Baptism Meeting

On Sunday 14th of March we had a baptism meeting.

These meetings always attract a good turn-out and Sunday was no exception - we estimated there to be 100+ adults in the congregation of 250 that were not yet commited Christians.

There were a large number of people not from our villages but from Badicu, Romanscova, Porumbesti whose churches had brought various ones to baptised as well as guests from Cahul, Cantemir, Chisilea and many other villages and towns who have been bringing people to the Alpha course.

The man being baptised here is called Misa and beside him on the right is Stefan Hanganu, the pastor of Porumbesti.

Misa is in his 60's and has been a Christian for quite a while but had not quite come into the fullness of relationship with God.

After the special day in the course when we meet for a whole day and do studies on the Holy Spirit, Misa said at the end of the day to Stefan.

"It's time I got baptised because I want to be filled with the Spirit"

Don't rush to write to me. He hadn't misunderstood the teaching and wrongly concluded that we were saying that he had to be baptised to received the Spirit. We had been speaking about one of the reasons why we are not filled with the Spirit as we should be is that it's like we have a whole lot of rooms in the house of our souls and although we have invited Jesus into our house\hearts there are maybe some rooms that have remained locked which we don't give Him access to and so we are not filled with the H.S. in these parts of our lives.

He thus understood that he had been holding back from following Jesus's example of getting baptised and on Sunday put that to rights.

We as always preached an evangelistic message - on this occassion taking the life and response of Zacchaeus - Luke 19:1-10.

We gave the opportunity to those present to invite Jesus to come and stay in their houses ( hearts ) as their Lord and saviour as Zacchaeus did and 13 answered the call.

Ten of these 13 were ones that had been coming to the Alpha course and that meant that overall in this course 20+ people have prayed to receive Christ as their Lord and saviour.

We were also delighted that one of those who came out to the front was Vitali ( right of picture).

You may remember him and his situation being in a previous post.

He needed a serious operation on both lungs.

Many of you prayed, God provided and he had a successful operation.

Many of you continued to pray for his salvation and here is taking what we hope is at least a first step to entering into a full relationship with God.

We plan to start some studies with him and his wife Catea next week - she is also seeking. Please pray for them to come fully through.

Thank you for your continued support in so many ways

Yours and HIs

Pastor Mark