Work begins on the new Chircani church community centre

Well, finally work has begun on the new church community centre at Chircani, one of our church plants.
In the front of the picture you can see Ruslan ( with his back to the camera ) who along with me will be responsible for this church plant as it now starts to meet in it's own village again. It was 5 or 6 years ago that we used to meet in the building you can see in the background until the owners kicked us out. The same owners are now selling it to us and what a struggle and strain it has been.
We have had the money ready in December on threat by them of loosing the building to someone else but here we are in April and they have still not got the documents ready for us to legally and correctly buy it.
However the word is that they have now got the last necessary document and we should exchange contracts this Wednesday - please pray.

If you haven't got the documents why are you starting work I hear you ask. Well what the boys are doing here is digging a trench for running water to be connected to the building. Up until now, nowhere in Chircani has had running water. Now a firm has come to install the system and almost all the village (all those that could afford it) have made the contract with them to install. Each home owner then has to provide the trench for his section of main system and also the trench to his property.
If we didn't take up the option now then later it would be much more expensive.

Our vision is to convert this building into a church community centre.

The building is in a terrible state of repair - the roof needs replaced and all the rooms bar one are like this and need gutted and renovated but the shell is made of reinforced concrete beams and columns and is very sound

Our vision for this room would be to convert it into a day centre with kitchen for vulnerable children, invalids and the old and needy. We would hope to have regular meetings for all 4 groups when we could meet their various needs as well as share the Lord with them.

We have another room this size that we will use for holding our church services.

The lord has been blessing the work in Chircani and we have seen several adults recently come to faith in the village and many more show interest.

The children's work is also growing. This year a new law meant we could no longer use the school premesis; this was the precipitating factor in us having to get a building

We have 4 rooms like this one pictured which we want to convert into 2 Sunday school rooms, a youth\adolescents room and a sports room.

We have raised enough in gifts and promises so far to replace the roof we believe and maybe also do the electrics but it still leaves us needing another 40-50,000$ to complete this project.

If you feel the Lord moving you to help with the costs of this project by giving a gift small or large please contact me on markmold7@hotmail.com for more details

But can we ask for your prayers that

1) We get the documents sorted on Wednesday

2) For the brothers as they give of their labour and services in the building work free or for little charge

3) That he provides the remaining funds necessary

4) That perhaps other teams from the West will come out to be involved in the construction work

Yours and His

Pastor Mark

Physically Disabled meeting

On Thursday April 2nd we held a meeting in our church building especially for the physically disabled of our village and many also came from Cantemir and the surrounding area.

We had over 100 attend ranging from those either blind or in a wheel chair to those with perhaps one eye missing

Here we had a lovely young couple from the Cantemir region who just got married in December.

Both are deaf.

It was fun talking to them

I spoke in Romanian wondering how well they were able to read my lips with my accent and they signed back to me with a friend beside them translating. They sat in different parts of the hall and were signing to each other during the meeting very often and even a fool like me could tell from their signing how much in love they are. They were signing so much that after a while I had to tell them to be quiet ( only joking! )

Here we see Ion Lupan one of the physically disabled ministry team helping a blind man out of the physically disabled ministry vehicle that we have.

Misa was able to bring so many more to this meeting as a result of having the car

Iulian and Ilusa still had to help with the mini buses as there were so many who wanted to come

Here are the brothers that brought the support that funded this meeting

Brother John beside me brothers Sam and Ray ( all three from USA )

Then there is brother Petru in the foreground. He's a Romanian who has lived in Germany for many years and has faithfully raised support and help for the physically disabled ministry here in Moldova - it's not the first time he has helped us put on such a meeting.

As always they provided the funds for us to be able to provide a meal for all those attending

They also provided honey and a financial gift for each that attended and even left the same to be delivered to ones that wanted to come but were unable

Since brothers Sam, John and Ray were from USA and English was their first language br Petru asked me to translate for them as they came to preach.

It was thrilling for me to translate a preach from English into Romanian and all of the brothers preached

Praise the Lord we also saw 11 people give their lives to the Lord.

Pray for Misa as he and his team make plans to follow up these ones who responded and the many other new faces that came to the meeting.

Pastor Mark

Winter's not over yet

If you looked out my window now as I write you'd think Spring is here - blue sky some buds on the trees etc

But the Moldovans have a phrase for this kind of weather

"Sunshine with teeth"

It is still bitterly cold at night and even during the day at times

So it was good that with gifts from your good selves we were able to bring various needy ones at least some wood to do until the end of the winter we hope

This older lady is blind and has grandchildren and great grandchildren living with her

Some of you may recognise Marusia here for whom you have been praying for more than a year

She has not been coming to the church at all and a major reason is that she has been looking after husband who had a stroke.

