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

Tigheci

Valeriu Munteanu and his wife Angela are responsible for the small church in the rather big village of Tigheci (3000 citizens).
Here he is at the lecturn in a room of his house that has been converted into a meeting room.
Valeriu was led to the Lord by Nicolai Sin who was the pastor at Antonesti who went recently to USA - see earlier blog.
Nicolai discipled him for some time and then left him responsible with Angela for the little church that had grown up.
There are around 5/6 that come regularly to the meeting. One lady is 84 and actually handles the catering for the church even cooking for foreign guests when they come. When she was saved she was almost bedridden but when she gave her life to the Lord He entered in and revitalised not just her soul but her body also.
It's been difficult for Valeriu working in the village as people are suspicious that he is leading some kind of a cult.
We have been trying to take over in some measure the role that Nicolai had as his mentor with the limited amount of time that I have. However we have been with a worship group and preached the gospel on Sunday afternoons while Valeriu has invited non Christians to come. There have been a few that have come and been quite open. We continue to work with him as best we can be of service
Pray that the Lord saves some villagers and the church thereby gets encouraged
Pastor Mark

Ray Tucker Ambassadors in Sport

In the late Spring it was great to have my old friend (actually I ought to say my friend whom I have known for a long time ) Ray Tucker with us again.
He is the European Director of Ambassadors in Sport and he was here doing a TREC course in the capital in conjunction with O.M. The course trains Christians how to run a football ministry - training, the young people who come, in football skills and teaching them about the Lord.
I have known Ray and his wife Christa and their sons Paul and Timothy since I became a Christian. At the time I was living in Newark but had a job in Grantham and so we felt it was of the Lord to put an advert in the local paper to find accommodation in Gramtham. We wrote "Christian man seeks Chrisrian home" and got 5 replies to this advert. I visited them all and each were genuine Christians and each seemed the right place to be but as we sought the Lord we realised that all the homes were good but all apart from Ray and Christa were also looking for a young man to help with their needs - nothing wrong in that - but we realised that Ray and Christa had simply replied to the advert wondering if God was aksing them to serve Him in this way.
Thus began a relationship of 28 years. For the first year of my Christian life Ray and Christa were spiritual parents in many ways helping me through all the big changes that happen in a man's life when he turns to God's ways from what was a wild life style. They were Christians of great love and patience towards me - they still are - and the Lord did much in that year until they moved to Manchester to take up a post in a Christian school and I, now established in the Lord, moved into my own home.
One of the trainees at the TREC course is our own Viorel, the leader of the football ministry.
Here he is sharing the word with the young footballers who have come to the club. He is, himself, quite a decent footballer and plays for the Gotesti seniour football team. Having done what is quite a high standard professional-like training schedule with them including ball skills and fitness training they all stop and have a time when Viorel shares something from God's word. The boys are generally very attentive and several have been to our youth meeting Friday nights.
Pray for Ray and Viorel in their European and local ministries respectively
Pastor Mark

Easter Programme

It was great to again be able to have a special meeting at Easter in our church at Gotesti.

As usual we had our children do various songs and poems about the resurrection and many of their parents said how they had enjoyed what was done

In fact they often say how they appreciate what we do for the kids which obviously encourages us

Here Alina, MIsa and Maricica’s daughter is singing a solo. Isn’t she so cute.

Actually her mum tells me she not’s so cute at home. Ours are perfect at home I tell her with my tongue so far in my check I can hardly breathe.

I thought pastors weren’t supposed to tell lies she tells me – enough said.

We had about 30 parents of kids come to the Easter meeting many of whom were non members.

We’re praying that the message of Easter – the death of Jesus as our substitute for our sins and His resurrection so that we might have new life – will remain with them and they too will come into this new life.

Pastor Mark

Ladies Day – 8^th March

Every year on the 8^th of March here in Moldova and in many countries in the East we celebrate ladies day – when all ladies get “spoiled” by their husbands sons etc.

Usually they get flowers or chocolates and a nice meal is made ( although it’s the women that make the meal  – no surprise there I hear you say)

Their children did a programme for them in the church to celebrate their mum’s day.

My wife Mari was the speaker on this day while I was in the coffee shop looking after clients – it meant I missed her first evangelistic message ( maybe that was her plan or His) I am told it spoke to the heart.

Here Bianca, Ilusa and Diana’s daughter, and Abigail are singing a duet and many of the other kids did poems or songs.

Many of the women said to us afterwards how it was such a lovely time of relaxation for them – something one has to say that in general women here do not get much of

Pastor Mark

February Baptisms

Baptism Meeting

We had the great privilege of baptizing another 20 or so people from Gotesti, Chircani Porumbesti, Hanaseni and other villages.

There were some encouraging testimonies of how they had come to the Lord and also how some had undergone a measure of trials to keep on with their faith – often from unbelieving partners.

Here in Moldova 98% of people ate baptized in the Orthodox church as babies and their doctrine is such that this means they are baptized into the church and thus are saved. It is thus understandable that those who are convinced this is the truth are thereby hostile to us who baptized these ones a second time ( since the majority were baptized as babies ). They feel we are baptising them out of salvation and into who knows what ( in their view ). So often the unbelieving partner is angry and accuses the new believer of “changing his/her law” Sadly the new believers if women often receive a beating to go with the accusations.

