BISERICA BAPTISTA GOTESTI: Chircani Vision

This is the centre of Chircani, a village 6Km South of Gotesti where our main church is.

In 1999 we preached the gospel there and the Lord graciously moved in the first meeting saving one of the listeners.

Quickly others were saved as we began to meet there regularly and we soon had 6 members, 20 children and 15-20 adults coming to the meetings. We then began to rent this former grocery shop in the picture where we began to have our meetings.

All went well until 2003 when the owners no longer

permitted us to meet there not wanting to rent to Christians.

We already had quite a few children coming to the meetings and so our decision was to transport the adults to our twice weekly meetings in Gotesti but rent two rooms in the local school for the children's groups to meet. Thus things remained until 2008 when a new law was passed that prohibited schools from using their premesis for anything religious.

Around the same time the Lord had been moving amongst the unsaved that we were bringing to the meetings in Gotesti with another 6 becoming members and 20-30 adults coming to the meetings on a regular basis or

taking part in an Alpha course that we ran last winter.

Three quarters of this Alpha course group in the picure were from Chircani

So we were in the position of having nowhere to meet even for the children while the Lord was adding numbers to the church and also the children's work. We felt the Lord was saying that we should be moving the church back to Chircani and that we needed to find a suitable building to meet in.

After prayer the Lord showed us the building:-

It was now up for sale and they did not mind selling it to Christians

The Lord confirmed this was the building because of it's soundness of structure, tremendious potential and the fact that a guest who was with us at the time provided a gift to buy the building.

Now the vision for the work and this the building is this;-

We have 2 rooms of 13m * 6m at the front as you look at the picture and 4 of 6.5m * 6m at the back.

In the front right will be our room for the church to meet on Wednesdays and Sundays then in the back will be two Sunday schools rooms, an adolescents\youth room and a sports room while the other long room in the front will be a centre for vulnerable people like children whose parents are away, the physically disabled, the needy etc - a sort of a drop in centre.

There is much work to be done and indeed finance needing to be raised.

Here some of Mission Direct team members are cleaning up the inside of the rooms that had around 6 inches of dirt on the floor from the leeking roof.

We will need to replace the roof and windows, replaster the walls, fit central heating, running water and electrics as well as decorate and equip all the rooms for minsitry and we estimate that the total costs may be as much as 74,000 pounds.

We have been blessed to already have received around 20,000 pds and work has begun.

The two children's clubs are already meeting in the room where the church used to meet in the past and the numbers are growing.

When we advertised the restarting of these children's clubs we invited kids from 8-14 to come which they did but around 15 young people between 15 and 23 came also.

Ruslan asked them why they had come and they answered - "What else to do in this village" - we felt this was the Lord encouraging us to know that the youth room and the sports room are His plan and that souls are awaiting us.

Pray for Ruslan and Larisa who will be assisting me as pastor of the church in Chircani while steadily moving into primary responsibility for this church plant.