The Story of the Mobile Phone Pouch

Many years ago I remember talking to a brother who had been to a meeting where the late Derek Prince was the main speaker.

Now I am telling this story secondhand and from distant memory so I trust I am not breaking any copyright laws or writing any misquotes but the brother in question told me that Derek Prince had said something like God had given him an annointing for a particulr gift of healing and that, the gift he had was for the healing of people who had one leg shorter than the other.

Now this brother had exactly that problem and went up to Derek to be prayed for and was healed.

I remember the brother saying to me that he went home and without saying anything to his unsaved parents his mother a couple of days later said "Son what has happened to your legs as I've noticed there isn't that kink in the back of your trousers any more."

I was very struck by this testimony at the time and noticed also that the list of gifts in 1 Cor 12 talks about "gifts ( PLURAL ) of healing" and so thought that biblically this was possible.

Now from the time I became a Christian, if I am being honest, I think the gift of the Spirit I most wanted was the gift of healing and yet as much as I asked for it and as much as I prayed for the sick no gift of healing manifested itself.

So now with renewed vigour I asked the Lord "well at least a gift of healing for a specific sickness Lord"

Sadly, although over the years I have seen one or two people healed and even dramatically when I have prayed, the gift or gifts of healing does not seem to be something the Spirit has chosen to give me ( I live in hope though )

Now what, I hear you say, has all this got to do with a mobile phone pouch.

Well as my wife will tell you ( if I let her which I won't ) I am always mislaying things around the house

I put keys, important documents, money etc etc down somewhere and then cannot find where I have put them.

This has been going on for some years now.

However, about a year ago, when I had yet again mislaid something and was getting frustrated because I could not find it I suddenly stopped my frantic search and turned to the Lord and prayed "Lord show me where it is - either open my eyes or lead me to it as I search"

And praise God He led me straight to it within a matter of seconds.

I was, as you can imagine, full of praise and thanksgiving and joy.

Since then I have done this on every occassion that I have mislaid something and without fail the Lord has led me to it within seconds.

( The single occassion when I didn't find my driving license and residency card the Lord that day led me to the policemen who had taken them and forgotten to give them back - that's another story )

I get such joy when this happens that I almost want to mislay something deliberately so the Lord can encourage me.

(Of course you can't do that since you know where you mislaid it and therefore it isn't mislaid)

Yes but what's that got to do with the mobile phone pouch I hear you impatiently asking.

I'm tempted to say look at next week's blog for the answer but I am guessing after reading this one you might not log in again.

About 3 weeks ago I lost my mobile phone pouch in the house. I looked for it and didn't find it but didn't have time to search diligently.

Again I looked in a rushed way unsuccessfully and so on until last Saturday.

When finally I stopped and said "What am I doing - Lord please lead me to it"

Well I looked in a place where I had searched about 100 times and didn't find it but I moved to the second place where I had already looked but not diligently and there it was.

This led me to praising and thanking him with joy.

Then the following day - Sunday. A sister came to me after the meeting and said "Brother Mark, I am so stressed; I have mislaid a large sum of money in the house and I cannot find it - I've been looking all week"

So I explained how the Lord answers my prayers and leads me to where the lost item is and suggested she pray the same but I could see she did not have the faith.

So I prayed for her that the Lord would open her eyes and lead her to where the money was.

Praise the Lord the next morning she rang me full of joy and thanksgiving to God to say the Lord had led her straight to it.

Praise HIm

So maybe I didn't get a gift of healing like Derek Prince but ...... have you mislaid anything in the house?

Oh that God would annoint your prayers and mine that lost souls ( those precious lost silver coins of God ) would be found.

Perhaps we need to pray He opens our eyes to see where they are and leads us to them?

Pastor Mark

Adolescents party at Karis Pizza

This is our adolescent group having an ice cream party at our Pizza restaurant.

There were 23 of them to-day but the group has as many as 30 attending on a Tuesday on a regular basis.

The large majority of them are from non churched families

We meet with these on a Tuesday because we do not have the room in our present building to meet on a Sunday.

Around 2 or 3 of them are now coming regularly to our ordinary Sunday morning meeting but it would be so much better if we had the facilities for them to meet on a Sunday morning.

Thus they would start off for the first few minutes in the church and thereby the link would be made with all with the church.

