Eulogy: Andrei Bivol

I had the privilege of sharing the eulogy at my father-in-law’s funeral. The word “eulogy” comes to us via the Greek language and it means “a blessing“. I want to share with you how Andrei Bivol was a blessing to my life, and to many others’ lives.

Unto us a Child is born

The Scripture has been fulfilled. The Promised Seed of Genesis 3 has come. When Seth was born, Eve thought he was the Promised One. She was ready to celebrate the birth of the Savior. This is the first occurrence of the celebration of the birth of the Messiah. She was about 4,000 years too early, but, we see the desire to celebrate the birth of the Savior. Eve was looking to the Savior for her rescue. We look back to the Savior for our rescue.

21 “She will bear a Son; and you shall call His name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins.” (Matthew 1)

The name Jesus means God saves. He will rescue us from our sins. I pray that our attitude will be like Mary’s attitude, a reminder of Eve’s attitude when she first learned of the coming Messiah. Marry has just been told that she will give birth to the Messiah. Here is her response as recorded by Luke:

38 And Mary said, “Behold, the bondslave of the Lord; may it be done to me according to Your Word.”  (Luke 1)

From the Brewer family, we want to wish you a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

In Christ’s Love,
Erik, Elena, Evangelyn, Emmanuel, and Elizabeth

I almost bought some Girl Scout cookies today . . .

I was out and about today, running some errands for my dear wife and children. As I pulled in the parking lot of a local store, I saw the sign and immediately thought of those delicious samoas that were waiting for me. I reached for my money and then I remembered, the Girl Scouts support Planned Parenthood. I stopped in my tracks, put the money back in my pocket, and entered the store to look for a tasty alternative.

Two more summer camps down

I had the privilege of spending 20 amazing days at two different camps during July and August. It was a wild ride leading and the whole thing left me exhausted like no other time in my life. In fact, after the first camp, I almost ended up in the hospital because of extreme fatigue. I left church on a Sunday morning and headed to the hospital because I was experiencing dizzy spells. When I called my friend who is a cardiologist, she told me to go to the emergency room right away because I was demonstrating some early warning signs of a heart attack. I went and did all the tests and discovered that I was fine. My heart rate was slow and slowing down to let me know it was time to take a break. The doc suggested that I take a few days off. I took one day off and then I went to a week long festival for all of our leaders. I was refreshed physically and spiritually there and gained the needed strength the lead the next camps.

The English camp

This was my 13th summer to lead at our annual English summer camp. We had about 200 students attend the English camp, along with about 50 public school teachers. I met some awesome people from several different States in the USA who came to serve with us. Volunteers came from MS, MO, NC, TN, LA, and VA. There were 15 countries represented at the English camp. I had 4 of my English students attend camp. I was very excited because 3 of them had yet to accept Christ as Lord and Savior. The two main studies were “Someday, a marriage without regrets” written by Kay Arthur which was studied by the advanced students and the Gospel of John for the beginner and intermediate students. God worked in a mighty way and over 30 people accepted Christ as Lord and Savior. My two non born again students did not make a decision to follow Christ but they were very impressed by all the things that they learned from the Word of God. I was able to build some good relationships and all of my students want to continue studying in the Fall once school starts back. I am very excited about that and pray for new students as well.

