Wednesday, June 4, 2008

National Children's Day in Moldova



June 1 is National Children's day in Moldova and we marked the occassion by having a special children's meeting in the afternoon with 3 of our children's groups taking part.


Each group took on the identity of a country and produced food, dance, dress etc accordingly
Here is our youngest group doing a traditional Moldovan dance.

All 3 of their Sunday school teachers taking part in the dance have actually been trained by Larisa, our children's ministry superviser just this year so wwe were especially impressed by the programme they produced.

One of the ladies in the picture has also gone from being on the edge of mental breakdown because of her very difficult relationship with her non Christian husband to being a healthy enough Christian to take on this role of Sunday school teacheer. This has been due, of course, to God's great grace but His instrument has been Ruslan taking her patiently week after week through counseling that has enabled her self esteem to be rebuilt.


The Grupa Mica as they are called adopted Moldova as their country and the 3 rookie teachers produced the table display seen here in the photo.


These are all traditional Moldovan foods and drink including Mamaliga ( corn flour bread), goat's cheese and samali which is a mince meat mix with rice inside a vine leaf.

The Grupa Mijlocie adopted India and here Cristina, one of their leaders, is preparing the India tea set to go with the curry and rice that they had cooked.


And a deliciously authentic taste it had too!! ( sorry I can't transmit taste by internet yet but pop over to see us in Moldova and Mari or I will make you an Indian curry)



There are around 3o kids that come to this Sunday school group every week and here are some of them taking part in an Indian dance


It was the highlight of the show and the whole dance came out of the imagination of Cristina the leader you saw earlier. It is quite a talent she has.


The other group was from Constantinovca, a village around 4 km from us where we have a children's work and are also evangelising the adults.

We have one baptised member from there and several others saved or having made responses.

One of those recently saved is Viorel who is featured here in the middle of the photo. He has been going on well and is already actively involved in this children's work there

Their country was Egypt and Viorel was Pharoah, he brought a message of greeting to us in Arabic while Aliona one of the other team members translated it to us into Romanian ( all acting of course )

It was a real fun time for all.

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Pastor Mark