Glad You Asked and English Club

The first two activities that we've started here after the opening night, are a Glad You Asked Course and an English Club. Glad You Asked is a DVD course where the answers to 10 important questions are presented from a christian perspective. It starts fairly general with questions like 'why is there suffering/' and 'do all religions lead to God?' and gets more specific with questions like 'who was Jesus?' and 'why did He die?' At the English club, we do some basic activities and games in English and do some grammar exercises. The aim is partly to serve students with their need for learning English, but also to get into contact with students who wouldn't necessarily come directly to other, more spiritual activities.

Above, students studying English and below, a warm up activity at a Glad You Asked evening.

Bible and Life Conference

Last weekend there was a training conference for students here entitled 'Bible and Life'. The students who participated (7 from Balti and around 15 from Chisinau) were separated into two levels depending on whether they had been to the conference before or not. The first level students had studies on topics such as 'the Authority of Jesus in our lives', and 'Evangelism'. I helped with the second level. Here we studied about 'how to study the Bible inductively using the manuscript method'. Certainly in Balti the conference had a positive affect on the students involved, all of whom have since shown a desire and enthusiasm to get involved in the activities we have here.

Top picture, the second level students and below, all the students from the conference.

Opening Night

Monday week ago, the 24th September, we had our opening meeting for this academic year here in Balti. The programme was simple, with a few songs, a getting to know you game, a presentation of IFES and CSC and I gave a short talk about Matthew 6:33 and the importance of making seeking God a priority in life. About 20 students attended, who hopefully we can keep contact with in the course of the coming year.

Balti

After spending a couple of weeks staying in Chisinau, I have finally arrived here in Balti. The time in Chisinau wasn't planned, but God's plans often aren't ours, and it was good to have sometime to get used to being in Moldova and also I was able to get a medical certificate done (something obligatory for foreigners who want to live or work in Moldova. Yesterday, I arrived in Balti and we had our first planning meeting for the student work here. The team here consists of Zina who works full time for CSC and who is the leader, plus there are three female graduates who have expressed interest in helping out part time and me. From the 20th September we will be renting an apartment, which will be used for student meetings plus it will be where I will live. The first activities will be to go to the university to try and contact new students with the aim of inviting them to the opening student evening which will be in the week after we move into the apartment!

Extreme Camp

The first activity with the students here in Moldova for this academic year was a camp entitled 'tabara extrem' (Extreme Camp). The camp was attended by just over 20 students from Chisinau and Balti. The extreme part of the camp consisted mainly in sleeping in tents in a forest, eating some special delicacies cooked on an open fire and getting told off by an angry monk from a local monastry for swimming in a nearby lake. The theme of the camp was investigating Jesus. On the first evening we were introduced to Luke, someone who investigated Jesus in great depth. Then, for the next two mornings we studied two passages from his gospel to see what he had found out about Jesus. Each afternoon, the students also had an opportunity to search in the forest for Bible verses telling them more information about this Jesus. On the final morning, each group of students presented what they had discovered about Jesus and I made a brief conclusion, pointing out that there is a lot of evidence and good arguments for the truth of what says in the Bible about Jesus, and emphasizing what is possibly the best evidence i.e. that of changed lives! I was able to do this by giving a brief testimony. A number of students gave positive feedback after the camp and hopefully in the coming months, both in Chisinau and Balti we will be able to build on the relationships formed at the camp.

Balti

Balti is a city in the North of Moldova, the second largest in Moldova (not including Tiraspol in Transnistria). An interesting aspect of the city is that there are very large ethnic Ukrainian and Russian populations. Around 90% of the city's population identify themselves as Orthodox. There is also a relatively large Baptist population, around 2%, but after that most other Churches and religions have only very small populations.

CSC - Communitatea Studentilor Crestin

CSC is the name for the IFES movement in the Republic of Moldova. They have student groups in Chisinau and Balti plus contacts with students in a couple of other cities. They seek to organise evangelistic activities, such as Bible studies, camps, evangelistic evenings, as well as to disciple Christian students. Here is a link with some more information: ifesworld

Moldova

Moldova is a small country sandwiched between Romania and the Ukraine. Historically the territory has spent a large period of time as part firstly, of the Russian Empire and then after the second world war as part of the Soviet Union. However as communism began to collapse Moldova was able to gain it's independence on August 27th, 1991. The ethnic population living in Moldova are very closely related to Romanians, indeed the 'Moldovan language' is almost identical to Romanian. However, there are also large numbers of Ukrainians and Russians living here, many of whom use Russian as their first language.

OSCEBv

For the last few years I've been involved in helping the OSCER student group in Brasov called 'OSCEBv'. Last year a number of the key group members left the group, so this year the emphasis was on reforming the group. Alongside a few evangelistic activities, mainly a conference at the start of the academic year and a Christmas student evening, we had regular small scale meetings with the students in order to form a group. The process worked relatively work and I felt like ultimately it was God workingn to form the group! I personally feel like it is time to move on, but I hope that the students in OSCEBv will continue to meet once the academic year 2012-2013 begins and indeed begin some more regular evangelistic activities.

Moving On

A couple of months ago I was offered the opportunity to work for the coming academic year at least in Moldova for the IFES movement there. They are going through a transition period and need new workers to get involved. I've already been there on a number of occasions to visit their student groups and help at different camps and was thinking and praying about maybe getting more involved, so was glad to receive this opportunity. I'm not yet exactly sure how all the practical aspects are going to work out, but most important is to trust God and take the first steps in faith!