February Prayer Requests
While our church faces much turmoil, there are also some exciting possibilities on the horizon. Our church needs so much wisdom at this time, not only in the trials we face, but in the opportunities God is leading us to. Please pray for us as we consider moving forward with the purchase of a building with which we would seek to pool the skills and resources of our church to form a community center. Please read what our team leader, Derek Ebbers, wrote in their latest newsletter:
"The above picture represents an idea (or location) for a new project. Does it look like a great community center, or just a run down post-communist building that was once called 'The Institute'? Called that because it was the location where genetic modification and research of exotic plants was done during communism.
It is just a minute from our house by foot and next to a developing part of the town.
For several years we have had our ears open to community needs and several ideas have surfaced. We are in the process of communicating with church leadership and members about their participation. We believe that the reconciling work of the gospel message must infiltrate the community at many levels and in many ways.
Please pray for unity and clarity as we pursue what we believe could serve the kingdom and build the local church."
We noticed that our church has an age gap in the congregants, namely the lack of teenagers and very young adults. We have begun a bimonthly get-together with some of the older youth in the community and plan on continuing this. So far we've had three meetings, and each time the group has grown! Eventually we would love to take the relationships we're making in these hang-out times and extend our influence through after-school programs, Bible studies and discipleship, etc. Pray that God would grow the relationships here and that he would help our valuing of these youth to be infused with the sweet smell of the gospel to a group that tends to seek value in social acceptance and academic merit.
Catalina and our pastor's wife have begun teaching English through Bible Puppet stories at our kids' school. They are using Bible stories from The Jesus Storybook Bible (in both English and Romanian) for their basic curriculum. Please pray that those stories would be well received and that God's wisdom and love would shine through his Word. We are so thankful for your support, as last month we raised enough money to provide each of the students in the class with their own storybook Bible! Please pray that God uses the time spent in the Bible to make the Word of God come alive and remain deep inside the children's hearts.
Continue to pray for the three Roma families we are working with, including *Alexa (not her real name). You may remember that she stole our credit card back in the summer before we went back to the States. We didn't see her for months once we returned. Now that it's winter, we see more Roma begging again, and Alexa is back at our doorstep regularly, too. We continue to encourage her to seek reconciliation with us and build trust - by demonstrating the truth of her claims with medical documentation, by being truthful and telling us that she has lied, and/or by allowing us to go with her to her house to assess her needs. She continues to string us along. We always still invite her into our home for coffee, while she tells us new reasons for why she needs us to give her money. We've shared with her the Gospel several times in different ways. It's truly sad. We believe she has a genuine love for us in a weird way, especially for our kids. But she's trapped in a cultural cycle of living by lying. It must be a terribly scary thing to try and give up everything you've been taught and be truthful with foreigners like us. Pray for our wisdom as we learn how to work and love in this community, as our learning and wisdom seem to come largely through mistakes we've made. It's a frustrating process, so please pray that God gives us patience, and that we would have a persevering love which would mark us as distinct from the non/nominal Christians with whom the Roma come in contact.
Continue to pray that our church would find a Romanian pastor.
Please pray for our church congregants, especially the elders, as there are many who are facing some very difficult circumstances. Please pray that God would give them wisdom and endurance, and that he would help them to lean into the body. Pray that we would have wisdom in reaching out to them and supporting them.