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!