Dag 1

Na een goede aankomst gisteravond van de 6 dames uit Nederland, hebben we vandaag een goede start gemaakt. Om 10 uur de kerkdienst in Micleuseni meegemaakt en om 15 uur de kerkdienst in Huzum bezocht. De kinderen in Huzum hebben er zin in deze week en ze kijken uit naar de dag van morgen: dag 1 van de vakantie-activiteiten-club! De grote vraag is: zouden we ook een kado krijgen?? Tja, dat blijft natuurlijk nog even geheim...;-) Morgen voor ons iig weer een drukke nieuwe dag.

Vandaag net op de valreep nog een fotootje kunnen maken....de rest van de dag te druk gehad met allerlei andere dingen...maar wie weet, morgen misschien meer tijd voor kiekjes....wordt vervolgd...

Merry Christmas from Micleuseni!

This morning we celebrated Christmas in the church in Micleuseni. With the children I prepared a small skit, 3 poems and 3 songs. The kids had some emotions but all went well and nobody forgot their words or actions;-) And as Maria said at the end of the skit: Jesus is born for us!

Josef and Mary.
(Praise God, this time Josef received the gifts from the 3 wise men....during the practice he told the wise men, he does not need the gifts! hahahaa.....)

Shepherds on their way to see baby Jesus

The shepherds arrived and worship Jesus

The 3 wise men are following the star

Singing the Christmas songs & saying poems.

The Christmas stable

This afternoon again many children came to the church in Lozova and all together we were singing about Christmas, we made a Christmas stable and we thanked Jesus that He was born for us. Praise God for the great time we had!

Operatie Schoenendoos / Operation Shoe box

Deze week drie verschillende scholen bezocht in Varzaresti, Nisporeni en Dolna. In Dolna heben we ook de lokale kleuterschool bezocht. De aanleidin van ons bezoek was de schoenendozen die we hadden gekregen om uit te delen aan de kinderen maar we hebben natuurlijk dankbaar van de mogeijkheid gebruik gemaakt om de ware reden van kerst uit te leggen aan de kinderen. Voor de kleuterschool en de kinderen van klas 1 tot 4 hadden we kerstliederen en een poppenkast die uitlegde waar het met kerst om gaat. Voor de kinderen uit klas 5 tot 9 hadden we een programma met goocheltrucs, kerstliederen en een korte boodschap. Over het algemeen waren de kinderen en de leerkrachten erg blij en dankbaar en we werden uitgenodigd om nog eens terug te komen....(en natuurlijk hopen we zeker van deze uitnodiging gebruik te maken...)

Aankomende donderdag gaan we naar de school in Micleuseni. We bidden dat God de deur voor ons zal openen want de Ortodoxe priester is niet eel erg blij dat we toestemming hebben en wie weet bedenkt hij nog een plan om het niet door te laten gaan maar we weten dat onze God grotere plannen heeft dus vertrouwen we op Hem!

The weekend passed quickly

As usual time is flying when you are busy...Thank you for praying with us for the meeting last Friday in Lozova, it was a blessed day. In the morning we went to the kindergarten and about 100 kids were present at our small Christmas program. Many of the workers of the kindergarten, listened very carefully because now they finally had a chance to see and hear with their own eyes what these Christians have to say. And praise God at the end many of them said that they were encouraged and liked the program. We didn't teach wrong or weird things and now they saw themselves that the rumors are not true...

In the afternoon we had the chance to visit some families who have been coming to the church meetings lately. We had some different welcomes. One grandmother served us cookies and chocolates and her dream came true that "Americans" came to her house. But in another family we were shouted at and were told to go and take our God with us. Leave my house....
In the picture is Juria who received a Christmas Shoe Box. It was a great joy to see how incredibly happy she was unpacking and looking at all the stuff she got!

At 17 hour we had a service at the church and around 30 people and 30 kids came. The room was full! When it was time for the kids to go to their program, there was NO space left. Try to fit 30 kids in a room of 3 meter by 2 meter and still keep them happy and do a Christmas program with them. Wowie, it is quite challenging! But we managed, praise God!

On Saturday we went to a wedding of our friends from OM, Pavel and Becky. It was a nice wedding and again like normally, no lack of food!

Today we attended church in Micleuseni in the morning and at 15 hour we had again service at Lozova. Around 20 people came and 14 kids. (So this time we had a bit more space per child!) Below a small video of some brothers from Micleuseni singing a song this morning:

We thank God for this weekend and we pray that He will bless the coming week! 

