We are so glad that in Pasat people celebrate Christmas on the 25th of December. During this month we were very glad although we underwent some periods of sadness.

We were happy to see that in December we had the greatest number of people that had ever attended our church service (16 persons). One family came for the first time. During the meeting they told us about their fear to attend church services.

We are so glad also for the opportunity to buy a house. We found two houses and had to decide which one to buy.

Mr. G. confessed his desire to repent and to know Christ more during one of our meetings.We visited a family once again whose children forbid us to come to their place. The children threatened even their parentsw. But the visit was a great joy for the family.

After a period of almost 6 months, Ion was not addicted to alcohol anymore. But in the beginning of this month he started using alcohol again. Until now, we could see in Ion a desire of change. He never missed any of our church services.  He sang with us and carefully listened to the preaching of Scripture. But one day he started again to drink which led to more and moore drinking. This was a huge problem as we started our meetings in his house and the people in the village knew this. His unsteadiness was a subject of gossiping among nonbelievers.

Before Christmas time, the orthodox priest would go to the homes of people and tell them to kiss the image of Mary, the Child and the priest's hand. Those who do this must also pay a sum of money to the priest and to the people who are with the priest. Before this event we talked to all the people who attended our services concerning this custom. We told them about the necessity of making a decision. No matter how much we insisted, they did the same as they did in the past. Initially the priest told us that he will not enter the houses of those attending our church, but some of the people went into the street to invite the priest not to forget them. We were very disappointed, but once again we understood that we cannot change the hearts of people and we also realized that some exterior things may deceive. God is the One who knows people's hearts and thoughts. Nevertheless we continued to work with the same intensity. We started to pray more for the salvation of these souls.

In Pasat people celebrate Christmas on the 25th of December but they are not used to caroling. We tried to find out the Christmas customs in this village and to our amazement we found out that people do not carol in this village. Some years ago somebody tried to carol and all the village thought he was mad or he drank too much that he didn't realize what he was doing. Nevertheless, we decided to carol in the village. We visited almost 20 houses over the Christmas evening. Generally, we were welcomed, but I cannot say the people were joyful or interested in our carols. The atmosphere was artificial and difficult. We were not received in three houses. Every house which received us had the opportunity to hear a message related to Christ's birth in addition to the carols. Because we wanted to be different from the orthodox priest who used to go to people to receive money, we gave to each family that we visited a little gift. We also invited them to come to church. Our goal was to show the inhabitants of Pasat the real meaning of this great event.  They thought the event was to drink and eat. Many of those visited didn't have a positive reaction, but there were some families who manifested their interest in meeting us again.

I kept a good pace in meeting with Mihai this month. Together we discovered great truths from the Scripture. We continued to pray for our personal needs as well as for the ministry needs.

I was asked to preach in two funerals. One of them was so unusual to me. The dead person was a young man who was 20. He killed himself and his family expressed their desire for me to come and preach. We used this opportunity to share the Gospel in the village Patrauti de Jos. After this event the family of the young man decided to come to God.