Freedom!!!

I’m a little late on this post. I will be talking about things that happened the week before this last one. Or that is where it will start.
So 2 Mondays ago concluded the first day out of Quarantine and right off the bat our ministry host took a group of us to a castle. It was a great first day outside the house getting to see Romania and talk with our ministry host and get to learn a little bit about him.

Here is the castle

We got to some historical Romanian Architecture too

 

Tuesday we opened up the day with some prayer and intercession. We prayed for the Hope Church ministry and for some of the events that our squad was going to be putting on throughout our last week in Romania. After morning intercession we went out on the town and started handing out fliers inviting people to the events we were going to be putting on. During this time I got to get a feel for the people of Craiova, Romania and engage in conversation with them.
After this we went to dinner with a Craiova local, who had promised to show us the best  Romanian food in town. It was amazing and we got to invite him to one of the events we were going to be putting on.

 

Here are some of the dishes

Wednesday- today we did intercession again in the morning and had a teaching from our ministry host. We prayed for the youth event that our squad would be putting on that night.
After intercession we handed out more fliers trying to get as many people to come to the events as possible. By this time we had had about 10 people who had RSVP’d for the event we were going to be putting on. Also our host had said that in Romania we could expect that less people would show up than had said they would come. So we had set the bar low for what to expect.
After passing out the fliers a group of about 4 of us went to the park to play some basketball and soccer with some of the locals. We were continuing to plant seeds and create relationships for future ministry opportunities. After the park we went to the last bit of the event and a little more than 43 people had showed up!!

There were tons of conversations that were had and things that were shared with people ages 18-35. God is so Good!

Thursday- Today I got to go out with Chris to do some evangelism in one of the parks a lot of young adults and youth hang out. We went expecting to meet one of the ministry partners to help with interpretation.
We show up to the park and the person we were supposed to meet wasn’t there. But Chris and I couldn’t help it we started trying to find crowds of people to share the Gospel with! The Holy Spirit was moving in that park and we were allowed to walk alongside. It started with a group of young adults that were skateboarding. We shared the gospel and were able to compare it with their orthodox beliefs. We learned about one of the churches that is established in Craiova and the beliefs that come from them. We ended that interaction being able to pray over a couple of the people that were there. From there we went to 2 other groups of people they were more in the teenage years.

We got to share the Gospel and speak over some of them encouraging them and challenging them to live a changed life.
From there we met a group of college students and got to engage in some apoplectic conversations.

 

Then we met a group of cyclists. Here we where met with some of the first serious opposition were one of the guys was agitated to the point of wanting to fight me. He demanded proof. God showed up in our conversation were we dug and I found out that this gentleman had experienced a lot of hurt in his life and he couldn’t except a that there was a good God that allowed people to hurt. He didn’t change his mind, but God allowed for some really cool experience in the midst of that confrontation. I was allowed to stand firm in my faith under opposition and get to see the Holy Spirit change this man’s heart from anger and fighting to brokenness and sadness. We talked to many more throughout this day of evangelizim and saw some of the same. Some were willing to listen and were interested and some were angry and combative towards the message.
Wow! God is GOOD!!!
We also had a Muslim event that night and got to have some conversations with different culture and religions. We were able to learn a lot about some of the traditions and customs and hopefully use them as we get to go into a lot of countries were they are majority Muslim.

Friday- Intercession in the morning for the women’s event the ladies on our squad were going to put on.
Today we invited a couple of the guys we met at the Muslim event and youth event to the park to play soccer. We were able to continue to build relationships with them and meet new people at the park that day.

The LORD really blessed our last week in Romania and allowed me to join in what He was doing in the community. A very small part of what He was doing.

Thank you for all the prayers, they were really felt this last week.

I have some more prayer requests for this next month.
We are going into a month of ATL, which is Ask The Lord. So basically we are going to ask God to lead our teams into what ministry He has for us and where He would like us to be in Albania. So please pray for my team that we would be able to hear the Father’s voice clearly in where He would have us and what we should be doing. Pray for discernment and wisdom.

Lastly I have been privileged to see God’s work within the funding for this mission trip. The funds have continued to come in and my prayer is that the Lord would give a double portion of what has been given and that He would bless the funds for the ministry.
With that being said I am so close to being fully funded and I am running out of ideas on how to fundraise. Please be praying for the funds and if anyone has any ideas on how to help with that let me know.

Phillipians 1: 27
Phillipians 4: 17-20
1 Peter 5:9
Jeremiah 10:6