Harvest at Slobozia Mare

We had the priviledge of being invited to speak at the harvest service of the Baptist church in Slobozia Mare

The village has approx. 8000 residents and around 300 of them including the lady mayoress came to

the service.

Again as in Giurgulesti the Pentecostal church's youth came to take part in the worship

As well as the harvest service they had a dedication and here we see Nicolai, the pastor of the church, explaining it's significance.

He is standing under the word seceris which means harvest and is made from corn seeds

Vasile, the pastor of Cuslita Prut, a neaby village is here pictured bringing a word of encouragement.

They cancelled their Sunday meeting and the whole church came to this harvest service

Later I brought an evangelistic message taking as my text Jer 8:20. "The harvest has passed, the summer is ended and we are not saved"

I explained that biblically being saved means having an assurance that you will be in heaven when you die, having a personal relationship with God now on earth that also brings you a purpose to life until you get to heaven as well as knowing all your sins forgiven among other things.

We looked at the fact that Eph 2:8,9 tells us that "it is by grace we are saved through faith... not by works ..." and explained that grace is God giving us the opposite of what we deserve going on to point out that although what we deserve for our sins and selfish life is judgment that Jesus ( God become man ) died in our place on the cross taking the judgment that we should have had and now God offers us forgiveness, heaven, abundant life etc something that we plainly do not deserve.

We explained that this salvation is obtained by coming back to God from our own selfish ways, giving the rest of our lives to him and trusting in Jesus to save us.

We ended by saying "The harvest is passed, the summer is ended and I AM SAVED .... WHAT ABOUT YOU!!

Those in attendance were then given the opportunity to make that decision for themselves and come to Christ - around 20 came forward.

It was also our joy to meet Tudor, on the left of the picture.

What a testimony he is to the grace of God.

He was saved in 1949 and is 87 years old and could hardly contain the joy of his salvation as he gave testimony in the meeting even though it is 60 years since his relationship with Jesus began

As per last week in Giurgulesti we were all able to share a fellowship meal together afterwards, celebrating the Lord's provision of a good harvest.

This celebration of God's goodness in an abundant harvest such as this is something that would not be taken for granted by ones like Tudor who lived through the famine in Moldova in the years after the war when many died of starvation.

Next Sunday is our harvest service at Gotesti - please pray for a harvest of souls

Pastor Mark

A double harvest at Giurgulesti

This is Fedea Parpalov with his wife Valea and 4 lovely daugthers.

They are friends of ours and he pastors the Baptist church in Giurgulesti.

He invited me over to preach yesterday at a special service for both material and spiritual harvest - i.e. harvest Sunday and they also had 4 people getting baptised.
The lady in white is 80 years old - never too late to get saved and baptised.

Here we see the church's youth group who for the most part led the worship during the meeting.

But we also had groups from different churches taking part.

Pictured here is a group from a Pentecostal church in a nearby village preparing to bring a programme - and powerful it was too.

In this shot are the children from the church who each did a part of a poem about how God made all the fruits and how each speaks into our lives

The quality of the poem, written by their Sunday school teacher in the picture, made this part of the programme one of the highlights

The baptisms took place outside as is the case for most churches.

We are among the few churches that have an indoor baptistry which gives us the option of holding baptisms at any time in the year

Although I did not get a chance to talk to them I was encouraged to see 3 young men getting baptised and as we pastors prayed for them afterwards we called on the Lord to equip them for the plans he has for their lives to "..serve the purposes of God in this generation.."

There was a good sized crowd that turned up for this double celebration including many people who openly admitted to not having a personal relationship with God ( John 17:3 )

We preached on the story of Felix - Acts 24 - and how he knew the gospel well but when the moment came for him to give his whole life to Christ he said "Go away - when I have a more convenient time I will call you again" Of course it's a deception. There never is a convenient time and the Bible says "today when you hear the voice of the Lord do not harden your heart"

At the end of the message there were several who chose to give their whole lives to Christ including Lydia, a teacher in the school and who was one of the groom's relatives at a recent wedding we attended where we had an opportunity to witness to her.