As you can see he is walking with the aid of a stick ( things were much worse at one time )

However his disability has meant that he has been unable to work so the gift of this wood for them has come as a real blessing

Despina is one of our believers

Her husband is not a believer but has been working for the flour mill for about 8 months and has not been paid by them for the last 5 leaving them little or not funds for "luxuries" like wood

So again your gifts have helped enormously

Please keep us in your prayers

Pastor Mark

Conference in Sovata

Mari and I were blessed to be invited to a conference in Romania held at the lovely mountain resort of Sovata

Around 250 pastors and leaders of churches - Baptist, Pentecostal and Brethern - were in attendance for the 3 day conference

The speakers for the conference were Stuart and Jill Briscoe

Not long after I got born again in 1984 I read a book which was very encouraging by Jill Briscoe called "How to fail successfully"

Jill took the ladies while Stuart took the men

Mari mentioned to Jill about me being encouraged by her book all those years ago and she said interestingly enough someone had spoken to her the week before about how, many years ago, that book had been used to lead them to the Lord but Jill had said to the person that she never wrote such a book - she had forgotten she had written it and now here were two people in a week bringing it to her mind.

Stuart had pastored a church in USA from 400 to 4000 members and not surprisingly had much encouraging and relevant stuff to say those of us in

ministry.

When asked how he would summarise what a leader should concentrate on he said

Preach the Word

Love the People

Pray for the Holy Spirit to Move

Sovata was also a lovely place to be, to relax and although the weather was not great we still managed to go out an enjoy the local scenery

In fact many people come to the hotel for it's spa and swimming pools and fitness centre and saunas

Unfortunately we were foolish enough not to get round to using any of these until the last day and then greatly regretted that we hadn't used them more

This was my first time in a sauna for 20 years and Mari's first time ever

We were also able to go to this conference with our good friends Anatol and Nadia Dunas ( he is pastor at Emanuel church in Cahul

We are all under much pressure all the time and so it was good to get away for a few days

And much to the pleasure of both myself and the main speaker Mr Brisoce (a man of great wisdom and discernment) Man Utd beat Inter Milan 2-0 in the champions league on the Wednesday of the conference.

Enough Said?

Mark

8th March

In the west we celebrate mother's day albeit it a bit low key

However here in Moldova and indeed most of Eastern Europe 8th of March is a national celebration as woman's day

We had a meeting at the church and saw quite a few new ladies come to the meeting

One of the things our Sunday school teachers organised was for each of the children to find their mothers in the meeting and bring a 8th of March gift - some a flower some a bar of chocolate and so on

It was much appreciated.

Here is Angela, one of our alpha course receiving from her son Dima

The coffee shop was full - in fact we had our busiest day since we opened with sizeable parties coming from different churches to celebrate 8th March

Here we see half the group of the church from Crehana and we had a group from Chisilea

We also had some locals from Gotesti and also some from other nearby villages

So steadily people are coming to the coffee shop but the world financial crisis is as you can imagine not helping things much

Keep us in your prayers

Pastor Mark

The New Car

You'll remember that recently we were blessed by the Lord's answer to prayer in providing us the cash to buy a vehicle to transport the physically disabled to the meetings.

Here are two men that have been coming as a result of us being able to bring them by the car.

They have both been to the meetings before but only on special occassions when we have pulled out the stops to get them there.

Nicolai is the one on the right of the picture and the good news is that last week he asked Misa, our leader of the ministry to the physically disabled if someone could come to his hosue to do a bible study with him so he could discover what it means to "have a personal relationship with God"

This it seems to us is direct fruit from having this vehicle - thanks be to God and encouragement to those who prayed and gave.

Pray for brother Ion ( another member of the physically disabled team ) who will be doing the studies with Nicolai

Pastor Mark

Alpha away day

Well, what a wonderful time we had at the Alpha course "away day"

Our friend and fellow pastor Andrei Ciobanu allowed us to use the facilities at his church kindergarten and all 23 of us were able to meet together in this room and then eat together in the canteen upstairs

We arrived at 9.30 a.m. and left at 9.30 p.m having done 3 sessions of a "talk and discussion time" on the Holy Spirit and His ministry in our lives.

It also gave us much more time together than our usual 2 hours on a Sunday so that we were able to talk many more personal things and answer many questions on many themes - one discussion time after the talk lasted 3.5 hours

At the end of the day several gave their lives to the Lord and others dedicated themselves more fully.

We also discovered that one of the couples and a single mum from the group are being told to leave their homes by his mother and the single lady's sister respectively because they are attending these meetings

This single mum had sneaked out of the house leaving the child with her mum and not telling her sister where she was going to come to this day away. Somehow her sister who owns the house in which she is staying found out and even rang her at the course to give her a hard time

Yet the couple by the end of the weekend said they want to fully commit their lives to the Lord and the single mum wants to keep coming even more to the meetings.

Everyone was so blessed by the day that they insisted I get some song books from Andrei because they wanted to sing praise on the way home

Then on the following day the group got together to sing a programme in the Sudnay morning meeting

Keep praying for them as some are now wanting to get baptised and their unsaved husbands might be against this while others are wanting to make a commitment to Christ but he is still standing outside their door

Pastor Mark