Our Christmas Festival went great!

Hey everyone! We had our Christmas Festival this past Friday. It went well even though we didn't have quite as many people as we had hoped for. There were about 1200-1300 kids there and roughly 1600-1700 people there total including adults. This gave us a great opportunity to share the true message of Christmas with a lot of people and to tell them about our Savior, Jesus Christ. Here are the Pictures from the program and some videos.




We are stopping our English classes and homework help sessions for the Holidays, but we will pick them back up on the 5th after the kiddies start back to school. We are really excited about what this new year will bring for us here and we hope that God will really work in the peoples lives here in Rimnicu Valcea.

Keep us in your prayers!

Getting everything ready for this Friday's Christmas Celebration!

Hey everyone! Well I would like to start off by giving some happy birthday wishes to one of the girls in our youth group. This past Saturday was her birthday and on Sunday we had a small "birthday party" for her at our organization's center. Here are some pictures!


Last night we had a meeting with all of the volunteers that will help us on Friday at our Christmas celebration. We made up teams and discussed how we will proceed with giving the gifts. Claudiu Nitisor told us that he had talked with several local television stations and a few national television stations. All of the local stations have confirmed they are coming and two of the national stations confirmed with one more that has not responded yet. He also went and talked with some of the local radio stations and newspapers and asked if they would cover the event and two of the newspapers accepted.

We will doing a "special panting" like I mentioned in the post before last if you want to see what I'm talking about just watch the video below.

We actually won't be doing the same story or message these people will we just took the idea with the painting. We will also have our kids that our Organization works with sing two carols at the Celebration. If you want to see the full program for Friday night here it is.

1. Opening and welcome Claudiu Nitisor
2. A Carol by our Group Cristi Ciuculescu
3. A shrot word from the city's mayor Mircea Gutau
4. A Choreography Mihaela Runceanu
5. About the Organizations who
put together the Program Chuck Harrod
6. A Puppet show Dana Nitisor
7. The "special painting" Group
8. A Christmas message Claudiu Nitisor
9. A carol by our group Cristi Ciuculescu
10. Closing and exiting instructions Cristi Ciuculescu.

After the Program ends we will have teams waiting at the exits. These teams will take the tickets we passed out and will give a gift in exchange. The only way to get a gift is to have a ticket, this way we don't have to worry about being short. We will go and pick up the gifts on Thursday and will come back that same afternoon and drop them off at the place where the Celebration will be held.

Keep us all in your prayers as we have this busy week ahead of us and pray that God will guide us.

Our Organization's Christmas program went great!

Hey everyone! We had our Christmas Program yesterday and it went great! Not all of our kids came but we had a little over half of them. All of the kids that had parts in the play came so that was a big relief. First Cristi gave an introduction and then we sang some carols, had the play, and sang 2 more carols. After that Cristi had a 25-30 minute message about the true meaning of Christmas and how we as people try to take Christ out of Christmas by filling it up with junk like Santa Clause and stuff. After that We sang one last carol and closed. Here are they videos of Cristi's sermon, some of the Carols, and some pictures.


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We are really excited about next Friday. At 7:00 P.m. we will start and hope to be finished by 10:00 with everything. Pray for us that everything will go well and that God will bless what we are doing.

Our Christmas Program is all lined out!

Hey everyone! Well we have got our Christmas program all lined out and we are really excited! Actually we have two Christmas programs that we will have take place.

The first program is our organization's (Bunul Pastor) program. The participants in the program will be the kids we work with 4 days a week at our center in Ostroveni and our Church's youth group. It will take place on the 11th at the Casa Stiintei in Ostroveni at 7:00 o'clock P.M. This will just be our closing program for the Holiday's since this week is the last week of school. We expect roughly 60 people to show up. We will have some Christmas carols and play followed by a short message. We've been practicing for it this past week here are some pictures....


The second program is the big one that I wrote about in the last blog post. It will take place on the 18th of December at 7:00 o'clock P.M. at the city's indoor handball stadium. We will receive 2000 gifts from Samaritan's Purse and will distribute them at the program. The total time of the program will be about 2 hours, but will be split into tow parts. The first hour our group of kids we work with at our center in Ostroveni every week will sing some carols with Cristi and Irina, We will then have a special "painting", and Claudiu Nitisor will have a short message. The second hour we will distribute the gifts to Children between the ages 5-14. We already have about 20 or 25 volunteers and we need at least another 10 to 15, after all we are going to be giving out 2000 gifts. We will also have the city's gendarmerie there for security purposes (the gendarmerie is a division of the city's police force here). We hope that everything will turn out well and that the attendance will be good.

This week was my brother Chase's birthday. He turned 15 years old yesterday and we had a party for him at out youth meeting yesterday afternoon. We ate cake, played some games, and had a good time and then we all walked to town. Here are some pictures and videos of the party.....




This Saturday Mom had program with the mothers and daughters. About 8 or 9 mothers and 15 daughters came. Mom had a short message for them and then they did some crafts and played some games. Here are some pictures.....I had more but accidentally deleted some of them


This past Friday I went to help Claudiu Nitisor with 2 puppet shows that he had at the City Library and at one of the school here. We had really great attendance! Here are a few pictures...


Well thats about it, just keep everything we are doing and us in your prayers!

We've got a Christmas play coming!

Hey everyone! I hope you are all doing well. This week went really well and we've started practicing for our Christmas play. It will take place somewhere around the second week in December at either the casa stiintei(hope my spelling is right) or the theater in Ostroveni. We will have some songs and a play followed by a short message. We have about 30-40 kids that we expect to participate in our program. We hope this will help show the children and their parents what the true meaning of Christmas is.

We hope to have another christmas program with the help of our friend Claudiu Nitisor and Samaritan's purse. We want to rent the indoor handball arena in town that holds about 2000 people or so and invite people to come and receive a gift donated by Samaritan's purse, we will receive somewhere around 2000 gifts. We hope to have help from some local volunteers and possibly the handball team. We want to do this so we can gather the people to share the love of Christ with them and the wonderful message of Christmas. This project is going to take quite a bit of planning in a short time period and lots of help from the Lord. This will be one of the biggest things we have done and definitely will be the most people we have ever had gathered at once.

Our youth meetings are still going strong. There were 9 present not counting myself, Cristi, and Irina. We did have 3 or 4 of our youth missing tonight but everything went well. We hope the group keeps on growing even thought it is growing slowly. here are some pictures form this week's meeting.



Just remember and keep us in your prayers this busy Christmas season we have ahead of us and pray that God will touch the lives of the people here.

Swine Flu!

Hey everyone! Sorry I don't really have much to write on the blog this week because since last Wednesday I've been sick with the swine flu (At least thats what the doctor told me). I had a temperature of about 102 F.(39 C.) at one point, but I'm feeling much better now and will be back at it tomorrow.

I do have one piece of news for all of you Romanian readers though. My friend Claudiu Nitisor, who writes the Dumnezeu este opinia mea publica blog, has moved his blog to a new address. He said he lost his old blog somehow and had to move it. Here is the link to the new address http://claudiunitisor.wordpress.com/

Keep everyone here in your prayers and pray that now one else will get sick. Have a blessed day!