A Year Ends, A New Year Begins

The second to the last weekend of November the church here in Bucharest hosted its annual men’s retreat. This year we were honored to have Doug Marksberry a missionary from Kentucky come and be our guest teacher for the men who attended. The men who attended represented 7 different countries. The theme this year was, ‘Becoming God’s Kind of Leader’. We were thrilled by what we saw take place in many of the men’s lives who attended. As the retreat came to a close, many of the men developed a means through Facebook to continue to encourage each other towards this sort of growth.  Please keep these men in prayer as they endeavor to become the type of leaders God would have them be at home, on the job and in the world.

The men who attended this years retreat

The end of November we celebrated Thanksgiving as a church. This is an exciting time to come together as a congregation to give thanks and to worship and celebrate all that God has done in our lives. When you have so many from various cultures celebrate God’s goodness, it certainly makes for an exciting event. There was turkey with all the sides and even pumpkin pie, but the fellowship was even better. We praise God for his faithfulness and goodness in 2014.

Some of those from around the world who celebrated Thanksgiving

As we entered the month of December we celebrated Christmas with the community Saturday, December 13th. Once again this was one of the highlights of the year for the church as almost 130 attended to celebrate the birth of Jesus. We not only were thrilled to have some many in attendance, we were also thrilled to have so many visitors. We are thankful that God opened the door to clearly share the gospel with so many that evening. Now we pray that God will use this event to cause many of those who visited to come to trust Christ for forgiveness of sins and eternal life. Please pray with us that God will complete the work that he started in many of these people’s lives.

The IBC Christmas choir singing at this years celebration

A bit later in the month we had the opportunity as a church to continue an outreach project that we have had the privilege to engage in every year since we have been part of the church. We had the opportunity to bring shoebox gifts to all the children of a local shelter called 'Casa Ioana'. When we delivered the gifts we had an opportunity to share the gospel, as well as, inside each gift was a clear explanation of the gospel. We pray God will use this to cause some to receive God’s gift of eternal life. 

One of the children from Casa Ioana

Finally, Naty and I want to thank each of you for your participation in the work of ministry here in Romania and Moldova. It is a fact that we could not do this work without God enabling us to do this, it is also just as true that we couldn't do it without your generosity as well. We pray that each of you are being blessed and that God is richly rewarding each of you for your generosity towards the work and towards the work of God's Kingdom in Eastern Europe.