Christmas 2009

Well what a Christmas celebration we had this year
This photograph does not include all our children or their teachers ( about 100 in all ) who were in another room preparing their programmes.

We reckon we had over 120 non Christian adults at the meeting - many for the first time as they were parents of children in our groups who were doing the programme.

Also for the first time we were doing the meeting on 25 December ( except when it fell on a Sunday ) The new democratic government has made 25 December a national holiday as well as January 7 ( the Russian Orthodox Christmas which was always recognised here in Moldova sicne the revolution.)

There was some concern that if we held the meeting on Friday 25th that there would be a smaller turn out than if on Sunday ( it's always our biggest turn out of the year ).

But we had our biggest turn out ever

Each of our children's groups in Gotesti did a programme. This year we have had to split our smallest group into 2 as we have no room big enough for the group.

The smallest kids did a nativity play and the older ones from the Grupa Mica dressed up as Santa Claus and angels of the Lord. Santa had a small poem exlpaining what benefits he brings to each of us while alternately an angel compared the benefit that Jesus brings. It was challenging to think how we in the West have somehow arrived at the state that Santa is exalted above Jesus

Here Grupa Mijlocie ( middle group ) is singing a song. The outfits were made by some of our Sunday school teachers.

There are over 30 in the group that come regularly to Sunday School and as you can see here only 3 boys. So this is a need for prayer but we thank God how blessed we are with the number of children that come to our meetings.

We are now having nearly 40 adolecents come to the Grupa Mare which meets on a Tuesday and here we are blessed with a good number of boys that come.

This age runs from 12-15 and here Igor is probably having most success in discipling boys in this age range with many of them taking up assisting in children's work and practical help.

Igor and Tanya went off with 15 of this group for a winter camp in Chisinau, the capital kindly part sponsored by a Eurovangelism supporter. Of this group only 3 could we say with some degree of confidence are Christians so please pray that a harvest is reaped amongst the rest before this year is done.

When we got home from the meeting we turned on the TV to the national television station of Romania -TV 1 - the equivalent of BBC1. The news reader began the main lunch time bulletin with these words " Merry Christmas. Two thousand years ago the virgin Mary gave birth to the baby Jesus who is our Lord and Saviour. All round the world millions of Christians, Orthodox, Catholics and Protestants are celebrating his birth to-day"
I sat and listened with rising joy to a national news reader on a secular TV station speak of the virgin birth as an historical fact.

It's been a great day to-day. May the Lord do more than we ask or think this coming year.

Pastor Mark

Shoe boxes

Once again this year we were able to give shoe box presents to all the kids in our villages from 3-15 for Christmas.

Mustard Seed managed to get 13,000 boxes to us from donors in the UK despite the financial crisis which meant that not only we but around 30 other churches in the South were able to bring this great blessing to the kids of their villages.

Because of the flu epidemic we were not able to present the kids with the presents in the school which meant they had to come to the church to receive them. Here we see the 12-15 yr olds getting their presents while we were also able to share with them the true meaning of Christmas.

I saw a TV programme recently say that the true meaning of Christmas was peace and loving one another. I suppose they were correcting the commercialism of the season with this idea.

This is good but the real true meaning of Christmas is that around 2000 years ago God became a man and came to earth living among us for around 33 years as a man. God the Father gave God the Son as a gift to us sinners ( hence the exchange of gifts to remember what He did ). Jesus went on to die on a cross so that if we turn from our sins and trust in him we can be forgiven and receive a new life of joy and purpose which starts on this earth and continues into heaven.

There is plenty of historical evidence outside the Bible to prove that Jesus was here, did miracles that proved He is God and then died on a cross and was raised again. If we just took stock for a few moments of the true significance of what we are celebrating at Christmas i.e God who made us has been to our planet then it would immediately begin to change our perspective on the the whole purpose of what we live our lives for.

If you're reading this blog and you don't have a personal relationship with God, knowing all your sins forgiven and the certainty of knowing you will be in heaven when you die ( as the New Testament promises to those who have repented and trusted in Christ ) then may I recommend that you find the nearest Christian church that runs an Alpha course or a Christianity Explored course and join up as soon as possible. These courses usually last around 10 weeks meeting together once per week. They give you opportunity not only to have a nice meal together and then hear about these truths through a message but also to ask questions in a smaller group format.

Once again our thanks to Lisa and Michael and the team at Mustard Seed who put in a lot of hard work to get these shoe boxes to us and also a special thanks to anyone who might be reading this blog who was a donor of one or more of these boxes.

May God bless you with a double portion of the joy that your gift brought to these kids this year

Yours and His

Pastor Mark

Adolescents at Cantemir

As many of you may already know we have been asked by the Baptist Union here in the South to take an assistant role for the Cantermir region.

Part of our role is to help consolodate the exisiting churches.

Here we are trying to help Cantemir church with a new adolecent group they have started with Igor our youth leader bringing a team to develop the work.

Around 10-15 lads from 15-18 yrs old come to the group held in the Cantemir church building.

They are all in technical school and all doing the same course.

They are from different villages outside Cantemir and so are staying in the dorms in the college and have nothing to do during the week.

They're a good and attentive bunch and here is Igor sharing a message with them.

