Back to Romania to Equip and Encourage

Focus on the National Team

Mentoring, Maturing, and Growing our Team

• Meeting with the PIE-Romania national missionaries

• Teaching/training the new class of E2E missionary students (six months intensive mission program for missionary candidates, our second class starting this year)

• Women ministry: follow up with the missionary wives and the ladies in Draganesti Olt area, special meeting with the women in the new church plant in the city of Craiova

• Home visits with individual missionaries and their families to assess and encourage, to know them better as families

Upcoming Second Trip to Romania and Ukraine

July-August

In two weeks we will be back in Romania for our second time this year.  We will once again be staying at the PIE-Romania Ministry Center in Alba Iulia that has become our mission hub from where we go and come back to other locations.  

We appreciate your support and prayers as we travel back.  We expect a very hot summer and we pray that our whole team will stay healthy.

Our PIE missionaries in Romania are also meeting on a regular basis at the PIE Center, and their next meeting is coming up July 28.  It is a very special time as they travel from their designated mission points and spend time with each other, being encouraged in the Lord and in the Word, being able to share with each other their struggles but also their victories in ministry.  We are so thankful for our national committee who facilitates the missionaries' travel, meals, housing at the PIE Center, and for our generous partners who contribute financially so that the missionaries do not have to pay out of their pocket for the expenses of these regular meetings.

After spending a short time in Romania we will be driving up to Ukraine, together with two other teaching team members from the U.S. for a week of Camp Ministry in Ukraine, as well as a day of Women's Conference and a Meeting with the PIE national missionaries in the Ukraine.

July 27

Driving day from Romania to Ukraine

Friday July 27: driving day from Romania to Ukraine, crossing over Transylvania and the Carpathian Mountains and crossing the Romanian-Ukrainian border that is very unpredictable as to how long it can take.  We've experienced many hours waiting at the border to 2-3 hours.  Pray that we will be able to arrive there safely.  Cornel is our van driver, and we will have a full load, also several boxes that were shipped ahead to Romania with items for the Camp that we are taking and crossing into Ukraine.  

Saturday July 28:  Women's Conference and PIE Missionaries Meeting  The Ladies are getting together for a full day of conference.  This has been designed to minister primarily to the missionaries wives, daughters, daughters in law, and other family members, as well as other women who serve and are leaders.  Gabi was very inspired by the team who went to Romania from our church this spring, and is taking some of the activities and ideas that were used in Romania to the women in Ukraine.  In addition, we have two other speakers, Pat Grupp and Dr. Jackie Wunderly, who have both been to Ukraine with us last year, and there will be some important lessons about apologetics and leadership, personal testimonies and real issues women are facing raising the younger generation.  The men will meet separately and have a time of fellowship, sharing, and prayer.

PIEI Camp

July 30-Aug 4 2018

July 30th-Aug 4th: Annual PIE Christian Camp in Ukraine  This is a tremendous outreach opportunity for all the PIE missionaries who are sending children and young people from the villages where they minister to this camp.  We expect to have approx. 50 children and youth who are unchurched and unsaved, and 50 who are from Christian families.  We are praying that all will come to the saving knowledge of Christ, and that the Christian children, youth, and leaders will grow in their walk with the Lord.

Bringing Hope to ROMANIA

Bringing Hope to Romania

Our Trip to Romania this year started with an amazing Short Term Mission Team from our home church in Indiana that went with us and focused on Women's Ministry and Evangelism in the towns and Villages where PIE national missionaries in Romania needed it most.  Gabi had the privilege of translating two amazing women bible studies from English to Romanian that were given to everyone who desired to study God's Word. 

• We went from the poorest of poor you can imagine, where the ceiling and roof of a home was held by the door to an upscale Ramada hotel, but the needs of the hearts were the same. 

• We met broken women who needed to hear that there is Someone who knows them by name and loves them.  The message of the Gospel went out every day and every night. 

• From the poorest gypsy villages at the foot of the Carpathian Mountains where people have no electricity to the elegant home of the Roma (Gypsy) King who is also the pastor of the converted gypsy believers who fed us and our team a truly royal meal, we have experienced all kinds of extremes of life.

We spent Easter Day with a group of very special orphan adult women who are in a remote orphanage and they are sisters in Christ. 

• Two weeks later, the two of us revisited the missionary who ministers to them and several of them waited for us on the side of the road to see our car pass by.  What a sweet, sweet time!  

Revisiting the orphan sisters in Christ after two weeks

They call me mami

We were also involved in a mass evangelistic effort of church planting in the Southern Romania (Oltenia Region) where our PIE national Director Raul Costea and the church in Draganesti Olt, as well as a newly started training program E2E (Equipped to Equip) of church planters have focussed on the large city of Craiova to start a new church. 

• It was exciting to be there on the streets inviting people to the big opening event, praying for people, sharing the gospel, and bringing hope to this place where there is so much mysticism and witchcraft and only 0.2 % of Evangelical presence.

We felt that one of the major things we got to do this time was to love and encourage or national missionaries and their families. 

• They get discouraged seeing so few people responding to the good news of the Gospel and they give so much!  Their children too struggle and need encouragement. 
• They need prayer and someone to tell them they are loved and that their work matters.
• On several occasions we felt that Jesus was using our arms to hug them and our eyes to see their needs.  
• We are so thankful for these opportunities to get to know each of these families better and closer, as they are our brothers and sisters who sacrificially serve our Lord everyday for the sake of the lost.

NEXT WEEK: UPCOMING TRIP TO UKRAINE

We are getting ready for a large APOLOGETICS PASTORS CONFERENCE in Ukraine in partnership with Answers in Genesis and Dr. Terry Mortenson, who is coming to Romania with his wife Marge.  We will be driving up to Ukraine together to meet our PIE national missionaries who are organizing this Pastors Conference.

PRAY FOR US!         HERE

Upcoming trip in April/May

We are part of a team of nine from our home church Liberty Bible Church in La Porte and Chesterton, Indiana, and are also working once more with Dr. Terry Mortenson.  We will be focusing on:

WOMEN’S MINISTRY- In three locations: Drăgănești Olt, Curtea de Argeș, Sibiu

• Training and Equipping 

• Encouraging and supporting

• Providing teaching material for community Bible study for outreach

EVANGELISM

• Home visits

• Street evangelism and praying

• Evening evangelistic meetings

• Distributing food to needy people

UKRAINE- APOLOGETICS CONFERENCE

• Taking Dr. Terry Mortenson and his apologetics lectures that he taught in Romania last spring to Ukraine.

• A larger scale Conference with pastors, missionaries, workers from 110 churches from Chernivtsi Region.

• Equip the pastors to address today’s challenges in a godless society and giving scientific and undeniable answers that uphold and defend the truth and validity of the whole Bible. (Dr. Mortenson of answersingenesis.org)