March

Hey everyone! Well march is here and just when I thought winter was on its last leg, it comes a blizzard today! Oh well, it'll pass :). This past month has been a good month and I hope March goes even better.

We did our theme for the month today at our afterschool program, this month's theme is Mother's day. Romanian mother's day is on the 8th of March, so we decided to go with a Mother's day theme. I will have some pictures up of our theme in the next post.

Everyone be in prayer for Cristi this month, he is going to Tirgu Mures on the 17th to get his pins removed from his foot that were put in because of his broken foot last year. I'm sure it will be quite painful for Cristi and he'll be laid up for a month or two. We're taking a two week break from our afterschool program so Irina can stay home and take care of Cristi

I have a new blog, it's my own personal blog and I post much more often on it than I do this one. If you would like to check it out heres the link http://codyharrod.wordpress.com/ .

Keep us in your prayers!

February is almost over

Hey everyone! Well, February is coming to an end and we're only three weeks away from Spring! This past week the weather has been much nicer, the sun has been out and the temperatures have been in the 40-60's. These past two weeks have been great, our attendance at our after school program has been up and we have some new adults coming to our Thursday afternoon adult English program. We had about 25-30 kids on average everyday these past two weeks with about 5 new kids coming. This past week we had some of the parents come and tell us that they are very grateful to us for changing their children's lives. The parents told us that their children were more obedient, more respectful, and they started praying every night before bed, something they had never done before!The parents were shocked when their children said "Mom and Dad I want us to pray like we do with Cristi and Irina at the after school program" At our after school program we always have a 20-30 minute lesson for the kids where we pray and try to teach them about Jesus and instil good values in them. They have responded in a great way! All of our regular kids have had a great change in their attitudes and actions. Some of them have started coming to our Sunday morning church services and have started to read their Bibles. These kids are the next generation and we hope they will grow up and serve the Lord. We hope that they will be examples in the community and lead others to Christ as they grow. Here are some pictures and a short video of them from this past week.



Next Friday the Family Center, a place that helps family that was founded by a lady from New Zealand, is having a raffle for the ladies. The proceeds from the raffle will be used to support the Family Center in its mission here. Our youth group has been asked to do the music for the whole program. We are honoured to help in this fund raiser. We hope the raffle goes well and that all of the people who were invited attend. I will have some pictures and video of it next week.

I can see that God is really working here in they lives of men, women, and children alike, this generation has the power through our Lord Jesus Christ to change this place. I hope they will listen and accept the call of the Gospel and be the ones that change this spiritually dark place. Keep us all in your prayers as the work here grows.

Mada and Lavinia's Baptism went Great!

Hey everyone! If you read my last post then you know that we had a Baptism yesterday! Madalin and Lavina Dumitrache, a mother and son who have been attending our Sunday morning services since we began them, were baptized. We had a special service for them where they, and other close friends, had a chance to share some thoughts and encouraging words. In the Baptism services here, the focus of the service is on the ones who are being baptized. I personally think this is great, it gives the ones who are being baptized a chance to share their testimonies and how God worked in their lives. Mada told how the Lord had changed his life and how grateful he was that God offered him this free gift of eternal life. Lavina told how she had attended a Baptist church for several years and how she looked like she was a genuine Christian to others for all those years. She went on to tell how she struggled with the addictive habit of smoking and how the Lord showed her she was claiming to be one of His children but was actually living a lie and living in a way that wasn't pleasing to Him. She said that she is glad that she can now stand and say she is a true child of Good and a changed person. The service was very moving, it was also a great encouragement for us all. Lavina and Mada are now the very first members of our church, Beserica Bunul Pastor ( in English it means "The Good Shepherd Church"). We are really excited how God is working in our church plant. Here are the pictures from the Baptism.



Last week went well, we had about 20-25 kids everyday last week and at our Teen English we do on Friday night, we had some new students come. The kids really like the theme we did for February , they especially liked that we put up their faces on the wall.

