Moldova Mission Trip 09

Elena, Abigail, and I just returned home from a 20 day mission trip to our beloved Moldova. It was an amazing experience. We want to thank all of the wonderful people who prayed for us as we traveled and served the Lord by serving the people of Moldova. We traveled with 3 ladies from the St. Louis area who went with us for the first time to Moldova. They were real troopers. One of the ladies celebrated her 80^th birthday while in Moldova. I would like to give you a short update on the trip.

Abigail did great on the planes. The only time that she got “upset” was during the flight over the ocean. She cried 2 times during the 9 hour flight (which I thought was great). When we arrived in Moldova we had a few hours of travel and then we were able to go to bed. Since Abigail slept a lot on the plane and on the ride to the camp, by 2am she was wide awake, jumping on the bed while mommy and daddy were trying to get some much needed sleep. She played until 5am before finally falling back to sleep. We were zombies the next day as you can imagine. She adjusted but as soon as she adjusted to the time change she got sick, running a high fever. We battled that for a couple of days and then she was better. The day before coming back to the States Abigail got pneumonia and we were in the hospital for most of that day. The Lord helped and we were able to travel home on time and get her to the doctor here and she is recovering just fine.

As for the camp, let’s just say that it was amazing. We studied the course “Lord, heal my hearts” by Kay Arthur. The study is based on the Biblical book of Jeremiah. We learned about the problems that were present during Jeremiah’s time and the reason that those problems existed. Then we learned about the solutions to those problems and the best part was how we compared everything to our days and times to see the similarities. The same solution that was available during Jeremiah’s days is still available today, the Word of God. I want to thank our dear teacher and mentor, Vasile Filat, for making the lessons so practical and giving us step by step instructions to bring about change in our decaying society.

While at the camp there was a lady who did not like the fact that we were studying the Bible so she decided that she would stop us from doing what we were doing by threatening to leave with the 9 children that she brought. She was told that leaving would probably be the best thing and that really upset her. She went home and called the police, saying that we were promoting propaganda at the camp. The police camp to close down the camp or take a bribe. Vasile sat with the officer for over 2 hours. We were all praying and wondering what was happening. The officer left happy and we found out that Vasile was able to share the Gospel the entire time. The officer took a “The Truth about Sex” book and left information to be contacted later for Bible study. The camp was not closed and the Gospel continued to go forth.

At night we studied the subject of “Common Sense” from the Word of God. It was nice to see how practical the Word is. We learned things like being a grateful person, not being arrogant, etc. Then the final 3 nights we looked at true repentance in the book of Jonah. It was an amazing time. We saw many lives changed because of the work of the Word of God. Thank you for your prayers. The public school teachers who had given us trouble in the past were some of our best students and they are great about motivating others to study the Scriptures in their classrooms. I remember when we first started the ministry to the public schools how so many people said it could not be done since it is illegal to preach the Gospel in the public schools. Now we have Bible studies being taught in many public schools on a daily basis (it is still illegal but God has the door wide open).

Thanks for all of your prayers and support of the camps. I pray that God would continue leading you to help in the furtherance of the Gospel in Moldova.