CARING Councillor Keith Deakin is flying off to Romania again, but this time he's taking 14-year-old Nikki Johnson with him to introduce to her to a family he has virtually adopted over the years.

For Keith is taking Nikki to meet her penpal, Miruna Suru in Bacau. Nikki started writing to Miruna after Keith and John Leake, headteacher at Birchley St Mary's School, set up a fund to raise money to pay for a vital operation for Miruna. At the time the Romanian teenager was suffering badly from spinal scoliosis and was facing life in a wheelchair if she didn't undergo an operation.

But, after an appeal on the St Helens Star's front page, thanks to generous readers, Keith and John managed to raise the money for the operation within just six weeks and now Miruna's future is much brighter. Nikki, from Mount Pleasant Avenue, Parr, started writing to Miruna at the beginning of 1999 after a fund-raising day held at St Cuthbert's School, Berrys Lane. And she has been saving up over the last year to pay for the trip to meet Miruna and the rest of the family.

During their two-week stay in Romania Keith will also be taking time out to help 40-year-old Ana Amerinei, who suffers from muscular dystrophy and lives in the Carpathian Mountains near Bicaz.

Keith explained: "Her little wooden house stands at the bottom of a steep hill served only by a goat track. Ana ekes out an existence by making and repairing clothes for people in the vicinity of her home, for which they either give her money or food from their gardens.

"Her disease is progressive, she needs help to cope with it and there are no voluntary organisations in Romania to provide assistance. She needs a wheelchair to enable her to move around and an electric sewing machine so that she can continue to make a living for as long as possible. I visited Ana last August and realised that without help from outside, the future for her in Romania was bleak."