Christmas goes on

Well we were encouraged that we still had a good turn out to the meeting after Christmas.

Around 40 non Christians came.

As you look at the left hand side of this picture nearly all are non Christians from Chircani.

Some of these have given their lives to Christ in the last weeks some are sowing interestin finding out more.

I have planned to gather together on Thursday in Chircani all those who are interested in hearing more about how to come into a personal relationship with Christ including those that have given their lives to Christ recently.

In January we will start another "seekers course" for all these and for others in Gotesti that have shown similar interest.

Pray for this family. They are the parents of one of our youth.

Vasia and Catea and their neighbour Rita. We ask for God to bring them to the church regularly.

I hope to visit them this week and encourage them to come.

All others you see in the pciture are unsaved from Gotesti

Pray for our next outreach which is our Christmas programme at Constantinovca, one of our church plant villages.

They celebrate the Orthodox Christmas in that village which is January 7th so we will do a children's progamme in the kindergarten and probably do carols in the village as the time approaches

Here are some of our youth doing a programme in this week's meeting

Some of these will be involved in the carol singing

Also the team that is going to Chisinau Jan 2-6 to take a winter camp for our adolescents are taken from this group as well as some others

Do pray for them and that there wil be a harvest amongst the adolescents during this week

Thanks for all your prayers

Pastor Mark

Christmas Meeting 2007

To-day we had our Christmas meeting at which 243 adults attended + 86 kids + 94 kids we had in our programme from our groups in Gotesti.

This meant that we were able to share the gospel with 190 unsaved of whom 4 came to give their lives to the Lord after the meeting and another 36 completed forms looking for follow up of some kind or another.

In the message we spoke of Christ, the sent one's mission being to preach good news to the poor, TO HEAL THE BROKEN HEARTED..... and saw many faces showing signs that they were pondering these things in their hearts as did Mary in Luke 2:19

Pray for us as we try to follow up all those that came to the meeting.

Of course we are fully aware that most of these have come not seeking the Lord but rather because it was a Christmas meeting. Some because their children were in the programme some because they were hoping for a Christmas gift or some because they got an aid packet this week but nonetheless we have had opportunity to impart the gospel and, we trust, something of the Spirit to them to-day.

This dear lady on the right is called Marusia.

This was her first time at our meeting, coming because she got an aid packet.

After the meeting she spoke to one of our members with tears in hers eyes saying this is the first time in her life she has ever recived a gift.

Our thanks on her behalf to you who have given money to make these aid packets possible

The mayor of our village was also at the meeting and indeed gave an opening greeting.

Pray for him. He is an honest man working in our village that is anything but.

Our children's groups put on a wonderful programme of which the highlight was probably the angels parade that the adolescents groups put on.

One of the teachers from the Chircani Kindergarten was at the meeting and after seeing their programme asked if they could come and do it in the Kindergarten next week

Pray for Igor and Tanya and 4 of our youth as they take this adolescent group away for a winter camp Jan 2-6. We want to see many of these come through to a new birth. They are aged 11-14 and we believe this is entirely possible at this age.

All of us here at Biserica Baptista Gotesti and us of the McCormick Family wish you all a wonderful Christmas and prosperous new year

Pastor Mark

Christmas programme in Chircani

This year we were able to do our Christmas programme in the Chircani school.

Marin is the Orthodox priest in this village and we have a very good relatioship with him.


Here he is opening the meeting with me in the festival hall in the school. This is a photo that most Baptist pastors would be shocked to see as in general there tends to be very poor relations between priests and pastors












We have about 50 kids in the club in Chircani from 7 -14 and all took part in the programme.





Around 20 teachers and parents also attended and later some came to our Wednesday meeting in Gotesti.

All our kids that took part in the programme received a bag of goodies.

It was a joy for me to see these kids getting a pair of socks, an orange, a bar of chocolate and a pen and being thrilled with it.

