CSC Winter Newsletter

CSC Moldova Winter Season News 2013

January and February plans

In Moldova the month of January is a holiday month from lectures at the university, although some students still have exams. As a result CSC has their annual months holiday in this month. Also, in Moldova many people celebrate the Russian Orthodox Christmas, which is on the 7th January. Officially then , we won't be having any activities in Balti in January, although we may have some casual social meetings for the students. In February, we will do a course with the students entitled 'The Images of Leadership', in which different Biblical ideas are presented of what it means to be a Christian leader. For example, the first study is about David and some of his qualities as he led the Jewish people. Alongside some of our other more regular activities, such as English Club and games night, we also have some Bible studies, called 'uncover' in English which have been freshly translated into Romanian. The idea here is that each study, based on Luke's gospel, already contains all the information needed to understand and carry out the study, so Christian students can easily do the study with friends and colleagues.

Recent Activity

Here are some photos from the last few weeks (representing, not necessarily in order, the recent CSC student Christmas evening, Carol singing at the student dorms in Chisinau, Fritz's visit from Australia and arriving back in England to rain and a children's Christmas party):

The Australian Connection

Over the course of the last week we have been visited by Mervin Dunkin from Australia. Over the course of the last 10 years, he has been coming regularly to Moldova together with other individuals and teams, to be involved in different ministries here. Together with him, we have had a number of activities, such as Australian culture night, Australian presentation at a local college and some training in leadership for the student leaders here. Next week he will be going onto the student group in Chisinau and then to the student movement in Romania. He is however hoping to bring a team back to Moldova next summer and also has plans to help raise money to buy a permanent office for the student work here. Also, in two weeks time a colleague of his from Australia will also be visiting for a week and we are planning some more student activities for that time. Below a selection of photos (welcome evening Moldovan style, visiting a local college, pasta Moldovan style, around Balti, leaders' meeting, making fruit salad, Australian presentation, final product, down the hatch!)

Bible and Life Conference

On the weekend of 18th to 20th October we had a conference at a campsite beside the Moldovan city of Calarasi called 'Bible and Life'. This was a training event for Moldovan students involved in CSC. The conference had two levels. A beginners levels for fort time participants where topics such as evangelism and the authority of Christ in our lives were discussed. The second level was for students who had already participated last year in the first conference level. I had the responsibility of organising this level. Here we discussed about how to study the Bible and how to lead Bible studies for our friends, in particularly using what is known as the manuscript method. There were around twenty participants at the conference. Only two in the second level, but that was ok as it gave us a closer group atmosphere. The challenge now is for us all to put into practice what we learnt at the conference! Here are some photos in order (worship time, level two discussion, all participants, level one, level two and helpers):

English Club

Our first activity here for new students after the opening evening is the English Club. Almost all the students who came to the opening evening said they were interested in coming to the English club. In the end, only a couple of them actually came to the first meeting, although one of them brought along 4 friends from her university course!

Opening Evening

We began our student activity for the 2013-14 academic with a special evening on the 25th September. After a long search, we eventually found (the day before the event!) a room at another Christian organisation, which we were able to use. By word of mouth we invited as many new students as possible and organised a programme for them, which included games, songs, a presentation of IFES and a short message. At the end of the evening we also gave them the chance to sign up for our different activities. In total, 18 students came, about half of whom were new or people that aren't very involved in our group. All of them left contact details and since most of them have come to at least one activity. Below some pictures (more on facebook: aidan benbow):

Stadium Thanksgiving

Saturday 7th September and Sunday 8th September I participated in the special Harvest Thanksgiving service organised by the Baptist churches in the city at the local stadium. My role in the service, apart from giving out invitations in the days beforehand, was to be a spiritual counselor. After the musical programme, which involved various Christian artists and bands, both from Moldova, Romania and Belorussia, there was a message, on the Saturday by a pastor from Romania and on the Sunday by a Russian pastor who lives in America. Each day, at the end of the message the pastor called to come forward anyone who wanted to respond to the message. Both times a hundred or so people came forward out of the stands and gathered in front of the stage. After the pastor had prayed for them, me and the many other spiritual counselors present had the task of talking to this people about what they had experienced and understood from the message, to give them some christian literature and also take their contact details. Both times I only managed to talk to one person as there were quite a lot of counselors. It was a bit tricky as they were both Russian speakers, but I was able nevertheless to discuss a bit about what they had understood from the message and get their contact details. Both seemed quite moved by the messages and had understood at the very least that being a Christian is about God changing your life. Below are some photos from the event (there are more on my facebook account: aidanbenbow ). One thing I learnt and observed from the event is that the on neither day was the stadium full, despite the fact there had been very intensive publicity for the event (at least three billboard posters in the city, very many posters around the city and lots of flyer invitations - I alone must have given out over a hundred). The capacity of the stadium is 5,000 so there was probably around 3000 on the Saturday and 4000 on the Sunday. This just goes to show that alongside occassional big event evangelistic work, there is very much a need for week in week out evangelism through small groups and personal relationships, which is where ministries such as CSC can come in! Billboard advert My name badge The stage The choir The stadium slowly filling up Speaking to people afterwards Going Home Standing by the pitch Stadium Entrance

Thanksgiving at the stadium!

