Praise the Lord for another month in His mission field!

The ministry in Tereblecia

I have visited Tereblecia on several occasions for different ministries. I have been to the church seven times and continue the Bible study on Philippians 1 and 2. I have preached there five times. We have had two days of fasting and prayer for the evangelistic event on July 18.

Our village was flooded. The water broke bridges and brought a lot of garbage into the middle of the village. One day, as I was heading to church, I saw a dump that nobody wanted to clean. God gave me the thought to tell the people from the church about it and ask them to join me to clean it. They all welcomed the suggestion and we were all down there cleaning the village.

The people were encouraged to see that they had been able to do something useful for their own village. On the other hand, that has been good for our church's testimony as we did something good for the village without being paid for it or asked by the mayor.

Two weeks later, we had the evangelistic event. We printed out 700 invitations (on the back, we printed the message of the gospel) and 20 big posters. The church members took the invitations and passed them out. Most of the people took them, but only a few actually showed up that night. Some people didn't even want to take the invitation. We invited almost the whole village, around 4000 people, but only about 30 people from Tereblecia came and 20 others from other villages. But we thank the Lord for being able to cover the village with His word and we are also happy for the ones who came to hear the gospel. We had the Romanian music band as our guests, Continental and a pastor from Radauti who I preached with. No one publicly expressed their desire to give their life to Christ but I talked to people and who told me they had felt convicted in their hearts about getting right with God. I also talked with the director of the Cultural Center from the village and answered some of his questions. He said he would like to become a Christian too. The mayor of the village came also. I invited him to have a greeting for the people. Our prayer is for God to give repentance to every person from this village, especially to the ones that were there that night.

After this event I understood many things. The people have hardened hearts and are not interested in the gospel or salvation because whenever somebody dies, the priest performs the funeral service and says that their very soul, despite the life they lived, will go to heaven. People believe it. So, why would they care about repenting and living a holy life if they make it to heaven anyway (according to the priests' teaching). This is one false teaching I have to fight in this village. Another important thing is the Christians' reputation. If they live like the world and expect to go to heaven, then the others will say there's no difference between them and me. I have to confront this problem every day.

We want to gain favor from others for Christ by the way we live and act, and if necessary, using words too. I am grateful to the Lord for the wonderful things He taught us on the occasion of this event.

At the end of the event I invited the people that didn't have a Bible to come forth. I was surprised to see 15 of them. It's been a month of intense work in the evangelistic field. We'll continue the work because we live in a village of 4000 people out of which only 50 people are Christians, and not all of these are sincere ones. It is a big issue we have to settle and it takes a lot of physical and spiritual
work.

The water broke our bridge and we can no longer get to church unless we take a longer way. The government won't do anything about it. We would like to be able to fix it ourselves so that it can be a good testimony for this village. If the Lord places this desire on someone's heart to help us with that, it will be a great ministry for our village.

The ministry in Cernauti

I've preached the gospel on several occasions here this month as well. There were two weddings in Pasat and Voloca and a baptism service in Gorbova. I preached the Word at two wedding ceremonies in Nouasulita. More than 200 unbelievers were there and heard the Word. Only two of them didn't have a Bible but I made sure they would get one.

We had a baptism service in Gorbova where four young people got baptized. We had printed and passed out 200 invitations and 10 posters. 25-30 unbelievers responded and came to the church service. God is so great because he gave us such freedom to preach the gospel so that the people would listen and be saved. Please pray for the salvation of these people.

I spent the rest of the time with my family, doing physical work and studying.