The vast majority of those that were baptized were ones that got saved in the Alpha course that we ran throughout the autumn and winter. We had around 70 come each week for the 10 weeks of the course of whom 50 at least were seekers. In the picture you can see some of the discussion groups. The format and level of teaching seems to work well for all ages as we had ones from age 15-71 attend the course.

Unfortunately culturally it doesn’t work for us to do another Alpha immediately after this one as people are starting to work in the fields and it is difficult for them to come to a 10 week course.

Keep us in your prayers as we start to visit and talk to people over the next few months that they might become ones that will come to the next Alpha course planned in November

New Pastor at Antonesti

It was with some emotion that we attended the final Sunday of the ministry of Nicolai Sin in the Rep of Moldova.

He has been ministering and planting and growing churches all around the South of Moldova for the last 20 odd years and on Sunday many of his friends and peers gathered together to say a fond farewell as he and his family emigrate to USA.
His final pastorate has been the church in Antonesti ( while he has continued to mentor others where he was involved in planting the church )

Many of those that came to the front to share a short word were ones he had led to the Lord and who are now pastors or leaders in other churches or plants.

Some had travelled over 100Km to get there and as you can imagine it was an emotional time.

At the end of the meeting we had an unofficial hand over of the church leadership to the soon to be new pastor - Roma Munteanu. Here is with the members in the church at Antonesti as they said their testimonies to Nicolai and his minsitry to them and also gave him a small farewell gift ( in a future blog we will no doubt be doing a profile on Roma and Tanya and his family when we will have a better photo ).

Roma is and will be working with me as we go through the process of transfer so that he and the believers in the church find it as easy as possible to cope with the change. If all goes well we would expect Roma and Tanya to move to the village at the end of May and then we would take it from there.

Keep them in your prayers and Nicolai and his family also

Yours and His

Pastor Mark

Mission at Giurgulesti

The church at Giurgulesti had their annual outreach mission last week and we from Gotesti were invited to come with a team and do a programme and preach the gospel on Sunday the final day.

I came with 6 others including Slavic ( who led our programme) and Aliona his wife who together with Anisoara sang the songs in our programme.

Recently baptised ones Sergiu and Vasia gave their testimonies.

We took the passage from Luke 15 on the lost sheep and tried to show how this is an example of our experiences when we leave the Shepherd's way and go our own way i.e the lost sheep undoubtedly became hungry on it's own and so do we ( although ours is a spiritual hunger for love, assurance, purpose etc )
We then referred to the fact that Jesus is the answer to this emptiness - He Himself said "I am the bread of life" We looked at how the sheep probably got very hurt and how we also get hurt from various experiences in life - abuse rejection etc. Jesus said "I have come to heal the broken hearted" And various other things we also loooked at.

At the end of the message we made an appeal for anyone who wanted to come back to God and follow Him with the rest of their lives.

There were two that responded outwardly and here in the photo is Dana, one of those, being embraced by her father who is already a member in the church.

They held each other for a long time and wept.

It was a priviledge to be at that moment in her life and that of her family.

Pastor Mark

Chris Elston

We were pleased to have Chris Elston again with us at the church in Gotesti.

Chris has a teaching English ministry in Emanuel church in Cahul.

Around 80 students come in various groups and many then go on to come to the church regularly.

We were just at their end of term Christmas party when a great time was had by all.

Chris came on a visit to us in Gotesti and preached on Sunday morning.

His message was on the grace of God. God demonstrated how much he loves us by giving His only Son to die for us while we were still sinners - Is there therefore, anything good He will withhold from us if already gave us the best he has - his own Son. Many were touched by the timely reminder of His grace.

Ion Manica, a former student of our bible school was also with us along with his wife Irina.

He is from the village of Tartarul and the church there meets in his house. It's been hard work for them for many years and yet his message was from the Psalms about being thankful in all things. It encouraged us all as we all know how difficult things are for them.

Pastor Mark

Funeral at Moscovei

I was recently invited to preach at a funeral in the town of Moscovei.

The man who had died was a member in the church there but many years before his repentance he was a much respected brigade leader when the coountry was communist.

Thus the church were expecting many people to turn out for his funeral and indeed they did.

In Moldovan evangelical funerals the body is kept in an open casket and the procession starts from the house. This is where I had the privilidege of speaking. I shared how the body dies but not the soul, the person we are inside. We spoke of the Bible's teaching that there are 2 places after death and we will spend eternity either in heaven or in hell. I shared that both Vanya ( the dead man ) and his wife Ania knew before he died that they both will be in heaven and so they will one day meet again with joy. I explained that in 1 John5:13 we are told we also can know this for certain before we die if we put our trust in Jesus as our Lord and Saviour.

Under communism evangelical churches were not permitted to preach the gospel publically except at funerals and weddings which is probably why they use the opportunity to preach several times throughout the funeral service to the many unsaved that come.

