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

Igor Sin at Gotesti

We had the pleasure of having Igor Sin as our guest speaker on Sunday 12th December.

He is the pastor of the 1st Baptist Church of Cahul.

They have 120 members and a very active youth and children's minsitry.

Igor qualified from Bible school in Romania and has been pastoring the church in Cahul for 3 years now and has seen growth in all areas of the church during this time.

He spoke to us from Phil 2 on humility and left us all with some serious challenges about our own lives albeit expounded in a very gracious manner.

We had Slavic and his team leading the worship and one of our oldest members Liuba brought a poem to us in Russian.

We were able to go for a pizza after the meeting and Mari and I had a lovely time of fellowship with Igor talking about various aspects of the work and visions and plans.

Pray for them as a church and their various outreaches this Christmas time

Yours and His

Pastor Mark

Religion in School

As you may remember we are now permitted to teach an optional religion class in schools throughout Moldova.

We have over 50 requests from parents for their kids to attend an optional religion class at the end of lectures on Wednesdays and Thursdays.

The Orthdox church in our village also had over 200 requests.

I understand that nationally over 25% of pupils have chosen to take the optional religion classes, a figure that has surprised the education dept.

We have been able to form 4 classes - 2 for ages 11-16 and 2 for ages 7-11.

This is one of the older bracket age groups. In this case 11 and 12 yr olds and includes our daughter Rachael.

I attended the lesson this week and found every single child to be actively participating in the various activities and also in responding to questions etc.

Tanya, one of the many qualified teachers we have in our church, is in charge of this class.

We are very encouraged with the syllabus which clearly covers all the essential and basic teaching of the bible. It is the sort of course I would teach new believers that have had no experience of the basic doctrines of the bible.

Here Tanya is teaching on the fall of man and God's resolution of the problem of our sin. i,e how our sin has separated us from God and how God in human form ( Jesus ) came and died in our place taking our sin and thus bridged the gap, bringing into a personal relationship with God those who give their lives to Christ and trust in Him.

I hope shortly to attend at least one of Marina's classes and will post a blog when I've been. Marina teaches the 7-11 yr olds.

Do please keep Tanya, Marina and the childen in your prayers

Yours and His

Pastor Mark

Moldovan Elections 28 Nov 2010

The general election for the parliament of Moldova took place last Sunday - 28th Nov 2010.

In the run up to the election day we were priviledged to have the OSCE team for the South West come to our pizzerie for their planning meetings and their feedback meeting.

OSCE is the international observers organisation and the team with us that was responsible for Cahul, Cantemir and Leova was made up of 24 members + drivers and translators.

Andy McEntee (left ) from the UK and Jan Holton( right ) from Norway, the older two in this picture were the leaders of the team and they have been here more than a month organising all things.

It was interesting hearing about their job and gaining fascinating insights into what's happening behind the scenes.

As a pizzerie it was a relatively new experience for us providing drinks and snacks in a kind of conference style but they seemed pleased with the service ( even thought there are things we have learned ) - certainly they were good guests to have and seemed to enjoy what we provided.

Now the elections. Our thanks to those of you who prayed diligently. They went trouble free.

The results were Communist party 42 seats down from 48 at the last election, PDLM (Stejarul which means oak tree ) 32 seats up from 18 at the last election This is the party that Valeriu Ghiletchii and Slavic Ionita are with - both Valeriu and Slavic are members of parliament again. PDM ( Marian Lupu's party ) 15 up from 13 This party is made up of mostly ex communists P.L. 12. down 3. Their leader Mr Ghimpru was the leader of the parliament in the last election.

This means that the A.I.E ( alliance for integration in Europe) made up of the 3 non communists parties can form a coalition again and would have 59 seats which will permit them to govern again but leaves them 2 seats short of the 61 out of 101 parliament seats needed to elect a president.

Without an elected president they are not able to rule for 4 years but new elections will have to be called within 1 year.

As I write these parties are in negotiations which are likely to be quite hard going.

Pray that they will be able to form a coalition and thence a government and that a miracle would happen and at least 2 of the communist members would vote with the A.I.E.'s proposal for a president.

Pastor Mark

Visit to Baimaclia

One of the joys of having this role of serving the churches in Cantemir is that I get to go to these different churches and meet the leaders and the people.

In the last weeks we have been involved with Porumbesti as they have gone onto a new phase, having opened their church building

This last Sunday I visited the church at Baimaclia where Valentin Sacali and his wife Zinaida lead the work.
The church was planted by Valentin in 1990 and quickly grew to nearly 40 but in these last years they are down to 26 members due to believers emigrating mostly to USA.

Here Valentin is bringing a final word of encouragement after I had preached a little bit earlier, on Eph 2:8-10

How we are saved

How we are not saved

And why we are saved.

Valentin, Zinaida and their 4 children live in the building attached to this church building which really just has the meeting room and a pastor's office ( they could really do with some Sunday school rooms and a creche ).

Valentin supports himself by running a mill and bakery supplying fresh bread to Baimaclia and several nearby villages. Like many of the village churches they do not have a sound system or yamaha and here, again often the case, the pastor leads the worship, in this instance with an acordion.

Nonetheless there was great joy amongst us and it was a pleasure to be part of the fellowship of the Lord's people in this village of 3000.

Pray for me and them as we consider how we might work together in the future

Pastor Mark

General Election Moldova 28 Nov 2010

This Sunday sees a general election in Moldova just over a year after the last one.

The reason for this is that although the democratic alliance had enough seats in parliament to form a government they did not have the min 61 out of 101 to be able to elect a president.

Thus constitutionally they could only rule temporarily until this situation was resolved.

In the summer the government called a referendum to change the constitution so that the president would be elected by a vote of the electorate rather like the American way but the Communist party were very against this and campaigned not to turn out for the vote so that there would not be enough of a percentage of the electorate that voted to pass the result. They got their way and so now we are going to a general election.

Valeriu Ghiletchii, the former president of the Baptists Union, here speaking in our church last Saturday, is one of 2 evangelical Christians standing for re-election.

He and Slavic Ionita are standing with PLDM the Stejarul party. And although neither are members of the party Vlad Filat the acting prime minister regards then highly enough to have given them positions of 11 and 18 on the parliamentary list
Our parliament here is elected by proportional representation which means the

more votes for a party from the whole electorate the greater number of seats a party will have in the parliament. Each party therefore names a list of potential candidates up to 101. Obviously for number 101 on a party list to get elected then nearly 100% of the electorate would have to vote for that party.

For both Ghiletchii and Ionita to be elected Stejarul would need 18-20% of the vote.

Both Valeriu and Slavic are representing all evangelical Christians and the Adventists and have the support of these Unions so that most believers will vote for Stejarul so that Valeriu and Slavic can be elected. (Stejarul also has policies that are closest to conservative Christianity values )

Valeriu was sharing the many encouraging signs of God's hand working through he and Slavic in the last year in the parliament - their aim is to be salt and light in parliament.

And so we pray

Pastor Mark