Nieuws uit Moldavie

De winter is begonnen en dit betekent dat veel mensen in kou leven in Moldavië en vaak slechts 1 keer per dag eten omdat er niet genoeg geld is...In de komende weken gaan de zogenaamde winterprojecten van start: voedsel pakketten voor arme families en ouderen brandhout voor mensen die in kou leven, etc. Gods liefde laten zien op een praktische manier!

Een van de organisaties waar OM Moldavië mee samenwerkt is de Nederlandse organisatie Mensenkinderen. Ongeveer 3 keer per jaar komen ze naar Moldavië en bezoeken we samen allerlei projecten die met hun hulp zijn gesponsord. Hieronder een link met hun nieuwste tijdschrift, met daarin verhalen en foto's uit Moldavië.

Tijdschrift Mensenkinderen December 2013

Christmas season is starting!

This morning we woke up and there was a nice white world waiting for us! Already some snow has melted but it defiantly gives us a bit of a Christmas mood! Tomorrow we plan to go to the kindergarten in Lozova and we will have our first Christmas program there. Besides that we will visit some families in the village and at 17 hour there will be a church service. We pray that during this Christmas season many people will start to celebrate the real reason of Christmas: the birth of Jesus Christ, our Savior!

Vers nieuws uit MD / Fresh news from MD

Onze nieuwsbrief = klaar om gelezen te worden! Zie hieronder voor de link:

Nieuwsbrief December 2013

Our newsletter = ready to be read! See below for the link:

News letter December 2013

Tragedy in Micleuseni

Last Wednesday a house burned down in Micleuseni. Fortunately the neighbor was around and he rescued the  two youngest children from the burning the house. Father was not at home when the fire started and also the oldest boy, 12 years, was not present. Mother has abandoned her children and husband years ago and lives in Israel. She doesn't want to have to do anything with them anymore. She told father to take the younger children of 5 and 6 years old, to the orphanage because she doesn't want them....

Neighbor is pointing out how the fire destroyed everything

The fire probably started from a plug where the fridge was connected. A curtain got on fire and soon the whole house was on fire. The fire department was called and when they arrived they discovered that they didn't bring any water with them. When they came back from getting water from a local lake, there were only two wall left, the rest of the house was burned.

Nothing was left and so people from the village started to bring clothes for the children and all kind of other stuff that might be helpful. On Saturday we brought a food parcel to the family. For some time the father and the 3 children can stay with the neighbors and now they look at options to rebuild the house but of course finances are a big problem.

The local team in the Centre of MD started!

This week all the team members of our local team arrived in Micleuseni. We started the team life in a great way: first we played settlers and the next morning we celebrated the start of our team with cake and coffee!

I would say, so far, so good! We started well and let's continue this good work! May God bless our team!

History repeats itself!

In November 2011 while travelling with the Bus4Life, a reporter and cameraman from the local TV turned up to report about the bus. Spiridon gave an interview and the bus and their visitors were filmed. That same evening this was shown on TV and on the internet. Many positive reactions were heard after this and also the sunday after that, many more people came to church.

Yesterday history repeated itself: the local TV from Nisporeni came to the Bus4Life and the guy who interviewed us, was a Christian himself so he encouraged us to share cleary about our motiovation for coming with the bus and selling Bibles for 15 Lei/ 1€. So that's what we did!

Next monday the reportage will be on TV so we will have to be a patient for the final result but praise God that He gave us this opportunity to share about Him to an even bigger public!

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One week with Bus4Life...

Starting tomorrow we will be involved for 1 week with the Bus4Life. While travelling with the bus we will be visiting 4 different places: Nisporeni, Calimanesti, Huzun and Micleuseni. We will organize kids programs, youth programs and of course invite as many people as we can, to come and visit the bus. While drinking a cup of tea they can have a look at the Christian literture and we can discuss with them about God or challenge them to buy a Bible for only 1€!

We pray that in the coming week God will bless us with wisdom, daily strenght and energy, his guidance, dry weather, protection and a lot of creativity! We pray that many people will hear His Word and respond!

The bus in a village

Christian literature for sale

Kids in the bus watching a animation film

A family visiting the bus

The winter of 2013 is coming

As we are entering the winter of 2013, OM Moldova will again be involved in different winter relief projects. For example, 1150 familie will be visited every month (December - March) and besides sharing the Gospel and encouraging the family, also a food parcel will be delivered. As I was preparing today a report about some foodparcels that have been delivered in the last month, I came across the below story of Lucia. She is just one of many who are in need of help. Let us pray that this winter many, many people will be reached with the practical help they need but also with the spiritual help!

