Mari's Graduation

Here's my darling wife getting her BEE bible school graduation certificate.

I couldn't be prouder.

This is the same course that we run in Gotesti for pastors, leaders, church planters etc in the South except that the course was for women.

Pastor Lucian the director of the BEE course in Romania is presenting the certificate to Mari as he did for the other 29 students that were part of the course.

Most of the ladies were either leaders of the women's ministry amongst Baptists or Pentecostals in Moldova or wives of leaders or pastors.

We husbands were invited for the final subject in the course - "A healthy marriage" which included teaching and one to one discussion in couples of various questionaires.

Lidia Schiopu who is at the microphone in the picture was their teacher throughout the course and shared the teaching with Pastor Lucian during these 3 days of the marriage course also.

It was an emotional fairwell for all the ladies and Lidia as the Moldovan ladies now pick up the baton for continuing to minister as ladies in Moldova and mentoring other ladies to spread the work.

A big task indeed as one of the husbands who spoke reminded us since 70% of membership of churches are women.

Always in need of your prayers

Pastor Mark

Tolica

This is the village of Tolica ( or at least one half of it ).

It is a village of around 1000 residents in the North East part of the county of Cantemir and one of the villages that comes under the brief the B.U gave me for the county.

I have not be able to visit it until now as it's a bit in the countryside and when the winter weather is upon is the roads become difficult to travel on.

However I went this last Sunday with one of our worship teams from Gotesti and had a lovely time.

Stefan Rosca ( pictured in the middle ) is the pastor of the baptist church that has been planted in the village.

He's an old friend having come to the very first in house BEE bible school that we ran in Gotesti around 10 years ago.

He is a history teacher in the school and has been pastoring the church since before that time.

They managed to build a church building some time ago although as you can see like most church buildings in our patch it is not entirely finished.

They have around 15 members although most are old.

Nonetheless there were 2 adult non Christians at the meeting on Sunday who were both clearly challenged by the whole programme and message.

They stayed afterwards to ask more questions and were in agreement to meet again and talk more.

We're planning to go on another day soon and do a day long mission - to include street evangelism, door to door, and an outreach mission.

Always in need of your prayers.

Pastor Mark

End of year for our girls

In Moldova the first 4 years of school life from age 7-11 see the students remain in the same class with the same teacher. Only after this year do they separate into different classes.

Thus graduation this year was quite an emotional time for both Rachael, her class, her teacher (Miss Natalia to the right of the picture ) and us as a family since all the students would be no longer together.

Rachael is holding a "graduation" certificate that recorded her results for the year - she had an average of 9.36 ( out of 10 ) for all the subjects and was thrilled to have come first in the class.

The teacher then had the class go through various resumes of what they had learned in the last 4 years.

Of course it was the last day of school for both our daugthers and here they are posing in our garden before going to school.

It's been lovely weather over the last days and our cherries have come out and our strawberries.There's also been a healthy amount of rain during May so we might get a decent potato harvest.

In our church we pray for rain and rejoice, praising God when it comes - a little different one imagines from the UK.

Abigail also had her end of year pageant. Their teacher had them dress up in traditional Moldovan outfits and sing Moldovan songs and poems.

Do pray for their teacher who has been coming to the church quite regularly recently

Mari also invited Rachael's graduating class over to Karis for a free pizza.

They are the group in the background behind Larisa and family

Always in need of your prayers

Pastor Mark

Ambassadors in Sport come to Moldova

I came to the Lord in April 1984 after a life lived very much in the world with all it's trappings.

I got born again and joined the Wharf Rd Baptist church but I was 28 and had no friends in the church of my age and background so the transforming process in the first 2 years of my Christian life was very hard.

However. Ray and Crista Tucker, mature Christians of many years standing, answered my advert in the local paper "Christian man seeks Christian home" and I moved in to live with them.

They mentored me for the first 2 years of my Christian life.

Ray is now European director of A.I.S and they came out this year to do a TREC course here in Moldova. Ray is the man in the middle of the picture - he is actually only 25 years old so you can see what 2 years of living with me in 1984 did to him. (Only joking Ray)

TREC is a training course that equips Christians to coach football to an UEFA standard as well as sharing the gospel and starting a ministry with the young people who come to the course.

Ray and the team did the course in Chisinau at O.M head quarters to which around 40 pastors and leaders came to be trained over the 4 day course including many from Cantemir where we have a responsiblity.

After the course in Chisinau, Ray came down to us in Gotesti with his team -

Graham from Spain and Fabrizio and his wife Rebeca from Italy. Igor had already started a group last year in Gotesti and has now started another in Chircani with Ray and the team's help.

