Chircani Building Progress

Our thanks to you all who have been involved with us in the construction of our church building in Chircani.
We have just received another gift from one of you that means we have enough funds to be able to complete phases 3,4 and 5a-c of the work. Basically this means that we will be able to finish the outside of the building and also the meeting room, 2 Sunday school rooms and the other facilities such as indoor bathrooms etc.

Now we are working with all our power to get the work done in time to have a church opening on Easter day 5th May here in Moldova and then follow this up with a one week mission the following week.

In the photos you can see how we have got the floors and the baptistery done and just last week the electricity has been laid and connected.

We will need to get the walls finished with spaclovca - a kind of white cement that makes for a lovely finish and then various other finishes need doing.

We start this week on the outside of the building with maybe 3 teams and we hope to get it finished in time.

Keep praying for this and especially for the mission we plan to do to celebrate the opening

Pastor Mark

Ladies Celebration

In Moldova on the 8th March every year we celebrate national women's day with a public holiday.

This is the equivalent of the Western mother's day celebration except it is for all women although in general the mothers get the most attention.

We in the church celebrated it this year by having a special meeting on the Sunday that followed 10th March.

We had a special meeting and invited all mums and other ladies to come and our kids from our various Sunday school groups did a programme.

 As you can see from this photo we have quite a lot of kids in our church and all the various groups did small programmes.

Many of our kids are from families that do not come to the church and most of these ones' mums came to the meeting which meant we had around 30 extra ladies swelling our numbers. Some were there for the first time.

It has resulted in some being willing to receive one of our visiting teams

We are praying that these ones will come to the church regularly starting with the baptism meeting we have on 17th March.( watch this space )

 Here are one of the groups doing their programme which included somne songs on "an appreciating mum" theme and also some poems.

Once they had finished they then went and presented all the mums with a hand made greeting card on behalf of the church.

We then shared a message on getting personal with God

All of the church members gave a sum of money and we were able to provide a meal after the service to which we invited all to stay

Most did and we had a nice time of fellowship

May the Lord draw these ones to Himself and then they come to know Him personally

Pastor Mark

Missions in Gotesti and Antonesti

During each year we usually have many teams come out to us and get involved in children's work or mission or other ministries.

This year we at Gotesti took a break from having teams come to us although some of our members were involved in hosting teams for other churhces and I was involved with each team in liasing between the team and the partner church - as well as doing some transport and some translating.

When teams come they go to their partner churches and participate in the ministry either in the children's work or in a mission or teaching or any combination of the three. The picture above is of the groups from Kings Fellowship in Bangor and they were the one exception for this year in that they did come to us for 4 days and get involved in our autumns mission.

In truth they were really only a half exception as they spent the first 4 days of their time doing an outreach mission in the village of Antonesti. Here Eileen is giving her testimony as did all members of the team throughout the whole week It is a small church but we saw quite a few who are not members come to the meetings and several respond to an altar call during the week.

Throughout both missions the brothers in the teams preached the gospel each night and altar calls were also made each night

The mission in Gotesti ended with a baptism meeting - the man in the picture is Igor who also gave his testimony in the meeting. Several people responded to the altar calls during the week and we have begun new believers studies with them.

It was a busy time for all but also satisfying and fruitful

Pastor Mark



Religion in School

We have continued to do our religion lessons in our school in Gotesti. In fact it has been growing and we now have 85 kids in 5 groups coming. As you may remember the government has passed a law that Christianity is now allowed to be taught as an optional subject in school. An orthodox syllabus is available as well as our own evangelical syllabus. Marina used to be our teacher but she is taking a break to have a baby and so Diana Stefan is now the new teacher. Here she is teaching the class for ages 7-11.

Do keep this ministry and Diana in your prayers

Pastor Mark

The Rudi's at Obreja



This is Ghita and Olia Rudi with their family who are responsible for the church in the village of Obreja which is north of Chisinau.
We have been trying to help them in their ministry as much as we are able albei it in a very small way.
Their village is over 300Km from us so we are not able to "pop" in to see them but did manage to get up there for a visit a little while ago.
We were able to see all the minsitries they are involved in which includes a healthy children's work
Here we can see the fruit of a summer camp they did this year with the help of a team from abroad that came through O.M's contacts.
O goodly number of kids came and many are continiung to come to the 2 new groups that they have formed.
A major need in their ministry is that the Lord would save some men whom Ghita could disciple to become co-workers with him and another need is to replace the rotten doors and windows in their weather affected church building. We were able to help them with funds to buy a new front door ( double glazed ) but all the other windows and doors also need replaced - we're praying the Lord help them in both needs
Pastor Mark

Chircani Building

 

We have finally got the roof on at our Chircani Community Centre. Here the construction team are in the process of plastering the outside.
We had hoped that we would be able to complete phase II by early November.
Phase II would take us to having completed the outside and having the meeting room inside finished ( including a baptistery ) as well as completing 2 Sunday school rooms.
The remaining phases which we would hope to complete in May-Nov 2013 would be a sports room, kitchen and meeting room for pensioners, physically disabled, poor families and a day centre for vulnerable children.
We had hoped to have the meeting room and baptistery finished in time so we could have had a special week of meetings to celebrate the opening of the Church Community Centre in November but unfortunately circumstances being what they are we will not be able to finish in time for November. However we hope to get it done in time for an opening mission in the Spring.
Pictured here are some of the men who have worked on the project.
In the foreground in white is Jora and in the orange T Shirt is Sasa both of whom are members in the church in Chricani.
Then in white near the window is Vasia who is a member in the church in Antonesti. He came to help us out during that particular week. The other man is Ruslan who is deacon at our church in Gotesti and takes a large responsibility for the care of the church in Chricani.
Pray that we are able to get all the work finished for the opening in the Spring.
Pastor Mark

Youth in Gotesti

Every Friday we have our youth meeting at Gotesti.
During the second half of the year we changed the format into 2 parts.
Part 1 is designed for our own youth who are saved although all are welcome. We have a time of worship, then we do a bible study and discussion and then we pray together, We are actually studying a book by the Bible Mission which is part of their Bible School by correspondence course and it seems all have been finding it useful. Each study has an exam at the end so we discuss the responses that the youth have made in the exam.
Part II is where we have invited all youth 14+ to come to from the village.
Here we have lots of sports and games that for 1.5 hours we play together.
We have table hockey that a church from England sent to us - it is very popular. Then we also play darts ( I may be the man that introduced the game of darts to Moldova as I haven't yet met a Moldovan that had heard of this game.... "sins must come but woe to him who brings them in...." I hear you say) Some of the lads really seem to like the darts and I get to win most of the time so it seems a good arrangement to me. (If Tom McGibbon is reading this blog I'm ready for you any time boyo...Partick Thistle indeed!!)
We have a table tennis table which both lads and girls use but we also have various board games like UNO and Take Two ( a rapid form of scrabble ) which these girls are playing here.
We even have a points system and points make prizes.
Pray that the young people who have been coming on Friday nights will feel they want to give their lives to the Lord
Pastor Mark