Love in a Box comes to Moldova again

We have been very blessed to, once again, have received shoe box presents for the kids in our schools here in the South of Moldova for Christmas.

Mustard Seed is the organisation from England that has sent us these boxes.

In fact this year they were able to send us 2 lorry loads - 15,000 boxes in all which meant that over 40 villages here in the South had the blessing of some, if not all, of the children in their village getting a Christmas present of a shoe box full of gifts.

Here is one of the schools in our village in the Flaminda area getting their presents.

Boxes are sent to us for girls and boys ages 3-5; 6-11 and 12-15. It is largely children in the UK that fill the boxes with different gifts and the quality of the gifts are so good that it makes me proud to be British -indeed they are love in a box.

A.M.E.C, an international children's organisation gave us children's tracts that tell the Biblical story of Christ's birth and why God became a man and came to earth. We were able to give each child that received a box one of these tracts.

The main school in Gotesti is in the centre and we invited the teachers to bring the kids from their classes to our church to receive their gift.

Here classes 1-4, ages 7-11 are receiving their gifts.

In our church we were able to do a bit of a Christmas programme and short message to the kids about the meaning of Christmas.

Marina and Tanya, here pictured, are the two girls that are teaching the religion lectures in the school. They opened up a shoe box gift that in fact contained a story about the best Christmas gift "ISUS" - Jesus who died to pay for and remove our sins so that we could come into a personal relationshsip with Him - which is the true meaning of Christmas.

I also finished with a short message explaining that we have a personal relationship with God and know all our sins forgiven not because we are good and deserve this but because we have turned to Jesus to save us.

We finished by saying at this Christmas season it is a time for reflecting

"Do you have this personal relationship with God that Jesus came to give us?"

Pastor Marj=k