Opening Mission at Porumbesti

This is the church building of the Holy Trinity Baptist Church in Porumbesti, a village of 1700 people and that until now has had no building for Christians to meet in.

With the help of Greenway Community church from Bristol, UK and others from the West Pastor Stefan Hanganu pictured here and his team of workers have managed to construct this building from the foundations to it's present state in 10 months.

The speed with which the church has been built has been a witness to those who live in the village.

Although the building is not completed ( they hope that God will provide and they will be able to finish it by this time next year ) the meeting room inside is finished and thus the church felt it was time to do a special week of meetings and invite all the village to come and join them. As you can see from this picture a good number turned out each evening.

A team from Greenway Community church who partner with Porumbesti church came out to be part of the opening mission. They were in the village every day from 10.00 am and were involved in visiting homes in the village and participating in the mission that Porumbesti ran for adolescents to which about 15-30 came each day.

Then in the evening meetings they sang songs, gave testimonies and Chris Poulson, the leader of the team, and myself shared in the preaching of a gospel message each evening. Here Chris is preaching on the lost son from Luke 15.

Many hearts were touched as he shared of the grace of God to the returning son and the joy that resulted and then of the hardness of heart of the older son and how by his choice he remained outside the house - many in the meeting realised that they were still outside God's house - not the building but outside a relationship with Him - and steadily throughout the week people began to reconcile themselves to God.

All of the team members gave their testimonies at some stage during the week. Here Mark is using a £5 note to illustrate that even after he crushed it, stamped on it and dirtied it, it is still worth £5 as indeed we are to God, a fact he personally realised after he had ruined his own life and then was found by God.

After the meeting each evening the team members grabbed a translator and went to talk to those who had remained behind for tea and biscuits ( almost everybody ). Here Keith (who was on the team that came out last year) is together with Liz ( also a veteran from last year ) sharing with someone who had come to the meeting as a result of their visit earlier in the day. Rachael, our 11 year old daughter, was translating for them.

In this picture Kerra on the right with hair tied back is working with Natasa, one of our translators, and sharing with two young women

The team were a blessing to the work and good company to be with.

May the Lord repay them for their sacrifice

Pastor Mark