Badicu couples at Karis

One of the blessings of having our Karis pizzeria is that there is a function room and other churches are able to use it for special events

Here Lucian, from the church at Badicu, brought a group of couples from his village to have a meal together and enjoy an evening out in celebration of 8th of March - ladies day. It was a surpirse outing for the wives.

They have just finished and Alpha marriage course at his church and these ones were enthusiastic attenders.

It was a joy to be with them and you could feel the close relationship they already have even though only 2 couples were actually church members

Here they are playing a game. A couple stands back to back and each have a fork and a knife. The fork represents the wife and the knife the husband. They are then asked questions e.g "who takes the rubbish out each day" Then each has to raise either fork or knife or both fork & knife to say which is correct. There were some fun results.

We were asked to bring a word from the Bible to finish the evening and so Mari and I both shared a short word.

Lord more of these kind of evenings please!

Pastor Mark

8th of March meeting

Each year on the 8th of March Moldova honours all the ladies of the country. Girls and wives receive flowers and are pampered for the day ( the other 364 days are men's day )

We also do a programme for the mothers at the church.

Here the girls and boys are celebrating Spring - the day coincides with the Spring time of the year.






The umbrellas represent the flowers opening

All ages present their programme. Here the little ones are doing their spot with David temporarily forgetting his lines and Liviu beside him demonstrating what it means to be laid back ( or walking in rest to be more spiritual )

The leaves of the trees for the healing of the nations? LORD LET IT BE SO! - especially in these troubled times in which we live.

Then the older ones - and our Rachael is now being included in the older ones category!! - how time flies! She'll be 12 on 9th May!!!

Mum Jesus loves you the sign says - and so do we!

Finally all of the children brought a spring flower to their mums and then off we went to eat meals made and served by the mums - short lived day of rest and celebration for the ladies!!

Pastor Mark

Visit from Giugulesti Church

On Sunday 27th Feb we had the pastor and a group of youth come from Giurgulesti Baptist Church and participate in our Sunday morning meeting.

Giurgulesti is around 90Km further South from us and is right on the border with Romania and also Ukraine.

The church there has been established from just after the war while Pastor Fedea has been there as missionary and pastor since 1990.

After our own worship group began with a couple of worship songs the Giurgulesti youth group then did a programme of songs and Christian poems.

We had Misa Caraivan the leader of the youth at National level for the Baptist Union also with us and he brought a short message of encouragement towards the end of their programme.

Then Fedea Parparlov, the pastor of Giurgulesti Baptist Church brought the main message for the day. His theme was being led by God in His care.

We all felt encouraged and lifted up.

Their programme with us came to a close as Fedea's daugther Rebecca and their youth leader sang a duet.

It also gave us all an excuse to go and have a pizza together in Karis Pizza after the meeting.

Ah life is so hard here in Moldova!!!

Pastor Mark

Week 4 Alpha

We've been encouraged to see increasing numbers come each week to the Alpha course we are currently running in Gotesti.

This week 70 sat down to eat with people coming from 7 different villages.

We added an extra study this week preaching from Luke 19 on Zacheus as it speaks so much of the personal relationship that Christ wants to have with us. Just as he said to Zacheus that He must stay in his house so he knocks on the door of our lives and says "... if anyone hears my voice and opens the door I will come into him and eat with him.." Rev 3:20
This gave the groups a further oppotunity to talk about issues like repentance and receivng Christ and when I travelled round the various groups exactly these subjects were being discussed.

One group was asking how we hear His voice speaking to us and Sergiu who has recently given his life to the Lord answered very clearly much to our encouragement.

Ruslan had 18 in his group this week from Cantemir, Cania, Porumbesti; not generally a very manageable number but we were very encouraged when 5 of them said they wanted to give their lives to Christ.

We prayed with them after the group

One of the girls from this group got saved in the second week of Alpha and is absoltuely on fire.

In fact the whole group caught some of her flame in the discussions.

We'd very much value your prayers for these and more to keep coming and to be drawn closer to Christ

Pastor Mark

New Alpha Course

We have started a new Alpha course in the church at Gotesti and are into our second week

Around 50 are coming so far from 5 different villages in our region.

For those of you that do not know the format of the Alpha course. We have one meeting per week for around 10 weeks and on each occassion we start with a meal together where we can chat and enjoy one another's company and then from the front a message is given on a theme

The first week's message was Who is Jesus and this week we looked at Why did Jesus die.

Then we split into groups and discuss questions or thoughts arising from the theme of the message or any other taxing questions.

This is the group from Badicu village with Lucian the pastor right of picture. A very intelligent and active group.

One lady in one of the other groups felt she wanted to give her life to the Lord after the meeting and with joy and tears received Him.

The man on the left looking into the camera in this picture is Volodia, the pastor of the church in Cantemir.

This group included some of the oldest ones attending but one of our other groups included some youth as young as 16 so we are blessed to have a great mix of ages and backgrounds finding the Alpha course of use

Keep us in your prayers

Pastor Mark

Christmas Meeting 2011

We had an encouraging turn out once again at our Christmas celebration meeting which we held on Dec 26 this year as it was a Sunday.

There were a good number of unsaved who attended many coming to us for the first time.

We had a children's programme as always and Ruslan brought the word this year.

Here the youngest are ones acting as angels ( happens just once a year in my experience )

Then the older ones did a nativity play

Here all the players are gathered for the final bow as it were

All the costumes were made by ladies from our church and several of these kids are not regulars ( yet ) in our Sunday school

Then our adolescents also did a play and our youth did a song.

Just looking at our youth group here - the front row of girls includes 2 who have their weddings already planned this year Claudia and Cristina and another who's planning for next year. ( still a secret - watch this space )

Please pray that many who came to the Christmas meeting will continue to come to the church and even join the Alpha course we are starting 30 Jan 2011

Pastor Mark

Love in a Box comes to Moldova again

We have been very blessed to, once again, have received shoe box presents for the kids in our schools here in the South of Moldova for Christmas.

Mustard Seed is the organisation from England that has sent us these boxes.

In fact this year they were able to send us 2 lorry loads - 15,000 boxes in all which meant that over 40 villages here in the South had the blessing of some, if not all, of the children in their village getting a Christmas present of a shoe box full of gifts.

Here is one of the schools in our village in the Flaminda area getting their presents.

Boxes are sent to us for girls and boys ages 3-5; 6-11 and 12-15. It is largely children in the UK that fill the boxes with different gifts and the quality of the gifts are so good that it makes me proud to be British -indeed they are love in a box.

A.M.E.C, an international children's organisation gave us children's tracts that tell the Biblical story of Christ's birth and why God became a man and came to earth. We were able to give each child that received a box one of these tracts.

The main school in Gotesti is in the centre and we invited the teachers to bring the kids from their classes to our church to receive their gift.

Here classes 1-4, ages 7-11 are receiving their gifts.

In our church we were able to do a bit of a Christmas programme and short message to the kids about the meaning of Christmas.

Marina and Tanya, here pictured, are the two girls that are teaching the religion lectures in the school. They opened up a shoe box gift that in fact contained a story about the best Christmas gift "ISUS" - Jesus who died to pay for and remove our sins so that we could come into a personal relationshsip with Him - which is the true meaning of Christmas.

I also finished with a short message explaining that we have a personal relationship with God and know all our sins forgiven not because we are good and deserve this but because we have turned to Jesus to save us.

We finished by saying at this Christmas season it is a time for reflecting

"Do you have this personal relationship with God that Jesus came to give us?"

Pastor Marj=k