January brought a new volume of ministry. I started again to have regular meetings with the young people from the church. New people started to come to these meetings. I am happy about Sergiu, Marina, Raia, Ecaterina and other students who enjoy our meetings. We also help some students to grow spiritually. They come to study in our town and they need a church and a group for sharing the same experiences. We are happy they make this choice in a confused world as students. Because they are far away from home they are more exposed to temptations. Usually the youth meetings mean programs. Years before we saw that we were loosing time and energy for organizing the programs and forgetting the people. Therefore this year we will focus more on fellowship and the Word. However I see that my personal involvement in their lives represents the most important part of the ministry.

I have weekly meetings with three of the boys: Cornel, Radu and Igor. Although he comes from a Christian family, Cornel needs spiritual training. We studied the Gospel of John together this past month. Now I encourage him to go through the same Bible study with one of his roommates. Our purpose is for him to be able to pass along his knowledge. Although this is a challenging and difficult step for him, we believe he will be strengthened by it. He will learn to minister to others. This is our goal for all those that we evangelize.

Radu's training is more difficult because he is not completely decided. I have prayed for him for almost two years since I first shared the Gospel with him. I kept in touch with him over the years and managed to have one Bible study with him. He came only because of our friendship. He doesn't have the desire to study the Scripture. I pray for guidance and special situations for the Holy Spirit to convince Him.

I had an interesting experience with Igor. I shared the Gospel with him after New Year's eve. He received the Lord and there are changes in his life. He started a completely new life. He is 17. His parents are separated and his mother is gone to Turkey. He lives by himself. The absence of his parents can be seen in his lack of responsibility. During our six meetings we managed to make some steps in his life of faith. A week ago he told me that his relatives had advised him to give up attending our church. He had some headaches during the church services. They told him he was having headaches because of church going. I knew the devil wasn't happy about him coming to church. We prayed together and I explained to him that it might be a spiritual fight. I prayed with my family for him. In the meantime, I started to counsel him, analyzing his schedule, his sleeping hours and the lack of sport. I discovered more credible reasons for his headaches. A few days later he told me that his relatives and his mother stopped discouraging him from coming to church. They told him that he should go to church if he wanted to. But his mother called him to Turkey. He has already left and gone into a Muslim country with a more hostile context. It is more difficult to find Christians. He always wanted to live with his mother because she supports him financially. I don't know what is going to happen. We prayed together and I created him an e-mail address for communicating with him. But he doesn't know how to use the computer very well. We continue to pray for him and thank the Lord for allowing us to minister to him this past month.

The Lord asked me to have a discussion and counsel a young lady who didn't obey the Word or her parents and pastors. She started an inappropriate relationship and allowed sin in her life. During our meetings we tried to analyze her condition in the light of the Word, but her hardness of heart was evident. We hope that the intervention of her parents and us, as pastors, will stop this sin. It was a difficult situation but that was God's plan also.

We talked with the other students about the importance of faithfulness and personal accountability. We helped two Christian girls from another village to make some important decisions that will bring blessing afterwards. We helped them to get rid of this Christian studentship principle, "we attend more churches in town but we aren't members in any of them." Being members in a church gives them more protection and a proper place to minister and be ministered to. These situations helped me become a better youth pastor for the entire south community of our country.

I have a better vision to join forces with all the youth leaders in my area. I already had a meeting with all the youth leaders from the south community. We will continue to have a monthly meeting for training.

So far I mostly presented to you the people who I worked with. But there were other counseling situations as well. For example I encouraged Daniel, a young man who gets more and more involved in the ministry. He has a disciple and is very dedicated to the ministry. I also pray for Slavic to do the same. We have prayed for his family as his mother died recently.
Over the past month I preached on Sundays. I was involved in the Wednesday church programs. I also organized the youth meetings on Thursdays and was gone two days for planning and making decisions regarding the youth ministry of the entire country.