The month of October is a key month for the beginning of a new church in the city of Brasov, Romania. This is where my wife and I believe that God called us to plant a church. Along with coordinating the ministry of HeartCry in Eastern Europe, we heard God's calling that we ourselves should be part of a church plant. God guided us to the city of Brasov, a city of over 300,000. Two other families accepted God's calling and we began to pray and move toward this direction. The first Sunday of October was the day of our first meeting as a new church. By God's grace we had 19 people who attended. We meet in our apartment that has a large living room. We continued the meetings over the next Sundays and feel that God has blessed us. For now, we meet only Sunday night, as some of us visit other churches or are still members in other churches.

This month was also the beginning of the work of the Campus Crusade team for the fall semester. Students came for the fall semester which started on October 1. Four of the families that attend our meetings are involved in the ministry with the students. I helped them with the spreading of a magazine on the campus of Transylvania University. Pray that this semester will be a good time so that many students will come to know the Lord.

For one week, I participated with my wife in a ministry in the Southwestern side of Romania. For a couple of years, I helped a number of churches at the border with Serbia. I go usually once a year to preach and teach in a number of churches, helping also a team that comes from Kentucky. This year I was appointed to preach in all the churches that we visited: Moldova Noua, Resita, a Youth Conference. One particular blessing was to visit the sick people in the hospital of Moldova Noua. We visited each room where we found 5-10 sick people. We shared the Gospel and prayed with them in. I also preached the Word of God for an evangelistic meeting, for a youth meeting and also for a few church meetings. Being close to Serbia, I decided to take one day and pass the border to go and visit our HeartCry missionary, Zoran M.. It was a great joy to see Brother Zoran after a few months since we met at the conference in the spring. The work in Serbia has been slow, but Zoran works hard to spread the Gospel. God called him to start a new church in the city of Smederevo, a major city in his area, that has over 100,000 inhabitants and no evangelical church! He thinks that this is a key place where he should plant a church. Pray for guidance and resources for this new ministry. Pray also for Zoran and his family. He is alone in this hard ministry, because in the whole country of Serbia there are only a few ministers that are committed to preaching the Gospel.

The church in Kovin attempts to reach out to the town and a few villages around, such as Deliblato. Zoran has done a good job in reaching out even a Gypsy community that lives at the edge of the city.
Serbia is in great need of workers! Pray that God will raise up somebody that will join our brother Zoran in the ministry in Kovin and Smederevo.  The second part of this month, we welcomed pastor Don R. with his wife Mary and one of his nieces, Tessa M.. These are my wife's grandparents and sister. This is the first visit of her family to Romania since we've been married. They came to see where we settled and to get a feeling of how we are doing in our life with the Lord and ministry. For me, and especially for my wife, this was a great blessing. We were blessed with wonderful days when we were together, talking, praying and sharing God's Word.

We left Romania in the last week for Hungary, where pastor Rice was a missionary for ten years in the 90's. We visited a few churches where he had preached the Word. I drove and helped with the youth ministry. The end of our tour took place in a camp where I addressed the youth. One of my topics was the Gospel and the other one was about premarital relationships. All this time, was a great blessing in serving the Lord and loving his people.

Pray that God will continue to bless us in the new church plant in Brasov. Pray for Simona, Vali, Florin and Valerian. They are new guests in our meetings. Pray for their salvation. Also, pray for my wife, Trisha, that is pregnant. Pray that God will strengthen her. It is becoming more and more cold and she is not used to such a cold climate.