Harvest Service

Ignore the date on the bottom of the picture this is a shot of our harvest service on 30 September 2007.

We had a lovely time together thanking God for what He has done for us this year despite the fact that in general harvests were very poor in Moldova.

There were 53 non Christians at the meeting including the mayor and his wife who gave a short at address at the start of the meeting.

The youth did a programme including some songs and various others took part in the day such as Aliona's twins The harvest is past the summer is over and WE ARE NOT SAVED is the text that was used in the message. Jer 8:20

An appeal was made and 4 adults and 3 children raised their hands wanting to receive Jesus into their lives.

Another 23 people completed response forms of which 5 recorded that they had asked Christ into their lives and 17 said they wanted someone to talk to them about what it means to have new life in Christ.

We now have much follow up work to do especially since we have a mission coming up 14-21 October

Pastor Mark

Police Conference

The third Annual Conference of the Christian Police Association

Both Mari and I were invited to participate in this weekend held Sep 7-9 at Dusa Suumer Camp as guests speakers.
The Theme of the weekend was “Who is your security” and around 40 families attended including several non Christians.

I preached an opening ceremony short address and preached a final meeting evangelistic message while leading a discussion seminar on the Saturday afternoon at the same time as Mari took the ladies group.

There were guest speakers from Holland and from Romania and several people responded in various ways over the weekend

There are around 15,000 policemen in Moldova and yet there are only around 25 members in this association who are Christian and probably not that many more in the whole country.

It is a fledgling work and yet the 5 members of the board are dedicated and gifted men of God with a big vision for this work.

In my view this is one of the most significant works in the country. If the police force had a significant number of committed Christians what change this would bring to the country and it’s future as a whole.

There is a big need here of sponsors for this work. All the leaders are working full time and each has to have a second job to be able to support his family as the police salary is about 90 pounds per month and they need at least 120-150 per month in the capital to live if they are not to fall into debt.

The association has no funding. We at Moldovan MIssion Mission mostly funded this weekend summer camp conference. Around 10 pounds per person was need to cover food, accommodation and transport. Due to these funding limitations they were only able to fund around 40 families when the venue would have accommodated 120 families.

If there are any of you reading this that feel you would like to become a sponsor

(Victor in blue shirt has been blind for 17 yrs

after a driving accident)

of this work in some way or you know an organisation or a church or a group of people who would like to help then please contact me on markmold7@hotmail.com

Christmastiem will be the next major outreach

they will want to do to make the most of the

festival opportunity

Yours and His

Mark

Mssionary Conference, Chisinau

We were privileged to be invited to be a speaker at this years Baptist Missionary conference which was held at the summer camp resort of Vad lui Voda August 1-4.

Around 70 missionary families sent out by the B.U. to places like Afghanistan, Iran, Alaska and all the different regions of Russia were in attendance as well as a portion of those the BU has sent out into Moldova to church plant.

Mike Grevette, director of missions for the Georgia Baptist Union, USA was the main speaker, while Valeriu Ghilecthi and Ion Miron president and vice president of the BU ( see photo ) where there the whole 4 days.
Another speaker was Fitalie Fedula pastor ( see photo with his wife Larisa ) of the biggest evangelical church in Moldova Jesus the Saviour with 1500 members

We heard testimonies form the various missionaries of God’s faithfulness especially in Muslim countries where freedom is not permitted for the gospel.

A team from the USA took our children from 10.00-13.00 for games etc while we had the seminar times and in the afternoon everyone was able to relax in the swimming pool or volley ball or soccer fields or the many other options that were available.

I think we could say with confidence that everyone found a blessing in these 4 days of conference.

Physically Disabled Outreach

Our apologies to any of you looking at this blog site and finding no change for the last number of weeks ( feels like at little bit of déjà vu as I write )
We have been in the UK then in Romania and the at a missionaries conference in Moldova.

You’ll remember the story of Nicu, the young lad blind from birth who got saved and baptized in February.
Well it as if God had to save a physically disabled person to awaken us to the need in general of the physically disabled especially in our village.

One thing led to another and in May we had a special outreach meeting for the physically disabled in our village.

As you can see from the photo we had around 40 come to the meting we ran ( and that did not include those from Chircani or Cosntantinovca ).

We had an able bodied brother from Germany take the meeting and indeed sponsor the cost but Dima (a paraplegic who’s been a Christian for many years did the preaching and Gregory, blind from 10 months led the worship )

We had a meal afterwards and each was given a gift of food and a small money gift.

