Ministering at a Baptism in Cantemir

We were called to provide a programme and preach the gospel at a baptism meeting at Cantemir Baptist church.

Pastor Volodia and his wife Virginia ( extreme left ) pastor this church and also have a responsibility for several church plants in the surrounding area.

The paralysed girl in the centre is cronically ill and is in fact going blind

Sister Catea next to sister Virginia has a 23 yr old son physically disabled from birth whose disablity means she has had to wash his clothes every day for all his life. We discovered she has an alcoholic husband so no money comes into the house and she has thus been hand washing her son's clothes for 23 years.

We were able to give pastor Volodia 200$ from gifts that the Bayfarm church people left for her to buy a second hand washing machine PTL.

In our programme we brought Vova ( the former mafia man ( and Tanya his wife as well as Aliona for worship.)

Vova gave his testimony ( for the first time in public )

Interestingly enough in the congregation was the assistant chief constable for the Cantemir region who is a member at this church ( In fact he is pictured on the right of the baptistm candidates ( the younger of the two men ))

He knew Vova from his various run-ins with the law and it was wonderful to see the two men having felowship as brothers in the same family after the meeting.

Igor, our youth leader, here on the right of the picture translated for me in the preaching as he usually does. Indeed we have preached the gospel in 5 meetings this month either harvest services or mission meetings and he has translated in all but the last where I preached in Romanian

Aliona has been leading worship in evangelsistic events with me for 11 years now and with brother Sasa Triastar for several years before that right up to his death of cancer.

Tanya, Vova's wife spoke a powerful poem just before the preaching whose theme was "You were my good Christian neighbour and yet for shame you never told me the gospel and here I am now in hell"

This enabled me to start the message off by saying well here we are to tell you the message.

Four people responded to a gospel appeal at the end of the message

The following Sunday we went with the same team to do the same programme at another church in a town called Gurgiulesti

Vova gave his testimony again as it was interesting to see how much he had gained from the experience of the previous week

There are many mafia "friends" that Vova had in this village but unfortunately none was there to hear his testimony

However the mayor of the town was there and was visibly under conviction during the preaching of the gospel but did not respond to an appeal.

We are planning that Vova and Tanya will get baptised in our chruch in either February or March along with, it appears, several other condidates.

The date depends on Vasile Tofan and his programme for next year.

He was a famous Romanian boxer who had prospects of becoming world championj in the super heavyweight division but eneded up in prison in Germany where he got saved and he now serves the Lord and the gospel

He will come to preach in a 3 say mission that we will do that will end on a Sunday with the baptisms

He is also bringing with him a well known former mafia man from Galati so it will be a mafia man festival when this mission takes place

Keep praying for us

Mark

Our Adolescent football team wins medal

In October after a Sunday service we had a presentation for our adolescents football team. The team was formed 3 months ago and Igor and Ilusa are the trainers of the team.
Operation Mobilisation were the inspiration behind this new ministry inviting churches to start football teams while they offered training for the leaders on how to coach the teams.

Igor and Ilusa meet with the boys every Tuesday and Thursday, have a time of skills training, then a talk from the bible ( which has seen 5 of these boys repent ) and then a match.

Our team went to O.M in Chisinau and competed with another 4 teams on a round robin basis for a cup; they came 2nd and all got medals which you can see in the photo

One of the lads got best footballer in the tournament and another best defender.

Pray for this group of boys. Most of them have been coming to our Friday afternoon "grupa mare" for adolescents from 11-14 years.

Mission continuing

The mission has been continuing to go well with up to Friday night 26 adults having responded to thr gospel as well as several children.

Ruslan has been counselling them after their response and it apears that many have understood well the gospel and made serious responses

Pray for the first new believers discpleship course that will take place at 15.00 on Tuesday 23 october

Alexei, the former mayor of the village and former head teacher of the school was one of those who responded this week and his wife the following day.

In fact we have up to now had 3 married couples respond this week.

On Friday night we had Angelina Vasilache a well know gospel singer come and do most of the programme for the meeting as well as give her testimony

Meanwhile the Bayfarm team have been continuing on daily visits.

Here they are doing a programme in one of the 3 Kindergartens in Gotesti.

We were able to leave some games for the kids like leggo etc as none of these Kindergartens have any games

The team has also been doing visits to poor homes giving aid and also piglets the funds for which have been supplied mostly by Eurovangelism.

Many of the poor people they have visited have also come to the meeting during the week

Pray for the final two days of the mission that there would continue to be more new unsaved people come to the meetings and that they get saved

mission day Oct 16

Thank you for continuing to pray for the mission and all events surrounding it. It is going well with plenty of unbelievers coming and hearing the word - some for the first time.

Here are two ladies that responded. They are mother and daughter and were visited by the team earlier in the day.
Natasa in red has been coming to the chruch for some weeks but her mother Olia was there for the first time on Tuesday night.

The team did a play in the meeting called measuring up which really spoke of a man trying to keep the law to measure up and be accepted but then finding his rest in God. Sandra Newton also gave her testimony of how she was called by God to salvation at a youth for Christ rally many years ago.

Earlier in the day we had been to the local school which has 600 pupils

The photo to the right is the team meeting Olga the head teacher and below is Kim giving her testimony to the teachers in the room that Bayfarm church and friends have given a gift to refurbish it with double glazed windows, tables and chairs carpet etc

The team have been doing other visits to Kindergartens in the village and in the afternoons they have been visiting people's homes and sharing the gospel with them and inviting them to the meeting in the evening.

All this having travelled 10,000 Km to get here - not bad for a bunch of jet lagged oldies.

Pastor Mark

Mission Week

It is our special week this week when we have an outreach mission for the village.

This year we have a team with us from Bayfarm Community Church, California

After a 10,000 Km journey to get to us you can imagine how tired they were and yet they have been fully involved from day one.

Sunday morning. the gospel was preached in our 10.00 am meeting and 5 people responded including Larisa in the centre of the picture who had been close for many weeks.

Then in the afternoon we were invited to a harvest service in Pelenei where pastor Misa ( see photo with M&M) gave us the full programme.

Chris Modic ( see picture) gave his testimony and there were also 5 people who responded to a gospel appeal.

The mission in Gotesti starts on Tuesday evening 16th and will be every evening until Sunday 21

Keep praying for us

Mark

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