Once again God has shown His mercy on us as He helped us in our church's ministry. At the beginning of the month, I worked with a Youth With a Mission team from Romania. They were involved in a two-week mission trip here in Anenii Noi. They helped us with the Day Center for kids. We also had the opportunity to make visits either to our church members or the parents of the children who come to the Day Center.

We visited a lady from our church and helped her the cleaning of her house and garden. Another guy and myself from the YWAM team worked in the garden and the girls helped her with the house cleaning. Mrs Xenia was very happy and thanked us for our help. She is not in very good shape and can't work that much. When we had finished she invited us to have a meal together. Later that day we found out that she had borrowed the money to buy the food.

We visited another family who have two daughters who come to our Day Center. Their parents used to go to the Jehovah Witness church but they quit because of the hardships of life. Now they have a miserable life as they are addicted to alcohol. It was easy for me to see that there was domestic violence in the family as I have seen bruises and marks on the mother's face many times. While we were talking to her, she cried. In spite of her religious background she was in a miserable condition. I found it a little difficult to talk to them about heaven and earth due to the teaching they had received while attending the Watch Tower organization. Our prayer is for God to work in their lives and make them aware of their sinfulness.

When we left, we decided to visit another family that we knew were extremely poor. Not long ago, we had visited them to ask them if their children could come to our Center. Although it was winter time back then, no one answered the door. We could only see a feeble candle light in the window. When we came back to this house again, we saw people in the courtyard and decided to go in. We discovered it was an old lady and her married children who lived there. The lady told us that she had lived all by herself during the winter with no heat or electricity. She had used many blankets to keep warm when it was freezing outside. The neighbors would drop by to check on her to see if she was still alive. She told us she never believed she would survive. We were glad to tell her about the love of God and His care. We told her God had given her another chance to seek Him. Our desire is to visit this family again and share more about God with them.

We visited other families that we keep in touch with so we can encourage them to seek the Lord.

The YWAM team and us went downtown to give out tracts and talk to people. We talked to a few young people and noticed that they did not know why they had just celebrated Easter. They had a poor Bible knowledge and so we tried to share more from God's Word and answer their questions. When they left we found somebody else to talk to. It was a Gypsy gentleman. He kept saying that his personal faith had to be intellectual.  We had quite an argument with him.  He was very intrigued that we were giving out tracts and told us that we should have used the money to buy some food and give it to the old and poor and then tell them about God. Later on, we went to the hospital. We saw some people sitting on the benches outside. We got to meet a lady who had been sick a long time who wanted to hear more from the Word of God. We gave tracts to all the people sitting on the benches and one gentleman asked for more so he could share them with his roommates. May God bless His Word that reaches the people who don't know Him!  Our pastor, other church members and I visited some people working in the neighboring village. We showed them a Christian movie about trusting God under every circumstance of life.

Following these events we headed to Bucharest to attend the HeartCry conference. I went to visit my brother in Brasov and traveled to the conference in Bran from there. This conference was a real blessing as  I was moved to take spiritual warfare more seriously because as children of God we're in a permanent warfare. I'm glad I could record the sessions so I can study them later and work on my spiritual deficiencies.

Regarding the youth ministry, I shared with them the correct manner of telling the Gospel and emphasized the negative aspects of evangelism based on just saying a prayer. Not many people attended that meeting, and sadly, I realize their decreasing interest in these youth meetings. I pray that God will give me guidance in the youth ministry so that I can motivate them to persevere and come to the meetings.