Through the Lord's grace and kindness I have been involved in the church in Patrauti de Sus this past month. It was mostly an organizational month. Along with the church we thought about the doors that God opened that we had missed the opportunity to take advantage of. We needed to repent for a lot of things. Focusing on the future we planned several activities. We try to fulfill them by giving them our attention and keeping one another accountable as the Bible teaches us.

I would like to share with you the way God worked through us this past month. The end of the year was full of preparations for the holidays. Although the whole year people talked about the financial crisis, the preparations for these holidays were greater than past years. In these circumstances I managed to make several visits to talk to people. Although the visits were shorter than usual, I believe the seed was sown. I tried to talk with people about their successes and failures in 2009 and their plans for 2010. All of them talked only about financial things. I tried to change the subject to ask them about their souls. I was surprised that people were so indifferent and answered only out of respect for me. Although we live in a hundred year old religious context, people were very dis- interested, especially the middle age people who had grown up during communism. While none of them denied God's existence, they talked about Him as if He had been far away. I asked them whether the God of heaven could become their personal God. They smiled and looked at me as if I was a fanatic. Besides all these disappointments I know God has a beautiful plan for this village and He is preparing people for His Kingdom. We have more prayer requests than ever.

Regarding the church services this past month, the visitors number went down. Usually around 6 or 7 friends come. This past month only 2 to 3 visited our church. Some of them were too busy to come; others didn't answer my phone calls. We plan to carol to them on January 6 when they are more open. Some of the friends stopped coming because the orthodox priest threatened them. One of the church's neighbors used to be a teacher. He came to church each time I invited him. Because he was very ill his family was making preparations for his funeral. The priest told them that he wouldn't bury him. Since then many stopped coming to church, including our neighbor, Nicolae, who came home from the hospital. These events discouraged us. Knowing God, I encouraged the people from the church to continue following the Lord. He will give us victory.

Regarding the church I continued to organize the programs and the sermons. There is another man that preaches in Russian or Ukrainian each Sunday. We have three people that speak Ukrainian. Although they understand Romanian, they understand better the messages in Ukrainian. Along with this man we preach about repentance and evangelism. We also continue the Bible study each Friday evening. Everyone is involved in reading and analyzing the text. Then we share our notes and afterward I have a 15 minute message to emphasize the important things that we have to apply in our lives.

This past month I attended several meetings with the missionaries from our county, another meeting with the HeartCry missionaries and Nehemiah. It was a blessed time as we shared our ministries, prayed and encouraged one another. I am very encouraged not being alone and seeing the victories of others who face more obstacles than me. I praise the Lord for these men. I pray that God would break a new ground in Bucovina among Romanians and give us victory.

On December 25 I preached in two churches in Nouasulita county, Dranita and Cosuleni. In our village nobody celebrates Christmas on December 25. I took my whole family from the 24th of December till the 26th and we served there. We expect them to help us in January.
Next month we will go caroling throughout the village. We invited several youth groups to help us. I hope we will reach out to the entire area.