It reminded me of clip I once saw on a "You've been framed" programme of a 10 yr old opening his Christmas present on video to discover a
200$ computer game which he smashed into pieces because it was not to his liking


This is good reason for me to consider it a blessing that my kids grow up
in Moldova is ti not?

Christmas getting close

It's a great time of year if you are a pastor and evangelist like me to see the meetings full of rejoicing Christians and a large number of non Christians.

We counted 36 non Christian adults amongst us as well as 15 or so adolecents

One young woman Anisoara, the married daughter of one of our Christian families from Chircani gave her life to the Lord after the meeting.

We feel this is likely to be a new birth as she was part of the church 7 years ago until she ran off to live with the first boy who swept her off her feet. She knew the word of God well and has been coming again to the meetings for some months now so we suppose she understands all about the cost of being a Christian in terms of His Lorship etc.

We also had 17 people complete reponse forms asking for follow up visits or wanting to start a bible study etc. Many also completed the point that says I gave my life to the Lord to-day but from experience this usually means that they haven't fully understood it's implications.

However one who wants some material to read to discover how to have a personal relaionship with God is a doctor from the village whose cousin is a believer from the village of Pascani and who visited us to-day bringing this doctor with her.

She visited us to-day because Grija ( see photo ), a preacher from her church, was our speaker to-day.

Another one of the response cards was completed by a 10 yr old boy who gave his life to the Lord to-day but also wrote under the heading "other comments or questions"

"I want to know why God loves me"

What a text to preach on.

We also had the 6 out of the 9 new believers who are in the discpleship course along with their disciplers come out to the front and sing a carol.

For Alexei, the former mayor ( front right ) it was the first time ever siniging in public. He was relieved to agree with me afterwards that he did it for the Lord.

We are hoping that some of these will come through to baptism probably in February.

This time of year sees us also involved with giving out aid to poor families and is probably the reason why we get so many non Christians coming at this time of the year.

It is not an easy thing to select who should get aid and who we have to pass by as the need far outstrips the resources we have to give but we are nonetheless able to do something significant for around 160 families in our villages this year with the generous gifts of many of you who are reading this blog

We thank you all on their behalf

Many of you have been asking how the pizzerie is getting on. The answer is that we are still battling bureucracy here with the final stamp delayed yet again. But we are trusting the Lord as to His date for opening and are feeling this might be in January

Here is a typical example of the problems. The sign ( see picture ) which should now be up isn't because it is not properly made and unless we do some extra work on it is will leek water etc.

Keep praying for us though. We have truly seen much answer to prayer this last year and really depend on your intercessions

Pastor Mark

16 December 2007

The Gift of God

Christmas will soon be upon us and things are becoming very busy. We have just had a visit from the Eurovangelism team including the director Dave Roderick seen here preaching in our church.

Eurovangelism supply funds for us to be able to buy a food packet to give to poor families at this time of the year. We are able to help 150 families with a food gift of flour, potatoes, rice, macaroni etc. amounting to the equivalent of a month’s salary for a teacher.

It makes a substantial difference to these families to have this help

The husband of the woman above left her 2 years ago with 6 kids to bring up and no income

To the left is a family whose husband is honest and works when he can but only available is the odd day digging someone's garden or working at a house where they are doing repairs.

Taking these gifts to families also gives us an opportunity to speak of a greater Gift that God has given us.

In the past many of those receiving aid have then proceeded to come to the church and some have gone on to get saved.

Nicu our blind member is an example of one of these and yesterday he did a song with his accordian in the meeting

We had 39 non Christian adults at the monring meeting as well as around 20 non Christian adolescents.

Around 10 of those where at the meeting for the first time while two adults from Chircani who have been coming to the meetings for some time now gave their lives to the Lord after the preaching.

We were also fortunate to have international worship leader Rob Newey with us, who came with the Eurovangelism team.

He took 2 days of seminars on leading worship which was attended by around 70 people from many diferent churches in the South.

