Fisher of Men

This is Vasile Boev from Chircani who is one of those who repented in December.

He is also one who will receive baptistm on May 18 when we have our baptism meeting.

The fish beside him is 25 Kg and there is a lovely story of God's faithfulness attached to the catching of it.

Before getting saved Vasile had a big drinking problem and this finally led to him receiving a bad beating from his so-called friends, so bad indeed that he sustained some brain damage which even now is not yet healed.

However Vasile sees this now as the Lord's hand as it brought him to his senses.

He started coming to the meeting and in December got saved

What has this got to do with the fish you might well ask?

Well, having now got saved he went one day into his garage and took the 300 litres of wine that remained in the barrel and poured it out in his garden even though selling this was the only means of support for his family.

When one of his neighbours saw the wine flowing he came running in to Vasile thinking an accident had happened and could not believe the madness of his neighbour.

Vasile then went on to rip out all the vines that he had in his garden and burn them. To me it was like he had crushed the golden calf, burned it in the fire and scattered the ashes into the wind with no thought of how he would now support his family.

God, of course could not let that pass without demonstrating his faithfulness to Vasile in that within a few days he caught this big fish which he sold for over 100$ recouping almost all of what he would have sold the wine for over the next 3 months or so.

May God make Vasile into a fisher of men

Woman's Day

In the UK ,mother's day was recently celebrated but here in Moldova as in most of Eastern Europe one of the year's biggest national celebration days is 8th of March - woman's day.

We chose to mark the day by having our own 8th March meeting in the church on the Sunday.

Our programme was designed for ladies and the message was also about women in the bible finishing with the woman who broke the alabaster jar of ointment over Jesus and asking those present "What good work are you doing for Jesus"

Here the smallest children in our Sunday school are doing a programme of songs and poems mostly around the theme of mothers

We were also able to rejoice, as a church, in a specially meaningful event with Jana and her baby Cristean by praying a blessing on him for his future.

The event was particularly moving because Jana ,his mother, had been a member with us but had some time ago fallen away into sin.

However, 2 weeks ago when Brian Pile and others were with us from England ( see earlier blog ) God had moved among us powerfully and nearly 40 people came out to the front to get right with God in various ways.

Jana was one of those who came out to the front and in discussions with her this week it was clear that she was back in peace with God and full of joy rejoicing in His grace and the refreshing of her relationship with Him.

During the week we ran a mission for adolescents - 11-14 yrs.

Around 25-30 kids came each day with around 10 new kids in total during the week with 7 responding in total during that time

The leaders tried to do something different each day and on this day that had a restaurant with a meniu that the kids were able to order pop corn or jelly beans or ice cream etc

The leaders were the waitresses and waiters

Of course they also had games and competitions etc.

Can you guess was this game is that these lads are playing?

We were also very priviledged to have former heavyweight boxing champion of Romania Vasile Tofan with us to bring the word of God to us the week before Woman's day.

He gave part of his testimony and then also preached a little.

At 24 he had the world at his feet with the very real possibility of getting to the top of the world rankings for boxing but he ended up in prison in Germany instead.

There he was wonderfully saved and he now has an international minsitry preaching the gospel and particularly reaching out to those in prison.

It is great to be enjoying the Lord moving in so many ways in our churhces in these days