Other churches in the region are already coming to ask help for other aspects of their work.

Keep us in your prayers

Pastor Mark

The Visit of community church@ greenway, Bristol.

David Roderick is the director of Eurovangelism who have been great supporters of the work here in South Moldova ( as well as the rest of Europe)

Dave comes each year to report back on the progress of the various aspects of the work that Eurovangelism support.

This year we had the special blessing of him coming with a team from his home church - community church @ greenway from Bristol.

This is the meeting in Gotesti on Sunday 14th Dec when the CCG were leading our people in a worship song with actions

In fact the team were very involved in our meetings during the week with testimonies and preaches and worship leading and even sketches.

But in truth they got stuck into all the aspects of the work that Eurovangelism are part of.

Church planters, Aid, Physically Disabled Ministry, Children's work.

Eurovangelism have been connecting up churches in the UK to partner with church plants here in South Moldova with David being the UK link and me the Moldovan link. The church at Porumbesti is the latest church plant that Eurovangelism are helping find a partner for. More details of this exciting church plant with a vision for it's surrounding villages coming up in a later blog.

Support for producing aid packets for the poor is another annual help that Eurovangelism give us and in fact not just us but other churches that we are involved with here in the South.

Needy families like Catea here in this picture receive a 5 kg packet of rice, pasta, sugar 30kg flour and 5l oil. - about 30 pounds in value.

This family have already been helped by others fitting their home with electricity - He is a shepherd - an honest but very low paying occupation and now he has got seriously ill with a worms in his lungs caught from the sheep. They have eaten into both lungs. Without medical insurance ( at 100$ per year too expensive for this family ) they had to borrow a large amount to get an operation to cut out part of one of his lungs to remove the problem. He needs a similar operation on the other lung.

Thanks to the help from Eurovangelism 300 families in 15 different villages overseen by 8 different church plants will receive an aid packet of at least 30Kg of flour and 5l of oil.

Other supporters having seen the need of the poor in the winter gave some gifts last year which has enabled us to help at least a little with the cold by giving 2m3 of wood to each family which hopefully will mean that these families will have enough to avoid the risk of dying of hypothermia when it gets very cold ( -5C to -20C)

Margaret Lilley was also part of the team. She works for Scripture Union and is also responsible for 5-7 yrs at Spring Harvest each year.

O woman of much experience she came and shared in Kindergartens and on the Saturday did a conference for children's workers to which around 40 leaders from Cantemir came
They were very encouraged with the quality of the teaching.

Sadly as our time together with the team came to a close I started to come down with flu and some of the team began to join in.

Winter has now got a grip here with 1m deep snow in places.

I have quite a few speaking engagements over the Christmas period so pray for safe journeys for me.

Pastor Mark

Christmas in Chisinau

We were invited down to Chisinau to preach in the Elim church on Dec 6 where Sasa, a young man who was born again at our church around 10 years ago, is now a deacon.

We came down for the weekend with the family as Mari had a course on Saturday and we thought it would be great for the kids to see the Christmas lights in the capital.

As I was taking these photos it made me realise how much Moldova has changed both physically and spiritually in the 15 years we have been here.

PHYSICALLY - LIGHTS EVERYWHERE

When we first came to Moldova we had 4 hours electricity per day between 7-9 am and 7-9 pm. Some friends of ours travelled from the UK and brought over a generator. When we opened our new church building in 1999 we were one of only 2 buildings in our village with light which meant our week mission was full each night.

PHYSICALLY - SAFE ENVIRONMENT

This is Abigail standing outside the mayor's office in Chisinau.

His name is Dorin Chirtoaca and he is a member of the Democratic Alliance, which is now ruling the country after years of communist rule.

We walked a few meters down from the mayor's office and saw the man himself in a barber's shop having a hair cut. I popped in and told him how we believed he is doing a great job.

"Bine" he said

He had no security with him (unless they were dressed up as lady hairdressers ). Just a simple man having a haircut in a nearby barbers after his working day.

The bible says that the wicked do their deed in the darkness. When we first came there were 2 street lights working nightly in the whole of Cahul ( a town of 40,000 residents ). You simply did not go out at night on the street. Now even small villages have street lights on the main streeet at least.

SPIRITUALLY - LIGHT SPREADING

The fact that the Christmas lights were on, on Dec 6 is a sign of the spiritual change going on in Moldova.

In Moldova the vast majority of orthodox Christians are Russian Orthodox and they celebrate Christmas on January 7. Whereas, Greek Orthodox Christians, Catholics and Protestants ( inlcuding us Baptists, Pentecostals etc ) celebrate the Lord's birth on 25 December.

In the past only the Russian Orthodox Christmas was recognised by the communist government and so the lights wouldn't even be on, on 25 December but just recently the democratic alliance prime minister Vlad Filat announced that 25 Dec would now also be a national holiday along with January 7th.

Valeriu Ghiletchii, the former president of the Baptist Union who is now a member of parliament asked the prime to consider making this date a national holiday but when I spoke with him he takes no credit for the decision as, he tells me, Vlad Filat already had it in his mind to do this.

When we came there were 1000 towns or villages in Moldova with no evangelical church of any kind. Now there are less than 900.

Much still to do

Pastor Mark