The Youth camp

After the festival was over, I had one day to go home, see my family, and then prepare for the youth camp which started on the 5th of August. First we picked up the American team from GA who came to serve with us at the camp. We chose “Lord I want to know You” as the study for the youth camp. Upon arrival we were greeted with many trials and obstacles. We had 130 campers registered and to our surprise, 150 showed up. Together with the campers and leaders, there were 190 people at camp the first day. We only had portions for 150 🙂 . We managed and God blessed us with an amazing camp. More than half of the campers were non born again. After 5 days of intense study, we gave a call to repentance one night and 15 students came forward and accepted Christ as Lord and Savior. We let two days pass and on the final night of camp, around the campfire, we had another call to repentance and 20 more accepted the invitation. By the end, 35 new souls had their names written in the Book of Life. We were amazed at God’s goodness. The trials and obstacles actually worked toward the furtherance of the kingdom of God. One day we played a game with the entire camp and some of the conditions were to go into the near by village and share the Gospel with people as well as do random acts of kindness. It was great. Even the non born again students liked the game. The camp was also blessed to have the best live Christian band in Moldova as the praise band for the camp, Not an idol. On the final night of camp they held an awesome concert. One of the conditions for them to be at camp was that they do the Bible study with us. They had such a great time and we challenged them to write new songs based on what they were learning. One of the songs that they wrote will be a future hit once they record in professionally. They wrote it based on lesson one of the study. You can hear it here.

Missiology Session in Warsaw, Poland

I had the privilege of spending 10 days with some of my favorite friends (brothers and sisters in Christ) in Warsaw, Poland as I taught a session on Missiology based on the “Sermon on the Mount“. It was a great session. We studied this masterful sermon very intensively. It was a time of personal examination. All of us examined our relationship with God as well as our motives in doing what we do in the ministry. God really spoke directly to all of us. We evaluated the previous 6 months of ministry and planned the next 6 months.

God really motivated us to be salt and light in the societies in which we live. God motivated us to love people and serve them, teaching them how to have and live by the righteousness of God and not the righteousness of man, based on rules, rituals, and empty regulations.

Have you prayed today?

 

Preaching the Gospel on ESPN

Our sin nature loves “religion” (church Bible study on Galatians)

Sunday was a unique service at Good News. We spent the day studying the Scriptures together. Over the last couple of years, a new wave of false teaching has been creeping into the Evangelical Christian world. The teaching is that Jesus Christ is the sacrifice for our sins that gives us salvation but in order to experience true salvation, people must keep certain aspects of the Jewish Law. Because of this teaching, many people have stopped eating pork, not necessarily for health related reasons but as a critical point for salvation. Also, debates have sprung up about which day is the best day to celebrate the Lord’s day, Saturday or Sunday. In other words, which day should church services be held on? In order to clear up these false teachings and end much of the debate, as well as to protect the members of our church, Pastor Vasile decided to dedicate the day to studying the Apostle Paul’s epistle to the Galatian churches. This same false teaching was a problem during the 1st Century and Paul had to address the issue. I would like to share some of the main conclusions from what we learned. It was amazing to spend and entire Sunday dedicated to studying the Scriptures as a church family.

Grammar, Grammar, Grammar

If you are an English language buff like I am then I want to recommend a good book for you to read and use if you plan on teaching English or ESL. It is a simple read and the difficult concepts are easily explained. The author is C. Edward Good. Yes, it is the “good” book. I use it together with the real “Good” Book, the Bible to teach ESL in Moldova. This is a link to where you can buy the book online.

Why is language important? God chose to use language to communicate with mankind. Language matters to God (who does not need it to communicate btw) and He chose it as His way of communication with us. God invented the spoken and written word to speak with us and communicate with us. He took time to meet with Adam and Eve.

Hitting the ground running in 2013

On Saturday, 12^th of January, Elena the kids and I all arrived in Moldova after close to 30 hours on the “road” home. We arrived at 11p.m. and the next morning, I was up and running to get to church to share a testimony of our time in the States. The church was so happy to have us back. I shared the testimony, finished up the service, and then went straight home and crashed. Later that night, I met with the core of the youth group to get an update of all that they had done and begin planning the next few youth meetings. It was nice to be together again. On the 15^th, I attended a blogging seminar led by our senior pastor, Vasile Filat. We studied the Scriptures, evaluated what had been going on in the virtual world, planned activities and articles, and then set out to continue sharing the Gospel through blogging. Since attending that seminar, I have been more active on my own blog and began translating for the site “Christian Moldova” once again after a long pause.