Lucia lives in Bender together with her 4 children. Lucia was married but her husband was drinking a lot and was beating her very often. Three years ago he took a knife and stabbed her with it. For two years Lucia stayed in the hospital until she recovered. Her husband is still in prison. When she was released from the hospital, together with her children, she went to live in the house of her mother in law. It was an old and broken house made of wood. After just a couple of months, the house burned down and so again she was left with nothing, living on the street. At the moment Lucia is renting an apartment and she has a job at a factory where they dry fish. Her job is to wash and clean the fish but the solution they use for this is very strong and the skin on her hands is badly affected by this. But even if her hands hurt she continues to go to work because this is the only way she has some income and can pay the rent for the apartment. Her oldest son is not developing like it should and so after paying the rent, the rest of her salary she spend to buy the needed medicines to treat her son. Lucia tries to save up some money because she knows that in February 2014 she will need to leave the apartment. She can only rent the pace till that month and so she will need to look for a new place, which probably will be more expensive than the rent she is paying now so that’s why she is trying to save some money now. If she doesn’t find a place, than again she will be living on the street.


As you can imagine, the food parcel she receives is a very big help and encouragement. The children were invited to come to the Day Centre at the church and now the whole family attends church on Sundays. Lucia’s oldest daughter is 11 years old and after she attended for a while the Day Centre and the local church, she gave her heart to Jesus and we pray that God continues to work in this family.

Happy children & thankful mothers and fathers in Lozova

This afternoon we were thankful to see how the room of the house were we gather in Lozova, filled up with many people. We had brought some extra chairs and praise God, all of the chairs were occupied. After a welcome, some songs and a short message, it was time for the children to pick new clothes. We had put the clothes in a small room and so one after another the families entered and picked shoes, jackets, trousers, gloves, socks, sweaters etc. etc. Some of the families that came were not on our list that we had from the major but they had heard from their neighbors about the clothes for children and they decided to come also.
Many children were a bit shy but after a short time many of them got excited and at the end they were smiling and thanked us with a big smile.

Seeing some of the parents made us realize that also they could use some good clothes and so when we saw that some of the bigger clothes were left over, we decided to bless also the parents in need.
For example, Julia is a 7 year old girl and she just started in class 1. Julia is blind at one eye and so this means that it costs her extra energy to make her homework and often she is teased by others. But despite her situation, she convinced her father and mother to come and so as a family they came to church. Both of the parents don' t have a job and looking at their shoes and clothes, we could see that they also needed help. After 10 minutes the whole family was dressed: Julia was very proud of her new jacket and sweater, father was content with his new shoes and mother didn't want to take of her new shoes and coat anymore.

We invited all the people to come back next week and for some of the children who didn't find the right clothes or shoes we will try to still buy something so next week we can make them happy too!
We praise God for the way all worked out and we pray that the words that were spoken and the deeds that were shown will be a reminder of Gods Love for all!

Julia and her parents

Mihai is 9 years and although he was very shy, he was quite happy with his new clothes!

Winter clothes for children in Lozova

Many children in Moldova come from poor families. Families that do not have enough income or at least not enough to buy for their children warm winter clothes and good solid shoes. With support from outside Moldova, the church in Micleuseni got the possibility to reach out to 26 children in the village Lozova. Praise God for His provision! After we contacted the local major and told her about the project, she was happy to give us a list of different families with children who could use some good clothes. Next question was: who from the church in Micleuseni is going to buy the clothes? Surpirse: we were chosen! So last Wednesday we went to Chisinau to the second-hand market and bought many, many clothes and shoes in different sizes and colors!

When you shop for children in need and you just know that you can bless them with something they really need and make their face light up and smile, also knowing that many of them come from families that are broken and that they often don' t receive love and positive attention, this makes you enjoy the shopping even more....but we even experienced bigger joy beacuse.....when the local sales-people on the market heard that we bought clothes for children from poor families, they started to call us to their boutiques and gave us extra shoes for free, thick sweaters and all kind of other clothes and shoes with big discounts. So after two hours of shopping and filling big bags, the back of our bus was nearly full! Praise God for His help and for softening the hearts of the sales people.

Next thing to do is to hand out the clothes and make the kids smile! Coming Sunday afternoon we will hand out the clothes during a church service at 15 hour. We invited all the parents to come with the children to the church and we pray that the Orthodox priest will not make any problems and that we will be able to bless the children and share the Gospel in word and deed! Please join us in prayer!

