Repairing the Church

We have begun the expensive, time consuming but absolutely necessary repairs to our church building and the building beside.

During the winter the roof of this building was covered in snow and it finally gave way.

Thus we have been removing the destroyed sections of roof, clearing up the debris etc inside and then we sealed up the part of the building where the roof hadn't fallen down.

This means we are still able to use half the building for storing aid etc.

The roof of our church building was in desperate need of repair.

The apex had been leaking for some years now and we have always had flooding when there was a heavy rain.

Many of the roof panels were cracked and needed replaced

The rest of the roof needed power hose cleaning and then all needed painted. We found that many of the roof trusses were also in poor state

Then the toilets need totally overhauled.

Inside we replaced the worn DVP flooring with tiles

Here are Sergiu and Ilusa laying the tiles but various brothers from the church in Gotesti and in Chircani were involved throughout

In the Spring we will need to paint the outisde of the church and replace the tiling at the front of the church grounds etc etc.

We are not yet finished and it is just as well that our planned baptism in October has been delayed until the new year as we would have had a job to get all finished in time.

Yours and His

Pastor Mark

Here are some of the team that have been doing the work although Ilusa one of our key workers was not here on this particaulr occassion as he was organising the harvesting of our sun flower seeds for oil for the aid packets.

In fact the brothers have all been mixing the work at the church with time out for their own needful things.

There is a great deal of work that needs done inside the church also as well as these things outside.

Pray the Lord provides and enables

Pastor Mark

Gotesti City Does it Again

We're delighted to report that our 12-15 yr olds football team won the O.M. cup again this year.

Here are some of the team members posing for a team photo with the cup in our church.

We presented them the cup at the end of the service.

Unfortunately not all the boys where able to attend the presentation ceremony as many had to help their folks harvesting the corn from their fields. (None of these lads on £300,000 per week)

Here is our vice captain holding up the cup ( our captain was harvesting ).

It was a very close tournament this year. Our team drew their first 2 matches with teams B & C who both beat the weakest team in the tournament by 4-1 and 5-0.

Team B&C then played each other and a win for either team would have meant that Gotesti could not win the tournament.

With 5 mins to go B&C were drawing 1-1 when team B was awarded a penalty.

They missed it and went on to draw meaning that Gotesti had to beat the weakest team in the tournament by 6 goals or more to win the cup.

With just a few minutes remaining Gotesti were leading 5-0 and then scored a sixth.

And just to seal it they added a seventh in the dying seconds.

This is the second year in a row that the team has won this tournament and it is a testament to the hard work of Igor and Viorel training them both for football and also from the Bible.

What particularly encouraged me was how the boys conducted themselves both on and off the pitch.

O.M have said any team winning the cup 3 years will get to keep it - just like the world cup

Pray we don't get too proud

Pastor Mark

Dedication of Alisa

A couple of Sundays ago we had the dedication of Alisa Lazar, first child of Aliona and Viorel.

It's our tradition to dedicate both the child, the parents and ourselves as church members to the Lord to serve in Alisa's spiritual growth before praying a blessing on her.

Here I am explaining that before we ask the Lord to grant his blessing upon Alisa, Viorel and Aliona as parents need to dedicate themselves to bring up Alisa in the fear and knowledge of God by teaching her His Word as she grows up and by be a living example to her.

Here I have just finished praying the words of the blessing from Num 6:23-26 upon here.

She was one dear little girl with not a cry or a whimper the whole time.

This must be one of my favourite photos ever taken at Gotesti church. In the centre is Alisa being held by our oldest member and her great grandfather Costea. Despina in the back is also one of our members and Alisa's grandmother and then Alisa is flanked by Aliona her mother one our members who grew up in the church

God is faithful

Pastor Mark