Last night's youth meeting was one of the best we've had! All of our youth were so attentive and interested in what was being taught. You could tell they had genuine interest and when we had our worship service you could feel that they were singing with all they had to praise our wonderful Lord. Cristi's brother Catalin, who came to sing at Mada's Baptism, had a devotion for us last night. He talked about how even though we as people try to invent theories on how things were created and how they work, the truth is all of that we make up like the big bang, is a lie. He went on to say that God is so great that he created even the little tiny things and takes care of them, so how much more is He going to take care of us? He challenged us to put all of our faith in God and count all of the things he gives us as a blessing.

Last week was just great, keep praying that each and every week from here on will be better and better with our Lord Jesus leading the way.

Great News!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hey everyone! We have some great news to tell you all! This Sunday at 10:00 in the morning we will have our first Baptism service! We will use one of the Baptist's churches Baptisteries and it will last about 2 hours long. The people that are being Baptized are Madalin and His mother, who have been coming to our meetings ever since we started them. We are all really happy for them and happy that we will have our first official Church members! I hope that the Lord will use Lavinia and Madalin for the years to come in His service and for His will! Be in prayer for Lavinia and Madalin as they are the first people that attend our Church plant to do this. Pray that through this they will be a witness to the others and that they will be soon to follow!

Some more good news(I love telling good news!) for you! This past Sunday was our first time to ever serve the Lord's supper at our church plant! We are really happy that we could finally do this! There were only 6 of us (My Mom and Dad, Chase, Cristi, Irina, and myself) that took it, because we are the only ones that have been Baptized. This will soon change though, like I told you before Madalin and Lavina are getting Baptized so we hope they will partake next month when we give it again!

Well the Kids are back to school after their one week break, so our attendance was back up to 22 kids today. It's not the 30-35 we had at the beginning, but I think when the weather warms up our attendance will return to where it was. This past Friday the kids did some coloring for our wall's February theme! The theme is winter, with the kids on sleds and snowmen. We let the kids color a picture of a child on a sled and then printed out the kids that colored it and put his face in the place of the face on the coloring sheet. Cristi, Irina, Anca, Chase, Mada, Ioana, and I got together last night and cleaned the place up and hung all the "stuff" up. Here are some pictures!



Last week I went to Bucharest to take my ACT test for one final time and i some something very interesting on the way home! Here take a look at this! Talk about a loaded car!!!



Well I'll take some pictures of the Baptism and post them up next week! Keep us all in you prayers!

Coming home

Hey everyone! Sorry I haven't written in awhile. I have some important news for those of you who haven't read our latest newsletter. We Will be returning to the U.S. in either the latter part of May or at the beginning of June. I will Be returning for to attend college at Central Baptist College in Conway ,Arkansas. While my parents are gone Cristi and Irina will be in charge of the ministry here. We have complete confidence in Cristi and Irina and know that they will take care of things. We are really excited to come back and see old friends and family again, but sad at the same time to be leaving all of the people we know and love behind. Keep us in your prayers over the next few months as we prepare for our trip back.

These past two weeks went really well. We had some kids that stopped coming but we put out fliers and we have some new kids that filled their places. We have been teaching the kids a new song each week, so by the end of the year we will have a lot to choose from for the closing program. We still have room for another 15 or 20 kids so we have been putting out fliers during the weekend. We hope to get our attendance up over the next few weeks. Here are some photos from this past week.



Last night's youth meeting went great. We had some new youth that came and they had a lot of questions during our Devotion. We hope that our youth will grow and mature in the Lord, and we hope that they will learn to rely on each other because they are some of the very few Christian teens in this place. They are all that each other have as far as Christians go. I Pray that they will put their differences aside and learn to help each other. Here are a few pictures from last night.


Last week was Cristi's Birthday! He turned 31 on the 26th of January. We had a little get together for him on Sunday afternoon. Here are some pictures, HAPPY BIRTHDAY CRISTI!



Keep us in your prayers!

More snow? Ohh No!

Sunday it started snowing again and has snowed everyday since then! But even though the weather has turned cold and nasty, last week was a great week! The sun was out for most of the week and the temperatures rose a little. At our English and Homework help we had about 20 kids everyday, so that means our attendance has been a little down from the 30-35 we were getting. Since our attendance has been down a little these past two weekends we have been going and hanging out fliers. over the past two weeks we put out about 100 and I hope to go put out another 50 this Saturday if our attendance doesn't get any better. We hope that we can bring in more kids and meet more parents so that we can really get to know more people in the community where we are working.

