Farewell Chris

Well, Chris Elston of England and Slovakia has now left us and returned to his work in the latter country.

We had a wonderful month with him as he taught our members English in groups like this picture and with personal lessons

We saw noticeable improvements in all our English speakers

He also took private lessons with several pastors and leaders twice per week

Here he is with Gelu, the leader of the youth work in Emanal church Cahul

Chris also assisted our ministry here in Gotesti, Chircani and Constantinovca by visiting and encouraging believers as here with Vasile from Chircani and he also went to visit those who don't yet know Christ as their personal savour taking the opportunity to share the gospel message with them

He and we are praying to see if he will return in January. The Lord's will be done

Where's Gheorghe?

This is Gheorghe from our church plant village of Chircani at last year's Christmas meeting in Gotesti.

The Sunday after the Christmas meeting he came to our meeting and did do for a few weeks.

However after a month or so we noticed he wasn't there and I asked "Where's Gheorghe?"

"Oh" said someone "he's fallen back into the drink"

We went to visit him the following week and managed to catch him sober and got to share some of the gospel with him but he chose not to come to the meeting the following Sunday nor since.

I remember thinking at the time He is a widower and lonely and if we were to visit him regularly and build a loving relationship with him there would be a good possibility that he might come through to salvation.

Sadly we only have enough workers in our church to spend the time with ones that show clear signs that they want to know more of God.

You'll remember that I sent out prayer cards of around 20 people that were at that Christmas meeting asking for your committed regular prayers for them to come through to salvation.

Gheorghe wasn't one of the 20. I had to be selective as to who to ask committed intercession for and he hadn't shown enough interest.

I remember at one stage I added 4 new people to the list and mentioned several others that you could remove from the list as they weren't showing signs of response and one of our praying friends wrote back to say that she wasn't going to stop praying for them.

I remember rejoicing at her committment and also feeling challenged by the Lord. However in truth it is quite impossible to visit everyone and take Gheorghe and ones like him into the centre of our prayers.

The main road from the South to the capital runs right through the cenre of our church plant village of Chircani the home village of Gheorghe.

On Tuesday, a sober Gheorghe stepped out onto the road and was knocked down and killed by a speeding car.

So to-day as I write I ask myself

"Where's Gheorghe now?"

Pastor Mark

Whoever believes in Him

I was visiting Alistair to-day after the death of his brother last week.

Alistair is 75 and his brother that died was 74. He was weepy with me to-day because he has another 6 brothers and sisters still living and not one of them is in peace with God.

Alistair used to be mayor of Gotesti, his brother who died was the former headmaster of the school and there were 60 wreaths at the grave as well as hundreds of people, pupils from the school teachers etc.

Alistair had talked to his brother only last week about getting right with God.

"Come to the church this Sunday - talk to brother Mark - he'll tell you the way of salvation"

His brother said this "I'd like to, but I was an atheist all this time how can I go to the church now"

"But said Alistair "prostitutes, drunkards mafia men go there and have been forgiven and changed - of course you can go"

But because he was an atheist he thought it to much of a hipocracy or who knows what his reasons were to come to the church

We both became emotional - what a tragedy

Jesus said "For God so loved the world ( this includes prostitutes and drunkards AND atheists ) that He gave His only begotten Son that WHOEVER believes in Him shall not perish but have everasting life"
John 3:16

What a tragedy that Alistrair's brother could not believe that WHOEVER inlcuded him.

Pastor Mark

Chris Elston

We have been very blessed to have an old friend with us for the month of September - Chris Elston

He is a missionary from UK serving in Slovakia but has come to us for this time to help out with the work

He has been visiting many of the citizens of Gotesti that have been open to the gospel but that we have not been able to do a follow up visit with.

He has also been preaching and teaching in the church and indeed other churches. The photo above is Chris giving his testimony at an outreach that Emanuel church organised for the opening of the new building.

Another great service he has been doing for the work of God here is teaching pastors and key workers English - all have been students of intermediate level and all have been very helped.

Pray Chris gets the Lord's guidance as to whether to come back in January to carry on with his help for us.

He depends on the money he earns in teaching English in Slovakia to be able to support himself and so cannot afford to be away too long

Thanks to the kind gift of some brothers in the UK we have been able to start work on building an indoor baptistery - a great desire of mine for many years

We expect to be finished by October 1 and have a baptism meeting planned for Oct 26

Please pray that we finish on target as we have a team coming from Bayfarm church in California and a harvest celebration planned with them and needing the whole hall for October 5.

Great news

We have finally got the permission to function from the mayor's office for the coffee shop which means once we get the health and safety certificate we will be able to start the pizzerie business.

Watch this space!!!

Iosif Tson at Emanuel opening

I had the wonderful priviledge to-day of sharing a platform with the world renowed bible teacher, evangelist and author Iosif Tson ( centre of picture )

Actually when I say sharing a platform he was at the centre and I was at the edge

Iosif Tson was and still is the foremost and best respected bible teacher to all Romanian speaking Christians. But he is also very well known amonst Western Christians for many years.

