Mission at Hirtop

This is a view of the village of Hirtop from the grounds of the Baptist church plant in the village.

Around 800 people live in Hirtop and it is one of the villages in the county of Cantemir that we are seeking to help and encourage in my new role.

This is Misa with his wife Aliona and their two children Liviu and Catusa. He is leading the work in the village.

They have only 6 members and the work is hard because it's a relatively new thing in the village and so people are generally suspicious.

Life is hard for them. He has a bedridden father at home that they look after and because they have no financial support to pastor the church he has to go abroad frequently to work for 3-6 months at a time. It affects the family. It affects the work.

We brought a team a few Sundays ago and did a mission with them in the village.

You can see in the background (in the forecourt of the church building that they built with their own hands and money) Slavic and Aliona who were leading the worship team for the mission.

Aliona gave her testimony and I later preached out of Acts 17 on how the resurrection of Jesus is the assurance that one day God will judge the world by Him and thus we need to get right with Him now when we hear Him speaking to our hearts.

There were several unbelievers there who had come for the first time. Misa said afterwards that he was encouraged that "in his words" they were having the gospel clearly presented to them in song, testimony and message for the first time.

Our prayer is that, if it's the Lord's will, an evangelical church with a similar gospel outlook will decide to partner with Hirtop.

Keep us all in your prayers

Pastor Mark

Giving Seminars

A couple of Sundays ago I had the priviledge of being asked to do a day of seminars at Vad lui Isac church on the subject of "Giving to the Glory of God"

Other churches in the region were also invited and members from Manta and Pascani churches were among those who came about 270 in all.

We did 2 seminars in place of the morning service and then lunch together followed by another 2 seminars in the afternoon.

We looked at what our motivation for all our giving should be from Prov 3:9,10 i.e to honour God - by recognising that all we have comes from Him.

We then looked at how Abraham and Jacob did exactly this - they recognised that victory and the supply for life came from Him and they manifested this recognition by honouring Him in returning a tithe of all they received to God.

Jacob even said "...of all you give me I will give a tenth back to you.." Gen 28:22

What we then discussed was that this tithing had taken place 400 years before the law was given and that in my view God gave the law of tithing to remind the people of Israel what was pleasing to Him since they had got so far away from God by the tienm the law was given that they no longer knew what was pleasing to Him.

Thus tithing far from being a law should be a minimum goal if we want to honour God with our increase.

We looked at how the Bible shows 2 categories of giving to the glory of God. "Tithing" which we defined as "To give back to God a tenth part of your increase into the church, unconditionally as an honouring acknowledgement that all you have comes from God" Prov 3:9,10; Mal 3:8-10

and "Free will offering" which we defined as

" Every other kind of giving to the glory of God that comes from the remaining 90% of your increase or from your wealth"

We looked at some of the different categories of free will offering such as helping poor belivers ( as we see in 2 Cor 8:1-15 ), further giving into the church budget, supporting a ministry in your church, supporting a missionary or missionary organisation, helping the unsaved poor, a church building project etc etc and then we looked at how God teaches to do these things with our free will offerings ( although it is not obligatory ). We then looked at how to be good stewards of the many demands in these areas examening such passages as Math 5:42 in the light of 1 Tim 5:9,10.

There seemed to be a good, positive response to what was taught and Andrei the pastor of the church told me that the giving in the church increased fourfold the following Sunday.

My response;- "Let's see what it's like in a few months"

Pastor Mark

St Michael's in Chircani

We were very glad to have a team from St Michael's church from Bristol with us in April.

Here they are singing a song in the Sunday meeting at Gotesti.

We had them busily occupied while here ( nothing new in that says anyone who has ever been here on a team )

But although they slept and ate in Gotesti they had come to link up with the church in Chircani

and in particular with Ruslan and family who are overseeing the work in Chircani.

There are about 1000 residents in the village of Chircani and we have 11 members in the church there which has grown from 6 members that was the church around 2 yrs ago.

We also have quite a few people showing an interest in the gospel and a growing children's work there.

Last year the Lord blessed us and through a brother from the UK we were provided the funds to buy this building to convert into a church community centre.