We're praying for new facilities to be able to accommodate the increasing numbers of kids of all ages wanting to come to the church

Pastor Mark

Petrica Vornic

This is Petrica Vornic and thanks to the provision of a vehicle for the physically disabled we have been able to get him to church.

He is 20 yrs old and used to come to the Karis club 3 years ago when he was able bodied

Two years ago he fell of a horse led cart and the cart then ran over his back and paralysed him. He was in bed for 6 months unable to move.

But he is a very determined young man and has now got back the use of both his arms and tries to walk short distances on crutches even though he has little use of his legs

We are able to bring him to the meeting on Sundays and to the youth group on Fridays because we have the physically disabled vehilce.

He's looking for a girlfriend

We're praying he finds God

Pastor Mark

Tiddlers group

This is a picture of our "Tiddlers group" at our church in Gotesti

They meet on a Sunday morning in one of the rooms at the back of the church.

Over half those that come are from families who are not members in the church.

In fact we have 30 or more that regularly come and we have a serious problem with space. Larisa, who is the wife of Ruslan our deacon, and who is pictured at the back of the room confirms how the only effective way that kids of this age learn is through teaching by games and as can easily be seen from this picture there is simply no room for anything other than the kids sitting on their chairs and listening.

In fact we have the same problem for all the children's groups that meet at the church as numbers have grown.

Our middle age group (8-11) has over 30 coming and almost all from non-churched families

In short we have outgrown our facilities at least as far as our children's work is concerned - this has been a constant source of concern in this last year to Larisa and indeed all of us.

There are so many extra children coming and wanting to come. We are blessed with having 15-20 teachers and leaders for these groups of kids from 2-22, the single thing restricting us is not having suitable facilities.

We have an empty building beside the church 36m by 12m that we own but it needs a new roof and then converted inside to provide these rooms for this work

Pray with us that God provides

Pastor Mark

Every month here in the South of Moldova we pastors and leaders of various outreach works meet to encourage one another.

We plan outreach missions together like the Tony Anthony mission and we also plan training conferences - at the end of the month Mission Without Borders are coming to do training for all our Sunday school teachers.

We also have a time of sharing and praying together. This unity is, I believe, one of the main reasons why the Lord is moving much here in the South as well as being really refreshing for us all.

We tend to move the venue for meeting together to different locations and this month was the turn of Gotesti.

Always we have a fellowship meal together after the "business" and this gave us an opportunity to invite all the leaders and their wives to come to a meal in our newly opened Karis Pizza.

Usually around 40-50 leaders and wives come to these meetings but on Monday we had 87 attend.

Poor Mari, my wife, who was organising the meal kept telling me "We can't do it! We can't do it"

She was right - God did it!

In fact I was amazed at the effeciency of our team of cooks who got out 48 pizzas in total, fresh, hot and without any serious waiting time.

It gives us courage to realise that we could indeed cater for a wedding here both for service and space.

We also had a lot of very encouraging feedback from all who attended about the quality of the pizzas and also the look of the coffee shop.

Do keep praying for this project. We are holding our weekly Alpha course here every Sunday and are also touching the spiritual objectives of having opportunity to talk to and befriend unsaved that would never come to the church.

Pastor Mark

Alpha course

These are some of the people taking part in a new outreach course that we have started at Gotesti.

It is called the Alpha course and is much used of God throughout the world to bring people to faith in Him

The course consists of the group having a meal together followed by a talk given by me on a theme followed by a discussion\question time together.

The titles of the talks are for example "Who is Jesus" "Why did Jesus die" "How can I be certain I'm going to heaven"

We already have 25 coming and are holding the meals in the function room of the coffee shop.

To-day's talk was "Why did Jesus die?" and by questions and comments clearly ones in the group were touched.

One girl came to me privately afterwards and said she has many sins and wants to know how to be forgiven.

Pray for Ruslan and I as we go to meet her at her home during the week and try to help her

The man in this couple has just returned from working abroad and spoke of how he felt God's helping hand with him

He is seeking more

The bible says "I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God that you might know that you have eternal life"

In other words it is possible to know for certain that we will be in heaven when we die while we are on this earth.

All of these in the group would say they believe in the Son of God (Jesus) but 18 of them by their own confession would say they cannot say for certain that they will be heaven.

Pray for next week's talk which is on exactly this theme and for the 18

Pastor Mark