Sunday, December 12, 2010

Igor Sin at Gotesti


We had the pleasure of having Igor Sin as our guest speaker on Sunday 12th December.

He is the pastor of the 1st Baptist Church of Cahul.
They have 120 members and a very active youth and children's minsitry.


Igor qualified from Bible school in Romania and has been pastoring the church in Cahul for 3 years now and has seen growth in all areas of the church during this time.
He spoke to us from Phil 2 on humility and left us all with some serious challenges about our own lives albeit expounded in a very gracious manner.

We had Slavic and his team leading the worship and one of our oldest members Liuba brought a poem to us in Russian.

We were able to go for a pizza after the meeting and Mari and I had a lovely time of fellowship with Igor talking about various aspects of the work and visions and plans.
Pray for them as a church and their various outreaches this Christmas time
Yours and His
Pastor Mark




Religion in School


As you may remember we are now permitted to teach an optional religion class in schools throughout Moldova.

We have over 50 requests from parents for their kids to attend an optional religion class at the end of lectures on Wednesdays and Thursdays.

The Orthdox church in our village also had over 200 requests.

I understand that nationally over 25% of pupils have chosen to take the optional religion classes, a figure that has surprised the education dept.
We have been able to form 4 classes - 2 for ages 11-16 and 2 for ages 7-11.

This is one of the older bracket age groups. In this case 11 and 12 yr olds and includes our daughter Rachael.

I attended the lesson this week and found every single child to be actively participating in the various activities and also in responding to questions etc.

Tanya, one of the many qualified teachers we have in our church, is in charge of this class.

We are very encouraged with the syllabus which clearly covers all the essential and basic teaching of the bible. It is the sort of course I would teach new believers that have had no experience of the basic doctrines of the bible.

Here Tanya is teaching on the fall of man and God's resolution of the problem of our sin. i,e how our sin has separated us from God and how God in human form ( Jesus ) came and died in our place taking our sin and thus bridged the gap, bringing into a personal relationship with God those who give their lives to Christ and trust in Him.
I hope shortly to attend at least one of Marina's classes and will post a blog when I've been. Marina teaches the 7-11 yr olds.
Do please keep Tanya, Marina and the childen in your prayers
Yours and His
Pastor Mark

Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Moldovan Elections 28 Nov 2010


The general election for the parliament of Moldova took place last Sunday - 28th Nov 2010.

In the run up to the election day we were priviledged to have the OSCE team for the South West come to our pizzerie for their planning meetings and their feedback meeting.

OSCE is the international observers organisation and the team with us that was responsible for Cahul, Cantemir and Leova was made up of 24 members + drivers and translators.




Andy McEntee (left ) from the UK and Jan Holton( right ) from Norway, the older two in this picture were the leaders of the team and they have been here more than a month organising all things.




It was interesting hearing about their job and gaining fascinating insights into what's happening behind the scenes.

As a pizzerie it was a relatively new experience for us providing drinks and snacks in a kind of conference style but they seemed pleased with the service ( even thought there are things we have learned ) - certainly they were good guests to have and seemed to enjoy what we provided.

Now the elections. Our thanks to those of you who prayed diligently. They went trouble free.

The results were Communist party 42 seats down from 48 at the last election, PDLM (Stejarul which means oak tree ) 32 seats up from 18 at the last election This is the party that Valeriu Ghiletchii and Slavic Ionita are with - both Valeriu and Slavic are members of parliament again. PDM ( Marian Lupu's party ) 15 up from 13 This party is made up of mostly ex communists P.L. 12. down 3. Their leader Mr Ghimpru was the leader of the parliament in the last election.
This means that the A.I.E ( alliance for integration in Europe) made up of the 3 non communists parties can form a coalition again and would have 59 seats which will permit them to govern again but leaves them 2 seats short of the 61 out of 101 parliament seats needed to elect a president.
Without an elected president they are not able to rule for 4 years but new elections will have to be called within 1 year.
As I write these parties are in negotiations which are likely to be quite hard going.
Pray that they will be able to form a coalition and thence a government and that a miracle would happen and at least 2 of the communist members would vote with the A.I.E.'s proposal for a president.
Pastor Mark