During early November, the Daniel Murariu Foundation secured 70 Christmas presents and some school supplies, as well as their transport to Romania, from the Fairhaven Ministries of Covington, Louisiana through the kind help of Mr. Johnny Huffman and his staff.
On Sunday, December 23rd, 2007, the Foundation members and founders Monica Filip, George Prisacaru, Virginia Murariu and Daniel Murariu visited the Prisacani School of Arts and Crafts for their annual Christmas celebration.
The event did not go without plenty of glitches. First, the presents arrived late (two days before the event) due to weather issues after a month long sea journey to Germany and transcontinental truck journey to western Romania. As the weather deteriorated and finding a reasonable carrier within a short notice impossible, they finally had to be shipped by train and unaccompanied. Second, the drive from Iasi to Prisacani proved to be challenging as for several miles the road turned to ice as a cold front swept Romania and both George and Monica had to return to the city before night arrived and thus missed the celebration.
Otherwise the Christmas celebration went very well; it was wonderful to see the children sing, recite poetry and act out Romanian Christmas stories. At the end of the event 76 presents were distributed to all elementary schoolchildren, as well as poorer middle schoolers. For about 20 or so children in the audience that were not on Santa’s ‘original’ list, we had small candy bags specially prepared anticipating such a situation that we distributed so no child left empty handed.
At the end of the event, the Foundation members spent some time with the school teachers and principal who had Romanian sweet bread and champagne to celebrate the success of the event. Furthermore, a Sony VAIO laptop was donated to the school to use with their projector, as until now the teachers had to cart around a big desktop from classroom to classroom, and school supplies such as Crayolas, so young schoolchildren develop their hand muscles and motor skills, glues, scissors, highlighters, etc.
We kindly thank Fairhaven Ministries of Covington, Louisiana for the donated presents and Ashley Walker of New Orleans, Louisiana for bequeathing her laptop to the school.
For photographs from the event, please click HERE or go to our gallery page.