After the meeting I got to talk to several others including Sasa ( sitting at the front in a red tee shirt with glasses in the above picture). All with whom I spoke said that they felt God was calling them but they had questions and doubts.

Pray for Fedea as he organises a seekers meeting next Sunday after the meeting and that Sasa and the many other interested people sitting at this harvest meal after the baptisms will come to it and find God

Pray also for me as I preach the gospel at harvest meetings and evangelistic meetings on Sunday 20th and 27th Sep and then October 10 and 4-8th November.

pray for Mari as she speaks at a women's meeting in Chisinau on 1 October

Pray also for the Bayfarm team as they come out to us 2-9 October

Watch this space for other prayer needs soon

Pastor Mark

Costa gets a birthday treat at Karis

One of the blessings of having Karis Pizza is that we are able to give our members little treats from time to time.

This is 74 year old Costa on his birthday whom we were able to invite for a pizza with us We were also to invite Despina his daughter.

Costa is the oldest believer we have in the church and he was baptised and became a member around 7 years ago.

He walks the 3 Km to the church and back again for every meeting rarely missing a meeting. He is uncomplaining, faithful and a lovely uncomplicated witness to all.

Despina his daughter was one of our first members and she also is very faithful and a hard working servant of the Lord.

Her daughter Aliona will be getting married on 3 Oct - the first of her children to leave home.

Not long after Costa got saved, his wife of many years took sick with cancer from which she shortly afterwards died

We had the priviledge of leading her to the Lord in the last week of her life and Costa has the certain hope of meeting again with the love of his life.

It is a priviledge to have ones like these in the flock.

Pastor Mark

Two are better than one....

.... and a three standed chord is not easily broken..

Saturday week ago we had our first wedding for 4 years in our church.

Colia Regus married Ina David

Both are committed Christians and so very much wanted to make their vows consciously before the Lord and are looking to Him to be very much the third strand in their relationship.( indeed the principal strand )

A couple of weeks before the wedding we met with both sets of parents, who are not Christians, at the engagement and shared the spiritual significance of Colia and Ina leaving their mothers and fathers and being joined onto each other We particularly emphasized to Valentin how, biblically, the father has spiritual responsibility and authority in his daugher's life and we asked him if he felt that Colia was worthy to take this mantle and was Valentin willing to give his daughter into Colia's hands. He was quite emotional about the significance of it all and it was a precious time. As you can see in the photo here he is giving her over to Colia who then went on to remove her veil and lead her to the ceremony stage.

After some praise and worship, brother Andrei the B.U. superviser for the South and pastor of Vad lui Isac Baptist Church brought the message

then they came to making their vows

Here Colia is vowing to Ina in the presence of God

"With the help of the Holy Spirit I will love you as Christ loved the church and gave himself for it. I will comfort you, I will respect you, I will care for you in good times and bad. I will be faithful to you until death do us part. All that I am and all that I have I give to you also

Ina's vows were similar except that she vowed "... with the help of the Holy Spirit I will submit to you (Colia) as the church must to Christ..."

They chose to mark their committment to one another by the giving and receiving of rings.

Iulian who had Colia as his best man at his wedding took care of the rings and here is he and Vasia who had a similar role to best man pictured together .

Colia and Ina began their courtship over 2 years ago but soon afterwrds he went to France to work for 2 years to earn the money to make a start in their married life - their mobile phones in Moldova and France never cooled down and despite this separation neither did they.

Everyone noticed that Ina had the most wonderful smile on her face from start to finish.

Indeed several asked the Lord to bless them such that this smile would never have cause to disappear.

The reception was also a wonderful occassion with more non Christians there than Christians.

Although these guests would traditionally expect a wedding reception in Moldova to be full of drinking and dancing they nonetheless accepted our style graciously and nearly all remained to the end and indeed seemed to enjoy themselves thoroughly with the various entertainment items that Ruslan and our youth had prepared for the 4 hours of the reception. Certainly many of them said exactly that to me and others in the church. afterwards

It was in fact a lovely time of fellowship and our heart and prayer is that many that were there will come and be part of our family in the church in due season.

