We are happy to share with you once again about God's work in our life and the lives of the people we worked with. Thank you for being there for us in this ministry to preach the gospel and make disciples.

WHAT IS HAPPINESS?

Claudia used to be a student and now she is a physical therapeutic doctor. While talking to her, she told me that a paraplegic girl once came to see her. That girl had a great desire to be able walk. We know that God allowed that in her life but the clear thing is that for this girl, happiness meant to be able to walk one day.

God taught me a lesson. What is happiness? This concept may be different considering what we want. There are people who long for a spouse and that may mean happiness for them, while others want a job or a house. But what does it take for us who have all these things to be happy? If we look deep down in our souls, we realize that we sometimes lack the peace and joy to know our Creator and His fellowship. Actually, we are called to enjoy Him and His presence in our life, our family and friends He gave us.

The subject of forgiveness is pretty vast but it also creates a good interaction between people and  brings to light the problem of an unforgiving spirit. We talked about that at the girls' meeting. We talked about forgiveness and what the Bible says. We had good talks with the girls as they were very receptive and shared about their family relationships and how they were affected by them. They realized the problems they had in the relationships with their colleagues, friends, brothers, sisters and even parents. Mariana stated, "I never realized what the Lord wants me to learn from the relationship I have with a friend. He wants to work in my life!" Georgeta said, "I think I will spend some nights thinking of some things that I need to settle down". God called us to forgiveness and freedom from the prison of bitterness.  Furthermore, He is the source of power to do that. His power is unlimited!

FIGHT FOR YOUR FAMILY!

More and more we see  Satan attacking several Christian families. He brings division and unforgivingness. Not long ago, a family called to tell us they could no longer get along. They had two children and their problems showed up because they could not agree on how to raise the children. Sometimes, one parent was authoritarian while the other more flexible. The children realized that and they sided with the flexible parent. That brought disagreement between the two parents. We talked a lot on the phone about it, prayed and read the Bible so we could see what it said about husbands and wives, mother, father and authority. Eventually, the mother admitted her mistake and said that she would change for the sake of their marriage, even though the husband did not admit his mistake. I cannot give you their names but pray that God will intervene with power in all Christian families and protect them from the evil attacks that are meant to destroy them.

LOVE FOR THE ROMANIAN AND FOREIGN STUDENTS

As you know, we used to have a team that worked with the foreign students back in Timisoara. Most of them were from India and Africa. After moving out to Brasov, we have thought of them often. The Lord is good! One day we met some students from Nigeria on the campus and talked to them. I told them about myself and God. They were receptive and friendly.  Then we got to meet several others. We now have a group of nine foreign students. I am glad that God has brought students from other countries to Brasov. We realize that God gave us a heart for foreign students. We pray that we'll be able to find two Christian couples to love and support these students. The uniqueness of this ministry is the relations of love, an open door so that they could find some of the family love they left behind. Pray that God will provide these two couples.

CULTURE  VERSUS  BIBLE TEACHING

This was the topic of our student conference. We were privileged to have pastor Scott Lee for a few days here in Brasov. We had a good and edifying time with him. We prayed, did outreach and spent time in the Word. Six students from Nigeria came to the conference. On Saturday, we made up teams of two people and went into the dorms and talked to the students about God.

Here are some of their impressions:

"We came to a girl named Oana who was doing some cleaning up. We stood in the hallway and talked to her. Her roommate was sleeping. Oana seemed to have a desire to know more. She wanted to read the Bible. She was excited that she received one and understood the gospel. We agreed to visit her again.

- Mariana and Irina

We visited with a young man called Viorel. He was a sophomore studying law. We talked about religion, history and churches and also about integrity in his future job. "This is how the system is, I cannot do anything about that". We shared the gospel with him. He was the kind of a religious man who would go to the priest to receive forgiveness when sinning. He realized he could be saved only through Christ. I asked him, "Are you going to cheat on exams?" He said he would. I told him that to follow Christ meant to give up compromise.

-Viorel and Ionut

We visited with Dan, a student at Silviculture. His father was a forester and he was pretty wealthy. Dan had the opportunity to attend an international conference in Brussels about relationships between young people. We got to talk about God and he told us that he had had a teacher in high school who used to tell him about God. Then we talked about sin and what God thought about it and us. He had never thought about it before. He admitted he was a sinner. We gave him a new testament.

- Alex and Sergiu