Everyone who attended said they really enjoyed it and wanted to come again so we plan to do another in September.
There is a very big need in this area If you look at the picture you’ll see around 4 with wheelchairs but there are at least another 10 there who need them.
There are also blind and partially sighted there who have no help – not even a white stick.

We made a contact in USA that would be willing to send a container load of wheelchairs to our nearest port ) probably Constansa ) free of charge but it seems the government has restriction on getting them into Moldova such that we might only get about 10% of these to use as we see fit.

So we need much prayer in this area for wisdom how to go forward and help with the many needs

Mark McCormick 1 August 2007

P.S.

The man int he wheel chair front bottom is now coming regularly to the church

The Tamed Tiger was in Town

Tony Antony evangelist and author of the autobiography “Taming the Tiger” came to Moldova April 25-29.

For those who do not know him, his biography tells of how as a young boy he was taken from his home in England to his grandfather in China and forcibly and brutally trained up to be a Kung Fu master. In 1987-89 he was world champion 3 yrs in a row but shortly after this his life turned into a downward spiral when he became a body guard and then into crimes which landed him into the notorious Nicosia prison in Cyprus for 3 years.

It was while there in the pit of existence he got wonderfully born again and he now has a worldwide evangelistic ministry through the Avanti mission.

He is working in 40 countries and his book is translated into 27 languages.

We were blessed to have him in Moldova for these 5 days when he gave his testimony and preached a gospel presentation to nearly 5000 people in 13 different venues, including schools, universities, a prison and evening outreach events.

We are now planning a nationwide event in November 2008 to including his evangelism training seminars for all our pastors in the Baptist Union as well as a series of major outreach venues throughout the land.

Pray with us for these things

Baptism Meeting

On Aprl 22 we had the joy of celebrating a baptism meeting.

One of those who was baptised was Nicu who is 24 and blind from birth.

He was one of those who responded to the gospel message in December of last year and has now publically proclamed his faith in Jesus through the waters of baptism.

His parents and many of his relatives and neighbours were at the meeting to celebrate with him.

In our village of Gotesti there are many others who are blind or partially sighted and we discovered like Nicu they have little help with their diability so we are trying to do what we can to help Nicu and these others.

Indeed there are many others who have various other disablities which we are trying to help as there is also little help for them.

Keep us in your prayers

Christ is Risen

Firstly my apologies to all who have contacted this site in the last few months and found nothing new. We've been incredibly busy with many things ( some shared below ) and we've been away in USA for some weeks also.

We had a wonderful time linking up with Bayfarm community church in California and a team from there will come out to us in October\November.

Also I was able to link up with Saddleback's missions director on behalf of the Baptist Union of Moldova to set up some of their teachers coming out to Moldova to teach the Purpose Driven Church and Life principles possibly in the Spring of 2008

The Baptist Union has also asked me to get involved with 30 or so of their church plants ( from
2 -30 members ) in Moldova.

I am preparing teaching for these pastors but am much more interested in getting involved with them in practical ways like doing missions or helping set up children's works or bringing teams to their villages to help in other ways.

We like you have just celebrated Easter here and this is a photo of the meeting. We had various inputs from the children and from the youth with a play and from individuals with songs or poems.

The message was "Christ is Risen.... but what does that mean for us "and we went on to explain how we can be also resurrected as a result, physically after death but spiritually now in this life and that this resurrection will enable us to be in a personal relationship with God.

We are doing a series now until Pentecost about the experiences of Knowing God personally.

We had a number of unbelievers at the meeting and several completed response forms asking for further discussion or bible study on the subject and one young man gave his life to the Lord.

Please pray also for one of the ones who wanted to talk.

He is a very well known man in the village with a past and he came to talk to me on Monday. We had around 2 hours together and he is very close to committing his life to the Lord. His salvation would likely shake the village and further abroad.

We have 2 of our trustees and a team coming to visit us here in Gotesti this week and have a baptism meeting on Sunday while they are here when Nicu the blind young man who committed his life ot the Lord in December will be baptised.

Please pray for many to come to this event and to hear the gospel and respond

Following this on April 25-29 three times former world champion in Kung Fu Tony Anthony will be with us for missions in Cahul and then in Chisinau the capital. He was wonderfully saved while in a Cyprus prison and has a powerful testimony.

Pray also for us as we did not get our residency permits completed in time for the expiry date and so had to leave at midnight on April 13. We returned at 12.30 and now have another 90 days to get them done.

Yours and His

Pastor Mark