Vine Primavara! Spring is coming! After a long winter, the flowers in my yard are blooming, and many spiritual seeds are sprouting at last! We are so thankful for all God did this winter, and are looking forward with joy to all He will do this spring and summer!
• Thanksgiving Celebrations — Fall brought Thanksgiving, both American-style and Romanian! The Romanian churches celebrate “Ziua Multumirii” — a day of thanks, one Sunday out of October. Everyone brings things from their gardens to represent giving back to the Lord for the harvest He’s given us. Pam and I were honored to help arrange the presentation of fruits and veggies, and we loved celebrating the special day with over 100 people at church that Sunday! We also celebrated American Thanksgiving with a sweet, nonbelieving friend. Please pray for this friend, Carla, as we continue to witness to her.
• Agape Leaders Retreat — This fall, we took some time to both spoil and train the hard-working leaders of Agape. We took three families to the beach to pray, rest, fellowship together and plan for the future. Through our conversations on this trip, our new discipleship groups were born. The Lord blessed our time, and we are so thankful for these families!
• Christmas Season — Christmas was busy as always, with ministry opportunities galore. We gave out shoes and food bags in the gypsy village, chocolate chip cookies to all our friends and church family and organized a kids’ Christmas pageant at Agape! We also soaked up time with the Risner kids, who came home for the month. It was so sweet to all be together again.
• First Small Group Meeting — We began our discipleship groups in January! We have split our church into three small groups that meet weekly to study the Bible and fellowship. On top of that, as their leaders, we check in on each member weekly to see how they are doing spiritually. Bryan, Pam and I are leading a group comprised of 2 families and 15 teenagers! It is a challenge to disciple so many teens, but we enjoy working to get to know them better and are praying the Lord will use this to grow them each in Christ!
Prayers
• The kids being here for Christmas was wonderful, but we miss them dearly. Pray for our hearts!
• For our church plant as we work on a meeting place solution.
• For many who are on the fence to fully commit to Agape.
• Cristina, my massage therapist who is a nonbeliever. Pray God will give me the right words to witness to her.
• For our upcoming ladies’ day event. We are asking all our church ladies to bring a nonbelieving friend.
• That God will bless Return Church plant (Brasov) and our gypsy ministry (Santandrei).
• That God will make missionaries, pastors, leaders and servants out of Agape kids!
Praises
• Every person from Agape is plugged into a discipleship group!
• Agape church plant just had its one-year birthday! God is so good to us!
• We had large turnouts for Thanksgiving and Christmas, and we pray that these new connections will be cultivated.
• Our church is growing in its knowledge of God and His Word. Pray now that we can encourage the church to be missions-minded.
• Summer is coming! We are excited and praying about many new outreach opportunities this spring and summer. Please pray with us.
• My Romanian language skills are growing. I’m back to language classes, hoping to become more fluent!