In fact we have staying with us in Gotesti, Chris Elston, a missionary from UK to Slovakia, who shared of a time over 20 years ago when he was a missionary in Tanzania, at the end of himself and ready to give up because of the many hardships he was going through. On the very day he was at his lowest he received a tape from a friend by the bible teacher Iosif Tson entitled "suffering".

"God used it to lift me from the pit and put my feet on the Rock" says Chris

Br Iosif was a contemporary of Richard Wurmbrand. Both were pastors in Romania under communism and both opposed it.

In 1981 Tson was forced to leave while Wurmbrand was inprisoned and tortured. You may remember his book

"Tortured for Christ"

While in exile in USA Br Tson wrote many books in English and also was the Sunday afternoon preacher on Radio Free Europe which nearly all Romanians with a radio illegally listened to under communism.

Br Iosif was the main speaker at the occassion of the opening of the new building in Cahul for Emanuel church.

There was a great turn out of believers and many non Christians including the council leader and council members for the county of Cahul. Please pray for those that responded to gospel appeal of Br Tson - around 20.

Please pray for the next week as they have evangelistic events every evening. ( A team from Gotesti including me as preacher will be featuring on Friday night )

Among the other speakers were Andrei Ciobanu BU supervsor for the South and Valeriu Ghilecthii president of the Baptist Union seated beside each other in the photo above.

Br Anatol, the pastor of Emanual church also received from Br Valeriu the official certificate of opening the church building.

All in all a wonderful occassion to be part of.

Busy Summer

We have been away in the UK from early June until late July which is why this site has been largely unblogged but it does not mean that nothing has been happening

On the contrary

We ran 3 children's missions in Gotesti, Chircani and Constantinovca with around 300 kids coming throughout the week

We were also involved with other children's works. Here the picture is of the children's outreach in Baurci
Then Mission Direct an organisation from the UK have had teams with us throughout the summer.

Their vision is to send teams from the UK of 5-20 people to help the local church with their spiritual work and also to do community service projects

One such project was assisting the kindergarten wirh repairs, decorations ( like these murals ) and also building a new set of hygenic toilets see photo below.

The toilets work by the upstanding pipes getting heated in the sun and thus sucking out the gases in the toilets so that there remains no foul smell

The mayor came and loved what he saw asking that they come again and do the same for the toilets in the main school in Gotesti

There were many other things they did and they were also heavily involved with a

an outreach we did to the physically disabled in Gotesti

Over 50 people attended the meeting in our church building in and around 20 responded to a gospel appeal

Pray for us as we seek to follow them up .

Pray for the various visiting and outreaches we are doing this September in preparation for our Harvest service evangelistic event when a team from Bayfarm church in California will be with us

National Children's Day in Moldova

June 1 is National Children's day in Moldova and we marked the occassion by having a special children's meeting in the afternoon with 3 of our children's groups taking part.

Each group took on the identity of a country and produced food, dance, dress etc accordingly
Here is our youngest group doing a traditional Moldovan dance.

All 3 of their Sunday school teachers taking part in the dance have actually been trained by Larisa, our children's ministry superviser just this year so wwe were especially impressed by the programme they produced.

One of the ladies in the picture has also gone from being on the edge of mental breakdown because of her very difficult relationship with her non Christian husband to being a healthy enough Christian to take on this role of Sunday school teacheer. This has been due, of course, to God's great grace but His instrument has been Ruslan taking her patiently week after week through counseling that has enabled her self esteem to be rebuilt.

The Grupa Mica as they are called adopted Moldova as their country and the 3 rookie teachers produced the table display seen here in the photo.

These are all traditional Moldovan foods and drink including Mamaliga ( corn flour bread), goat's cheese and samali which is a mince meat mix with rice inside a vine leaf.

The Grupa Mijlocie adopted India and here Cristina, one of their leaders, is preparing the India tea set to go with the curry and rice that they had cooked.

And a deliciously authentic taste it had too!! ( sorry I can't transmit taste by internet yet but pop over to see us in Moldova and Mari or I will make you an Indian curry)

There are around 3o kids that come to this Sunday school group every week and here are some of them taking part in an Indian dance

It was the highlight of the show and the whole dance came out of the imagination of Cristina the leader you saw earlier. It is quite a talent she has.

The other group was from Constantinovca, a village around 4 km from us where we have a children's work and are also evangelising the adults.

We have one baptised member from there and several others saved or having made responses.

One of those recently saved is Viorel who is featured here in the middle of the photo. He has been going on well and is already actively involved in this children's work there

Their country was Egypt and Viorel was Pharoah, he brought a message of greeting to us in Arabic while Aliona one of the other team members translated it to us into Romanian ( all acting of course )

It was a real fun time for all.

Keep in touch with us

Pastor Mark