Pray for us as we do a Christmas gospel message every Sunday with our Christmas special on Sunday 23 December. We usually get large numbers coming and many have been coming for a while so we are looking to the Lord for a harvest amongst these.

Pray for the coffee shop which has been again delayed with documents and other problems. We will not now open before January.

Wishing you all a restful Christmas and a prosperous new year in all respects

Pastor Mark

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Ministering at a Baptism in Cantemir

We were called to provide a programme and preach the gospel at a baptism meeting at Cantemir Baptist church.

Pastor Volodia and his wife Virginia ( extreme left ) pastor this church and also have a responsibility for several church plants in the surrounding area.

The paralysed girl in the centre is cronically ill and is in fact going blind

Sister Catea next to sister Virginia has a 23 yr old son physically disabled from birth whose disablity means she has had to wash his clothes every day for all his life. We discovered she has an alcoholic husband so no money comes into the house and she has thus been hand washing her son's clothes for 23 years.

We were able to give pastor Volodia 200$ from gifts that the Bayfarm church people left for her to buy a second hand washing machine PTL.

In our programme we brought Vova ( the former mafia man ( and Tanya his wife as well as Aliona for worship.)

Vova gave his testimony ( for the first time in public )

Interestingly enough in the congregation was the assistant chief constable for the Cantemir region who is a member at this church ( In fact he is pictured on the right of the baptistm candidates ( the younger of the two men ))

He knew Vova from his various run-ins with the law and it was wonderful to see the two men having felowship as brothers in the same family after the meeting.

Igor, our youth leader, here on the right of the picture translated for me in the preaching as he usually does. Indeed we have preached the gospel in 5 meetings this month either harvest services or mission meetings and he has translated in all but the last where I preached in Romanian

Aliona has been leading worship in evangelsistic events with me for 11 years now and with brother Sasa Triastar for several years before that right up to his death of cancer.

Tanya, Vova's wife spoke a powerful poem just before the preaching whose theme was "You were my good Christian neighbour and yet for shame you never told me the gospel and here I am now in hell"

This enabled me to start the message off by saying well here we are to tell you the message.

Four people responded to a gospel appeal at the end of the message

The following Sunday we went with the same team to do the same programme at another church in a town called Gurgiulesti

Vova gave his testimony again as it was interesting to see how much he had gained from the experience of the previous week

There are many mafia "friends" that Vova had in this village but unfortunately none was there to hear his testimony

However the mayor of the town was there and was visibly under conviction during the preaching of the gospel but did not respond to an appeal.

We are planning that Vova and Tanya will get baptised in our chruch in either February or March along with, it appears, several other condidates.

The date depends on Vasile Tofan and his programme for next year.

He was a famous Romanian boxer who had prospects of becoming world championj in the super heavyweight division but eneded up in prison in Germany where he got saved and he now serves the Lord and the gospel

He will come to preach in a 3 say mission that we will do that will end on a Sunday with the baptisms

He is also bringing with him a well known former mafia man from Galati so it will be a mafia man festival when this mission takes place

Keep praying for us

Mark

Our Adolescent football team wins medal

In October after a Sunday service we had a presentation for our adolescents football team. The team was formed 3 months ago and Igor and Ilusa are the trainers of the team.
Operation Mobilisation were the inspiration behind this new ministry inviting churches to start football teams while they offered training for the leaders on how to coach the teams.

Igor and Ilusa meet with the boys every Tuesday and Thursday, have a time of skills training, then a talk from the bible ( which has seen 5 of these boys repent ) and then a match.

Our team went to O.M in Chisinau and competed with another 4 teams on a round robin basis for a cup; they came 2nd and all got medals which you can see in the photo

One of the lads got best footballer in the tournament and another best defender.

Pray for this group of boys. Most of them have been coming to our Friday afternoon "grupa mare" for adolescents from 11-14 years.