We walked from the house to the graveyard and stopped at various points to share the gospel. Here Sergiu the pastor of Moscovei Baptist church is speaking to the crowd as they stopped outside the church building. I cannot tell you what he was preaching as he spoke in Russian ( indeed my message was translated into Russian also, as, for most people in the village Russian is their first language). ( Moscovei is often called little Moscow by locals)

Mari was very poorly at home so I did not go all the way with them to the graveyard but they insisted that they feed me before I went so I sat down in the newly built canteen that they have for the vulnerable children's ministry and ate a lovely bors.

While I was eating the lady in this picture approached me - her name is Masa. She asked me if I remembered a mission that we did in 1996 in the cultural house in Moscovei. I said I remembered it well ( we had to get a translator to come from Chisinau, the capital, as Russian translators in the South were hard to find) I also said that we had done the mission at the cultural house in the centre of Moscovei and that a lot of people came every night of the mission but during the whole week only one person came out to the front in response to daily appeals to repentance. She said "Yes that is true - I am at that person" Despite a very hard life both before and after her commitment to Christ she is a member in the church and has been going on with God and serving Him ever since.

Go knows how to encourage us

Pastor Mark

Alpha Course

Our winter Alpha course began on 30th October and we are now into the 5th week. The numbers have again been good this year with 50-70 coming each week.

We have had groups from Cantemir, Porumbesti, Badicu, Chircani and Gotesti as before and this year Dorin Moga who is responsible for the church at Baurcii has been bringing seekers each week.

As in all Alpha courses there is a meal to start with and we serve pizzas in our course which seems to go down well with everybody. There has been so many questions over the weeks that we decided to add an extra topic for this week - Repent and Believe. In the message we spoke of how we can never make ourselves good enough for God by good works on our part because He is perfect and our sins will not permit us to come into His presence but that He has resolved this Himself by putting all our sins and their judgment on Jesus His Son on the cross. We then explained how we need to put our trust in this work that Jesus did on the cross and thereby be counted righteous by God ( or counted as if we had never sinned ). Then we looked at how the Bible says we also need to repent and what that means i.e giving our whole lives over to Christ and committing ourselves with the Holy Spirit's help to obey Him in everything.

The message was followed by splitting into groups to discuss what we had heard.

Here Ruslan is with the group from Baurcii - some were hearing this message for the first time.

I helped lead Lucian's group from Badicu and was very encouraged about how open and honest they were about the state of their souls.

They all seemed to have grasped about repentance meaning making Jesus Lord of your life and were honest about the reasons they had not made the committment yet.

We'd value your prayers for these ones and the others as they consider these big decisions for their lives

Pastor Mark

Progress with Chircani Building

We thank God, that with His enabling, and your support we are making progress with the Chircani building.

This is phase 1 we are working on which is replacing the roof.

As you can see the facia has been stripped to the brick and the roof top removed.

The double glazed windows have been fitted for quite a while.

Unfortunately as we began the work of roof replacement we discovered that there was more needing done than the original drawings required in terms of underpinning and raising coulmns which has added to the expense substiantially but the weather has remained kind and it has meant that if we do not run out of money we may indeed get phase 1 completed before the winter sets in which was our objective.


This is Avram whom many of you know. He is a member at Gotesti church and a very experienced and wise master builder - like Bezalel Ex 35:30,31- Avram is our foreman on the site at Chircani . He has been a real provision of the Lord as there has been a lot of specialist work needed regarding underpinning and columns etc and he has been that man.

We have had between 5 and 7 people working on site including a watchman.

If we finish this phase before winter then we hope to start phase 2 in the Spring which would be outside plastering and inside meeting room and hopefully 2 Sunday school rooms .

This architect's picture is the goal we are all working towards

Thanks for all your support

Pastor Mark

P.S Latest - we have started on the roof itself see photo

The Wedding of Sergiu and Liuba

Just one week after Sergiu and Liuba were baptised ( see a previous blog ) here thay are getting married also at the church in Gotesti.

The church was full with a large number of mostly Liuba's relatives attending along with members of our church.

We were able to share a message on "Your Maker is your Husband" and speak of how He wants a personal relationship with us like a husband to a wife.

Liuba's father who is in very poor health made the effort to come and give Liuba away while Sergiu's mum was responsible for all the catering making most of it herself ( she has been a cook in kindergarten's and schools for all her working life catering for big numbers - this wedding was a stroll in the park for her). The food was delicious.

Slavic was M.C and he did very well. Most of those attending had never been to our church or any evangelical church so I guess they did not know what to expect when it came to the reception afterwards. Often, of course, they hear all sorts of incorrect rumours about what we are like but you could see them all starting to steadily relax as Slavic began to lead in games and funny stories etc

As the reception went on they were paticipating quicker in the games than our own members.

We had the priviledge of being at the top table as well as having performed the ceremony and preached. To the right of Sergiu as you look at this picture is Vasia Rascovschii. He was also baptised with Sergiu the week before and he was his best man. To the left of Liuba is her, as yet unmarried, sister Marina who interestingly was the one who caught the bouquet tossed by the bride. So watch this space

Pastor Mark