Our vision is to convert the building to have a meeting hall for Sunday meetings etc along with an indoor baptistry + 2 Sunday school rooms, a youth room and a sports room and then a later phase would be to convert the left half of the building into a community centre for the poor and for the physically disabled etc.

Here is a photo of a proposal that an architect has given us which providing his estimate is real we are thinking we will go ahead with.

Always in need of your prayers

Pastor Mark

New Bible School Begins

No sooner finished the last Bible School and we've started a new one.

We have 15 new students who all want to be equipped to serve the Lord better.

The students come from 9 different villages here in the South.

The vision is to help equip these ones to do the work and also to teach and equip others

From left to right these are Vasile, recently appointed pastor of Brinza church which has around 200 members followed by Fedea pastor of Giurgulesti (70 members ) and Sergiu ( 68 members) pastor of Moscovei.

These men have been faithfully and sucessfully serving the Lord in their various churches but have never had opportunity to get the equipping that a Bible School affords.

This course that we provide gives them this opportunity without having to leave the work.

Here are Igor and Anatol, two key workers from the church at Vad Lui Isac.

The first week was looking at the book of Galatians.

We were encouaged to see all students taking an active part in thought provoking discussions.

We trust that our relationship with these various workers will grow as the course progresses.

Please pray for them

Pastor Mark

Graduation Day

As many of you probably already know we run a church based Bible School at Gotesti as a service for not only ourselves but also the work of God here in the South.

This is a Bible School course done part time over 3 years.

Students study such subjects as Galatians and Romans, the Christian life, How to Study the Bible, How to prepare a message, Church Dynamics etc.

There are 4 one week courses in each of 3 years making 12 in total.

The advantage of it is that the students get the standard of both teachers and teaching of a full time Bible School while not having to come out of the work of God that they are in, in their villages and towns.
The course has been produced and sponsored by Entrust4 an international organisation that runs these kinds of courses throughout the world.

On the left of this picture is Harvey Newton, the Entrust4 director for Moldova.

Harvey was a pastor for many years in the USA and is a graduate of Dallas Seminary.

He has been serving in Moldova for around 15yrs.

In the centre of the picture with his graduation certificate is Pastor Ion from Valeni. His church has over 70 members and he is typical of the students that come

to the course, i.e. a pastor who is faithfully and sucessfully pastoring a church but has never had the opportunity to get any training.

Beside Harvey in this picture is Tudor, the youth leader in a church called Hirtop.

Others coming to the school are missionaries working in new villages trying to plant the village with a church.

Of the 5 that finished the course and graduated 3 are pastors and 2 youth leaders in their churhces.

We held the ceremony at Karis Pizza and finshed with a nice meal together.

The next post you will see here is about the new Bible school that has just started 22 March in which we will be sharing the teaching with Harvey and the costs of running the school.

Pastor Mark

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

Mothering Sunday

Every year in Moldova we have the equivalent of mothering Sunday.

It is actually a day for all ladies, mothers or not and it is celebrated on 8th of March.

We had a special church service on 7th March in recognition of the day and invited families.

There was a good turnout with many new people coming as their children were in the programme

The children also did a lovely programme as always

Here our 7-11 age group did songs and poems and were dressed in red and white which are the significant colours for the 8th March celebration

Meanwhile the youngest group appeared in angels costumes to remind their mothers of exactly what they are not.

Only kidding - they're little darlings really

A lovely touch thought up by the Sunday school teachers was that each child take a flower and find their mother in the congregation and give it to her

Here Rachael is passing her flower onto Mari

Later in the day was the latest installment in our Alpha course.

We are still getting around 60 come each week from all the churches in the region.

There were 12 that gave their lives to Christ the week before and all were at the meeting on 7th March

The subject was "The Church" - we spoke of how new birth brings us into the family of God, the church, and also of the priviledges and responsibilities of being part of the church.

We also looked at baptism and invited them to come the following Sunday at the same time when we were planning to replace the Alpha study with a baptism meeting with 8 candidates due to get baptised from 3 different villages.

Pastor Mark