Over time the church has continuously tried to take advantage of
various opportunities to minister to the expat community. This year the church
organized an elegant Valentine's Day dinner for couples in and out of the church so as to extend the reach of our church in our community. It was an evening full of great food, amazing live
music, flowers, games and wonderful fellowship. We were thrilled to be able to connect with families from the
church, as well as, to create a bridge of friendship with many outside the church.
Enjoying the evening with the couples who attended
The worship team provided the entertainment
The end of February, we had a visit from our dear friends Scott and Sandy Chadwick, the pastor and wife from the International church in Sofia,
Bulgaria. It was great to spend time together and to show them what's going on
in the church in Bucharest. All International churches have similarities: we
all minister to the expat community from many nations around the world, yet each church
is uniquely different. It was great to spend time encouraging each other toward greater effectiveness in the work of God's Kingdom.
Enjoying a bite to eat with our friends
Once a year, in March, the church has a weekend away in the Romanian mountains. Everybody arrives Saturday morning and we have lunch together, then we
have free time where families and young adults can connect while hiking the
mountains or doing other things together, then we have dinner followed by
games. Sunday morning after breakfast,
we all meet for worship in a room with glass windows surrounding two walls, with the
background of the snow capped mountains. It is an amazing site as we worship Christ together. This
year we had the joy of having one of our former elders from Nigeria and his family join for the retreat. Currently the live in Geneva due to work but it was great to have them join us this year as brother Sunday Oloidi brought us the morning message.
The church together in the Romanian mountains
The church building is strategically located about a mile from the city center,
but our neighborhood is not a rich one. We have a lot of poor Roma families
with a lot of children right down the street.
The children have been coming to church for a few years, but we
wished we could focus on them in a more effective way since most of them speak Romanian. Therefore, we've had a desire to start a kids
club for them on Saturdays, but we just didn't have the people to lead it and
help serve to make it go. By God's grace, this year He has brought an amazing team of about 20
people from the church to serve the community.
God brought a leader, a young woman named Jennifer from Canada and the rest of the team are
from the UK, United States, Romania, Nigeria, the Philippines, Malaysia, Moldova,
Angola, South America, Mongolia. It's
wonderful to see over 11 nations, brought to Romania for various reasons, coming together to impact our
neighborhood. Please pray that God will work in the lives of the children and their parents to see them come to know Christ in a personal way.
The initial planning meeting for our new community ministry
The end of March we both traveled to the IBC Pastor's conference which was held this year in beautiful Mallorca, Spain. We are very grateful to serve a church that is willing to do what it can to help us attend such events. These are great times to get your batteries recharged and to rub elbows with others who are in the very same shoes as you. We greatly enjoyed this time away. We are grateful for the time of encouragement and rest that came from it.
Naty and I enjoying a nice meal in Spain
Finally, I had the opportunity to join the IBC once again in scouting out new cities for potential new International English language churches here in Europe. This year I joined a pastor from one of our IBC churches in Naples, Italy and three other pastors from Wisconsin. We went to Valencia, Spain a city that has almost 2,500,000 people in the total area including all of its outlying area's. While there we had the opportunity to visit with Spanish pastors, other missionaries and other expat's just to determine the viability of a potential new church there. At this time, the English community does not seem to be as strong as we might have thought it would be. So keep the IBC in prayer as we determine if this city and many other cities around the world would be spots for new churches.
The team in Valencia, Spain