This past Saturday night Cristi and Irina invited the whole youth group over to their place for pizza and a movie. I made pizza dough for 8 pizzas and Irina cooked them. We had a great time and hope to do it again soon!

This Sunday went well, even though we didn't have Cristi there. Cristi was invited to some of his friends baptisms, They had a large Baptism for 8 of the young people in one of the Baptist churches at once. Dad filled in for Cristi this Sunday and Irina translated. Sunday night's youth meeting went well too. We had 8, not counting me, Cristi, and Irina. I really feel like our youth are growing in the Lord and that they are trying to serve Him and do what is right. I hope they will continue to serve Him throughout their lives.

Well, keep us all in your prayers, pray that God will continue to grow the work He has started here!

New Years Resolutions!

Hi everybody! Well This past week I took pictures of the kids and the project we did with them, but Yesterday my external hard drive ,that I keep all of my photos on, magically got erased! So everything I didn't already have uploaded to Picasa or Facebook got deleted! Sorry! Anyway, This year we've decided to do a theme once a month in our room where we work with the kids. We want to let the kids draw some pictures and put up some different decorations each month. This months theme is "Happy New Year 2010!" We let the kids color some fireworks and we but up a big "Happy New Year!" sign. We also told each one of them to draw their New Years Resolutions and plans for 2010. Some of them drew and colored themselves getting better grades, some acting better and doing what their parents tell them, and one drew that he wanted to be like one of the famous soccer players this year! After that we hung all of their resolutions up on the wall so that they would think about them and remember them. I'll take some more pictures this next week so that everyone can see them.

This past Saturday Irina, Chase, Mada, Ioana, and Myself, gave our facility (the place we work with the kids, have youth meetings, Church, ect.) a good scrubbing! We got out the bleach and scrubbed down all of the walls until all of the black marks from shoes and chairs came off. We spent 3 and a half hours cleaning and I want to thank Irina, Mada, Chase, and Ioana for their hard work! Now it is really nice and clean! Here are some pictures of us.....


This past Sunday went great and we had a great Youth meeting afterwards! We also Celebrated Ioana's Birthday by have cake and pizza. We sang some praise and worship music and Then I had a short devotion for them. The text I used was Matthew 7:7-12, it was about the golden rule and treating others the way that you want to be treated. I told them that even though kids at school may say "your crazy and stupid for believing in all of that Jesus stuff" we still should treat them the way that we want to be treated. I also told them that when we are out and joking around with our friends we should be careful about what we call someone or what we say to them because we don't always know what that person has been through. We should talk to each other in positive and encouraging ways, not in discouraging and hurtful ways. I really wanted to emphasize the excessive joking and name calling in our group because it has been a real problem for some of them recently. I want them to lift each other up, not tear down, especially since some of them are new Christians. Here are some pictures....



Well, keep us in your prayers and especially ask God to help Cristi and Irina with the ministry here. Ask Him to keep them strong and not Discouraged.

Back to school kids!!!

Hey everyone! Well the Holidays were just super! We had a great Christmas and a great New Year. For New years our youth group had a small get together at Anca's house and at midnight we all went downtown to watch the fireworks! After that we came back to Anca's and had a short time of sharing our New Year resolutions. I was really enthusiastic when some of our youth said that they wanted to take this year and draw closer to God because he is the most important thing. I'm really excited the way that God is moving in the lives of these teens! Here are some videos and pics!






We also had a great youth meeting on Sunday night. Cristi had a short message on how there is a time for everything. He encouraged the group to take this next year and grow spiritually and make good choices. After that one of the girls from our group invited us to her house and her mom cooked for us, we had some ice cream, and had a time of sharing our new years resolutions. Here are some pictures!


Today was the first day of school so tomorrow we start back our after school tutoring. The same hours from 2-4 and 4-6 on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday with English lessons from 2-3:30 and 3:30-5 on Thursdays. This next week we will be hanging out fliers and posters all over the neighborhood to remind everyone of us and what we are doing.

We hope this new year goes well and are praying for a new facility either sometime this year or next year depending on our attendances and if it is God's will for us. Keep us in your prayers as we kick off 2010, and once again HAPPY NEW YEAR!