On Sunday the team ministered in the church in Gotesti with Ray preaching the message

We trust they will come back next year and do the next level of the coaching training

Pray for all the groups that are being set up in Cantemir, Porumbesti and other villages in our county

Pastor Mark

Mission at Hirtop

This is a view of the village of Hirtop from the grounds of the Baptist church plant in the village.

Around 800 people live in Hirtop and it is one of the villages in the county of Cantemir that we are seeking to help and encourage in my new role.

This is Misa with his wife Aliona and their two children Liviu and Catusa. He is leading the work in the village.

They have only 6 members and the work is hard because it's a relatively new thing in the village and so people are generally suspicious.

Life is hard for them. He has a bedridden father at home that they look after and because they have no financial support to pastor the church he has to go abroad frequently to work for 3-6 months at a time. It affects the family. It affects the work.

We brought a team a few Sundays ago and did a mission with them in the village.

You can see in the background (in the forecourt of the church building that they built with their own hands and money) Slavic and Aliona who were leading the worship team for the mission.

Aliona gave her testimony and I later preached out of Acts 17 on how the resurrection of Jesus is the assurance that one day God will judge the world by Him and thus we need to get right with Him now when we hear Him speaking to our hearts.

There were several unbelievers there who had come for the first time. Misa said afterwards that he was encouraged that "in his words" they were having the gospel clearly presented to them in song, testimony and message for the first time.

Our prayer is that, if it's the Lord's will, an evangelical church with a similar gospel outlook will decide to partner with Hirtop.

Keep us all in your prayers

Pastor Mark

Giving Seminars

A couple of Sundays ago I had the priviledge of being asked to do a day of seminars at Vad lui Isac church on the subject of "Giving to the Glory of God"

Other churches in the region were also invited and members from Manta and Pascani churches were among those who came about 270 in all.

We did 2 seminars in place of the morning service and then lunch together followed by another 2 seminars in the afternoon.

We looked at what our motivation for all our giving should be from Prov 3:9,10 i.e to honour God - by recognising that all we have comes from Him.

We then looked at how Abraham and Jacob did exactly this - they recognised that victory and the supply for life came from Him and they manifested this recognition by honouring Him in returning a tithe of all they received to God.

Jacob even said "...of all you give me I will give a tenth back to you.." Gen 28:22

What we then discussed was that this tithing had taken place 400 years before the law was given and that in my view God gave the law of tithing to remind the people of Israel what was pleasing to Him since they had got so far away from God by the tienm the law was given that they no longer knew what was pleasing to Him.

Thus tithing far from being a law should be a minimum goal if we want to honour God with our increase.

We looked at how the Bible shows 2 categories of giving to the glory of God. "Tithing" which we defined as "To give back to God a tenth part of your increase into the church, unconditionally as an honouring acknowledgement that all you have comes from God" Prov 3:9,10; Mal 3:8-10

and "Free will offering" which we defined as

" Every other kind of giving to the glory of God that comes from the remaining 90% of your increase or from your wealth"

We looked at some of the different categories of free will offering such as helping poor belivers ( as we see in 2 Cor 8:1-15 ), further giving into the church budget, supporting a ministry in your church, supporting a missionary or missionary organisation, helping the unsaved poor, a church building project etc etc and then we looked at how God teaches to do these things with our free will offerings ( although it is not obligatory ). We then looked at how to be good stewards of the many demands in these areas examening such passages as Math 5:42 in the light of 1 Tim 5:9,10.

There seemed to be a good, positive response to what was taught and Andrei the pastor of the church told me that the giving in the church increased fourfold the following Sunday.

My response;- "Let's see what it's like in a few months"

Pastor Mark

St Michael's in Chircani

We were very glad to have a team from St Michael's church from Bristol with us in April.

Here they are singing a song in the Sunday meeting at Gotesti.

We had them busily occupied while here ( nothing new in that says anyone who has ever been here on a team )

But although they slept and ate in Gotesti they had come to link up with the church in Chircani

and in particular with Ruslan and family who are overseeing the work in Chircani.

There are about 1000 residents in the village of Chircani and we have 11 members in the church there which has grown from 6 members that was the church around 2 yrs ago.

We also have quite a few people showing an interest in the gospel and a growing children's work there.

Last year the Lord blessed us and through a brother from the UK we were provided the funds to buy this building to convert into a church community centre.

Our vision is to convert the building to have a meeting hall for Sunday meetings etc along with an indoor baptistry + 2 Sunday school rooms, a youth room and a sports room and then a later phase would be to convert the left half of the building into a community centre for the poor and for the physically disabled etc.

Here is a photo of a proposal that an architect has given us which providing his estimate is real we are thinking we will go ahead with.

Always in need of your prayers

Pastor Mark