Ministry Updates

There are lots of exciting things going on with Ministry right now. First- the Mamarute children's club is still growing. Wen we started 6 weeks ago we had 7 children. This last tuesday we had a record 16 children. We were able to contain the group all in one room of the apartment but noware using two rooms. This actually works great because we are able to put the younger kids in one room and the older kids in another room. Each week we are doing a Alphabet letter, a story, songs in english, and a bible verse that relates to our letter of the week. Last week when we did the letter "R" our craft was a rainbow and we talked about Noah and the rainbow in the bible. We also try to do an interesting snack that goes with the letter of the week. The week we did the letter "T" we gave the kids tomatoes with tuna in them. A big hit- try that on American kids. We also have been blessed with a second Romanian translator. Chilla is a girl one of the American students has got to know. She grew up in an orphanage and is now working in a factory. She has come for 4 weeks now to help and is just great. She is really good with the kids. Magda is the other Romanian that helps. She is the assistant pastor at the church. Please pray for the safety of the children as they travel to and from club with it getting darker earlier.

On another exciting note the Baragon teens club is also growing. We have had as many as 17 kids. Up until this week we had been just been playing games and building relationships with the kids. Sometimes we would talk about how there week was. This week the club broke new ground though and it is scary and exciting all at once. We were going to teach them a christian song that was really fun. When we started to explain the song they all had this wierd look on their faces. One of the kids said " This isn't and orthodox song- is it?" Turns out all the children in our club except the two that go to our church are Romanian Orthodox. Orthodox is pretty much the state sponsored religion. It is very similar to catholicism but much older. They have a patriarch in Romania similar to the Pope in Rome. Under communism this was the only allowed religion. Some Orthodox priests are tolerant of other religions but unfortunately there are many that are not. Kids in the school are required to take Orthodox religious classes unless they get permission to go to a different class. Non- orthodox people (or protestants) are generally called "Pocait" which I do not think is a nice word. Kids can get picked on pretty bad for being a "pocait". When this came up in our teen club we broke up into three groups and tried to define similarities. This at least established some common ground. There were some very good discussions in these groups and the kids really participated. At the end we got back together and said that we wanted to understand their religion and we asked that they be open to understanding what we beleive. God was certainly in those discussions as none of us had planned for that conversation to come. Please be in prayer for this teen group and also for the two kids that go to our church that they would have a sense of peace and be encouraged in their faith.

The teen leadership is also growing. We have 4 Romanians in our leadership group which is great as well as Maurice, Melanie, myself, 2 American students, and 1 volunteer. On Wednesday we had a leadership meeting and talked about plans for future teen activities as well as how to proceed with future discussions. Please be in prayer for this.

Check out the picture album called Ministry October for ministry pictures.