Will you pray this also

Pastor Mark

Our team wins the cup

Our team won the cup!!!

Here is our adolescents team - "Gotesti City" parading the cup.

This is an anual competition run by O.M for all of Moldova.

Churches invite adolecents from 12-15 to join this church based football team which is then entered in this competition in Chisinau. This year our team won.

It was a close competition run on a league basis and we won on goal difference ( note the referrence "we" and you'll also see me in all the pictures - it's good copy for me as a pastor to be seen with winners! )

This is Vasile Popovici who also won the equivalent of the golden boot for scoring the most goals in the competition - 9 in all. Igor tells me he is quie a talent and has possibilities for a future in the game

And speaking of Igor, here he is with Viorel (on the right) getting some deserved credit as both have worked hard with the team throughout the whole summer.

They've been coaching them 4 mornings 8.30 -10.30 every week all summer.

In the middle, holding the cup, is the captain of the team Andrei Moldovanu. Many of you may remember me doing a blog on Vova Moldovanu, his father, the former mafia man of the village, who got saved. Well Andrei is his 15 year old son - going on with God and developing into a leader already under the mentoring of Igor and Viorel.

Here is Roma, whom many of you are praying for. He is also part of the team and going on with God

He's photographed outside proudly wearing his medal

Both his parents are away working in Italy so he has no-one to esteem him like a parent would normally do so moments like this where he feels particularly valued are significant in his life.

During his work with the team all summer Igor prepared a bible study for every time the group met.

This is the major part of the ethic of this O.M. run project - to reach young adolescents with the gospel.

In the picture of the team above, only 3 of the adolescents are saved and of the rest for most this was their first time at the church but Igor reports that they have all been attentive and active in the bible studies each day at the football training.

Could you pray, now that the football summer season is over, that they still keep coming to the church and also pray that we are able to start a new group - maybe table tennis or something else in October that will be of enough interest to them that they will continue to come to the church.

It would be a shame to loose what has already been built up among them.

Pastor Mark

I thought I would blog this lovely photograph of Tanya and Marina with their babies whom many of you know.

Both were saved as children under the ministry of Larisa at least 10 years ago.

Tanya, on the left for those of you that don't know them, became one of our worship leaders and a children's worker before marrying Igor where she now assists him in the youth and adolecent's ministry.

Marina was and is one of our Sunday school teachers and the driving force behind our drama ministry.

She's married to Iulian, our transport manager and maintainance man among other things

It is wonderful to see how God has saved both as children and they have grown up in the church to become ministers themselves and now mothers.

Looks like Dana (Igor and Tanya's daughter ) already has her eye on Alex Daniel (Iulian and Marina's son ).

Typical man though, his mind is probably already on fast cars.

May the Lord, with the help of your prayers, produce many more Tanya and Igors, Marina and Iulians and Dana and Alexes over the next 10 years in our 3 churches

Pastor Mark

Mission Direct

We have been blessed with 3 teams from Mission Direct coming out to us to help in our ministry this summer.

This is Rainer from Germany who was one of the team leaders helping paint our church building in Constantinovca.

Mission direct form teams of volunteers from the West to go to countries like Moldova, Cambodia, Dominican Republic and many more.

Their vision is to help the churches help the local communities and thus further the gospel.

Here Steve, another one of the leaders was working with one of our members, Iulian, at the kindergarten in Constantinovca fixing what is the bathroom for the kids.

In fact the kindgergarten has been helped by several teams so far and Maria the head teacher has been to one of our Alpha courses as a result.

The teams raise as much money as they can which is often enough to fund the project that they are helping with.

In this case one of the earlier teams raised the money for us to do the back wall at Chircani building.

The team participated and also left us the funds to finish the wall.
Part of the vision is for teams is to participate in the "spiritual" ministry of the church as well.

Here Bob one of the team members is giving his testimony of how he became a Christian in one of our meetings

Team members also went out with a translator and visited needy people in our villages bringing an aid packet to them of flour and oil.

If you are interested in discovering more about Mission Direct and how to be involved check out their web site

http://www.missiondirect.org/

We thank God for all His blessings this summer

Pastor Mark