gary Fisher mountain bike (thank you Jack and Vicki Weed!), I began thinking about this sport in relation to our area, and our ministry’s mission. This has evolved into a vision and an understanding of how mountain biking (MTB) can be a way that we can concretely love and be a blessing
here in the Jiu Valley. Already having built the first dedicated MTB trail in our region, we plan to build 3 more, develop a skills park, and connect the many existing trails and mountain roads that feed into our region.” Amazingly the community has really rallied around this and Dana has raised almost $50,000 in a fairly short amount of time, as well as getting 20 quality bikes donated from a local bike manufacturer.
Investing in this eco-turistic venture is a great direction for New Horizons because it:
a) provides a context for great service-projects (i.e. trail-building and maintenance),
b) consists of real community development,
c) provides opportunities for healthy recreation for youth and adults,
d) will bring in economic benefits for the Jiu Valley (youth can imagine a future here!), and last but certainly not least,
e) it’s just so much fun!
Dana likes to think of this as a sort of meta-service-learning project that will create the context for hundreds of future community service-learning projects. But most importantly, it is a way to show Faith in Action.
P.S. A new youth IMPACT club has just formed this week around this new eco-tourism venture. Below is the logo: IMPACT bike = ibike!
Meanwhile, we were blessed by a long-awaited visit from our friends and partners in ministry from Christ the Redeemer Church (Danvers, MA), led by our long-time friend, Father Tim Clayton (his last visit was the very first week of the very first Viata Program, 17 years ago!) and Allegra and Peter Smick. This team fundraised for and began work on the Viata Program’s new ropes course! They also participated in a Viata week, along with youth from IMPACT clubs around Romania, and found time to Read Together with us at the library, and to deliver and begin the process of automating our library’s holdings with a new software program.
Allegra and Briana entering books into our newly gifted Library Cataloging Software Program. Thank you CTR!
The Ministry of Visitation: Christ the Redeemer church with our friend Father Tim taking the picture.
And then the end of August brought: Science Camp!
Science Camp was Briana’s dream at the beginning of the summer, one we weren’t at all sure we could pull off. But we did: 5 days, 10:00-1:00, 16 participants (aged 2-31). And more fun then we could have imagined.
One surprise from the week came from one of our young adult participants, Teo, short for Teodora. (Pictured below.) Teo is in her late 20’s and has Down’s Syndrome. Her mother, Ileana, and her had NEVER been apart for as long as 3 hours since Teo’s birth. Teo had never attended school. (Where we live, a child with special needs would be in a class with one teacher and 29 other children, no aide or assistant and very little chance of individual attention. In that context, some conscientious parents choose not to send their children with special needs to school.) Ileana and Teo felt so good about Science Camp after 2 days that Ileana asked me if it would be okay for her to leave Teo on Day 3. And then again Day 4 and Day 5. When Ileana came to pick Teo up at the end of the camp day, you would have thought they hadn’t seen each other in years. They were both beaming: beaming to see each other, but also beaming for their newfound independence. Ileana shared what a blessing it was to have some time to herself, knowing Teo was in a safe place, and what a blessing it was for Teo to stretch her independent legs a bit. The week had so many favorite parts, but this was Brandi’s most favorite favorite parts.
Teo stirring salt into water for a density experiment.
The end of a camp day: Ileana and Teo at right.
Daria and Gabriel observing the reaction of oil, water and food coloring.
Diti dawning safety glasses for the next experiment.
Every day we Read Together a book relating to the day’s subject matter.
Creating, naming and classifying our own creatures. This is Sara.
This is Maria.
Daria and the cell she made.
Tudor playing animal bingo.
Hard at work.
“We are junior scientists!” Celebrating the end of a great week.
Thank you to everyone who gave towards our Science Camp. We were able to add some beautiful Science books to our library, many of which the participants used for their presentations on the final day.
The Viata Program celebrates 17 years of transforming young lives in Romania!
The end of a Viata Week: making a commitment to love God and to serve one’s neighbor.
The Viata Program concluded its 17th year of giving young people the best, and most transformational, week of their lives: 500 participants in 6 weeks (plus 5 special groups), 35 volunteers and 15 paid Romanian leaders. As already mentioned, Viata broke ground on a new Ropes Course in August and work continued through September and into October.
School also started. In our family, this meant big changes: Briana moving to middle school (she is LOVING all her new subjects, especially French, Biology and Geography), and Gabriel starting pre-first-grade (and doing so well, with his Romanian language and making friends).
Dana in Vienna: meetings to grow Service Learning in Eastern Europe.
Brandi after leading a training with Ovidiu.RO staff, including founders Leslie Hawke and Maria Gheorghiu.
Dana traveled to Vienna to participate in meetings (again with CLAYSS) to grow service-learning across Eastern Europe.
Brandi is serving as a consultant with one of Romanian’s largest non-profits,Ovidiu.Ro (founded by the actor Ethan Hawke’s mother, Leslie), on a Reading Together program with Romania’s most disadvantaged children.
A popular educational website posted an interview about Brandi and Citim Impreuna Romania (Reading Together Romania). Here you can read it in Romanian or English.
We agree with L.M. Montgomery: We are so glad we live in a world where there are Octobers! We’ve been hiking every weekend, watching the slow creep of Autumn’s glory across the forests. And we have a busy month ahead.
Classes are underway with our Semester Abroad Program students. Towards the end of the month Dana will travel to Northwestern College to speak in their chapel service and to recruit Semester Abroad Program students for 2017. Brandi will travel to speak at a large gathering of librarians about how to replicate Summer Reading Programs in Summer 2017. And we will host 2 pastors and 1 elder from our long-time ministry partners, Community Presbyterian Church (Ventura, CA).
Last week Brandi and some mom-friends launched BebeCafé in Lupeni. It’s a Baby’s First Book Club that doubles as a parent-to-parent support group that triples as a training school for parents on reading 20 minutes a day with their children, starting from birth. (Romanian parents read with their children at half the rate of the rest of Europe. Where we live, it is far less.) We had 9 mothers at our first meeting. (We might be the only weekly gig in town for parents of young children.) One of the reasons Brandi is most excited about this new project is that she hopes it will become a program that will be replicated across Romania, as part ofCitim Impreuna Romania‘s (CIR’s) national mission to educate and encourage Romanian adults to read to children, starting from birth. Raising Readers (a very successful early literacy program in the state of Maine that is acting as an unofficial mentor to CIR) shared that it is critical to “start with babies” if you want to truly impact early literacy. BebeCafé is one way to do this.
“The glory of God is man [woman, child & baby] fully alive!”
Reading aloud with young children is one practical way that helps to fully develop a child, and the parent-child relationship, on so many levels. We feel God’s face shining so brightly upon this new ministry.
2) Click on “A Young Life Ministry” and Search By “AREA NUMBER”
3) Type in “x248” and click “Search” (Make sure you see “Bates Dana/Romanian – x248” before you continue).
4) Choose what type of Gift you are making. “Operating” is the default category, and gifts given here can support any aspect of our ministry.
5) Type in the Amount.
6) Indicate Frequency: Monthly, Quarterly, One Time.
7) Click “Add Gift”. .
Checks can also be written to Young Life x248 and mailed to Young Life, P.O.Box 70065, Prescott, AZ, 86304-7065. (Please be sure to include x248 in the memoline.)
Their entire newsletter is printed here:
Their entire newsletter is printed here:
Recent Comments