Jeugdwerk in Micleuseni

Elke dinsdagavond en zaterdagavond hebben we jeugdavond in Micleuseni. Tussen de 10 en 15 jongeren komen bijeen. Sommigen komen uit christelijk gezinnen, anderen hebben geen christelijke achtergrond maar zijn nieuwsgierig. We zijn begonnen op dinsdagavond om een studie te houden met de jongeren. De eerste les ging over de Bijbel, wat is de Bijbel, wat staat erin, door wie is het geschreven etc. Terug naar de basis! Aan de hand van werkbladen, spelletjes en verschillende vragen, praten we met de tieners over het geloof en wat het inhoudt om christen te zijn. We bidden dat God de tieners zal zegenen en dat ze dichter bij Hem zullen leven!

The wood has arrived!

Winter is coming and so every family in Moldova is preparing themselves, and so are we! Yesterday the firewood arrived and today with help from Gheorghe, a young guy living in Micleuseni, Spiridon cut a part of the wood. Praise God that we are blessed and have the possibility to buy wood but in the same time we are thinking about all those families who are not able to buy wood and are forced to live in cold or collect illegal wood from the forest. We pray that God will provide also for them!

Ministry in Micleuseni-area

Yesterday afternoon, I went to Huzun and helped with the children's program. 20 children were kind of out of control while playing with the parachute but when it was time for a handcraft, there was full concentration on how to color Jesus. One boy said: "I have never colored a Jesus before";-). Well, at the end we had 20 different and very colorful handcrafts....

Yesterday evening we had another youth meeting and praise God around 10 young people came to the church, we had fellowship time, worshiped, played games and studied a couple of verses from the Bible.

We continue to pray for the children and the youth. We pray that God will give us wisdom to know how we help each one to draw closer to God!

November 2011

In November 2011, together with brother Nicu and some others, I visited the family on the pictures below. I still remember very well that on that day there was a lot of mud. While trying not to fall down or drop the food parcel in the mud, we arrived at the small house. The plastic in the windows, the mud everywhere and the cold smelly house, made me feel very sorry for the 2 small girls that lived in this mess.
The fact that all the adults were at home during the day, grandmother, mother and father and nobody had a proper job, made it already clear for me what kind of family we were visiting. Also the fact that all of them had been drinking, probably to forget their miserable life, made the situation even worse.
Nothing was clean, fresh or with hope, there was no love, nothing positive...everywhere mud, a dirty smell and the hopelessness and darkness was very obvious....We shared with the family about Gods love and the fact that He can change lives but the choice is ours/ theirs... I still remember when we left that I felt very sad and sorry for the family, especially for the girls who didn't have a choice where and how they want to grow up. They just depend on their parents to take care of them....

Yesterday while visiting some families with a food parcel, we passed again the house of this family. I asked brother Nicu how the family was doing and he told me that nobody lives anymore in the house. Something awful had happened....

Father and mother had been tying the oldest girl to the bed with the chain for the dog and had been beating her over and over. Also the youngest girl had been beaten and abused. The parents made fun of the girls and didn't care for their children.
When people found out what had been happening, the police came and the girls were taken to the orphanage in the nearest town, father was send to prison for 5 years but surprisingly mother has not been send to prison but for 3 years she will receive some kind of supervision. The rights of the parents weren't taken....

After this news became public, the television came to film and interviewed the mother. The link to the video clip, I put below. Mother tells without any shame about how she would tie her oldest daughter to the bed and how they would beat her. She is trying to make the right documents cause she wants to bring her daughters home from the orphanage.

Newsclip about family in Micleuseni

After hearing what had happened to these poor girls, I felt very, very sorry for them and of course the main question I am thinking about now is: how can we/ I help in this kind of situations? Because there are more children in Micleuseni, Huzun and Lozova who live in horrible situations. Besides the fact that we can pray for protection, I also pray that God will make it possible that our paths will cross and that He will show us how we can reach out to those who are in such desperate need of help!

Work in progress

Slowly we are getting more and more organised. Yesterday some brothers from the church came to help cut some trees in the garden but the main goal was to clean the well in the garden. For many years the well has not been used and so before we are able to use the water, all the water needed to be taken out. A lot of work but it got done! Praise God! It seems that there is 3000 liter of water and so with a pump in the well, we can have running water, quite easily....in theory...;-)

Last evening we had the first youth meeting! 9 teenagers came: 6 young girls and 3 boys. We got to know each other and had a good time. Praying that these boys and girls will continue to attend the meetings and that God will work in their lives. Every Tuesday evening and Saturday evening we meet at 18 hour.