This weekend there is a very special event taking place at the local stadium in Balti. The baptist churches in the city have organised a Harvest Thanksgiving service there both on Saturday and Sunday afternoon. The hope is that many people from outside the Church will also come. To that end we have been giving out invitations in the city. The messages at the services will be given by a Romanian pastor and a Russian Pastor who lives in the USA. There will also be a joint choir of all the baptist churches in the city plus various other musical groups from neighbouring countries. I have been able to get involved by helping to give out invitations and by being one of the 'spiritual counselors' at the event, which basically means after the message there will be a call for people who want to respond to come to the front and so there will be a team of 'counselors' waiting to talk to whoever responds and comes forward.

Retreat and New Academic Year

Last week for three days the staff, volunteers and some students from CSC met together in Chisinau in order to plan for this coming academic year. We had some different seminars about the organisation CSC so that we are all better informed about how everything works and also about the vision and aims of CSC i.e. evangelism and discipleship as a motivation and encouragement for the coming year. In Balti, two of the female students decided to join the leadership team, so now we are four people i.e. the students plus myself and Zina, the full time CSC staff worker in Balti. We made some tentative plans for the coming semester and over the next few weeks we will get to work at putting them into practice!

New Office

Over the summer we moved to a new apartment due to the previous one being expensive. This apartment has two rooms, one smaller one where I sleep and one bigger one which we will use as the CSC office i.e. a place for student meetings once the university term gets underway. The process of finding the office was fairly hard work as we searched for and considered a number of offers. Eventually the Lord worked to give us His solution. The director of CSC, Slavic, and myself had spent a lot of time, on three different days, simply wandering around the university area of the city as they wanted to find an apartment near to the university and by looking through ads in the newspaper we hadn't found anything suitable. Eventually, Slavic simply approached an Old lady sitting on a bench outside an apartment block and asked her if she knew of anything, to which she replied that she did. She also had a phone number. From there on we were able to get into contact with the owner and eventually view the flat and agree to terms. The location is idea as it's about 7 mins walk from the university and it certainly seemed through everything that it was the Lord's leading to this place!

Summer English and Bible camp

In July we had an English and Bible camp together with a team of 7 people from UCCF and 15 Moldovan students. Each morning we had a worship time followed by a Bible study in Mark, then an English lesson. In the afternoons there were games and outdoor activities and then an evening programme after dinner. Most of the students who came are from outside of the church and quite a few of them haven't even really had any contact with our student group, so at first I wasn't sure how they would react to the Christian activities. As it happened only one person was negative and everybody else seemed very positive. In September when the university starts again we will have a reunion for these students and so try and keep contact with them and get them involved in other activities.

Future Planning

Gradually here the university, colleges and schools are approaching exam time. At the university and colleges exams are already beginning and the High schools will start with exams in June. Thus our activities for this semester are winding down and we are starting to plan for the summer and beyond. The main activity of the summer will be an English camp in July. Even though it's not long until then, as is often the way of things in this part of the world, we still don't know for sure what this camp will be. There is the possibility that a team will come from England to help or otherwise, there are a couple of other camps with American teams who we have been invited to join if the team from England doesn't come. Thus at the moment things are a bit uncertain, but in any case, we aim in the next few weeks to start inviting and looking for students for the camp. Another initiative, is that we are trying to form a student team for the coming academic year. One of the ideas that IFES groups work on, is that the group should be student lead. Thus we are trying to encourage as much as possible the students here to get actively involved in the student group. Yesterday, we had our first meeting and four students came. Slavic, who is currently the director of CSC came and spoke to the students about the vision of CSC and gave them an opportunity to suggest ideas of things that they would like us to do in the coming academic year. There were a few suggestions such as to try and organise an evangelistic concert, as we know a number of Christian students from the music college here. Before the start of the new academic year, we will meet again to try and make some of the ideas more concrete.

Conference Invitation

Sometimes God answers prayer in unexpected ways, often so that He shows that He's in charge and thus gets the glory! Before the recent conference we gave out invitations and put up posters in order to try and invite students. Nobody phoned as a result and so I assumed our efforts had been in vain. However, at the end of the conference a girl asked if she could travel back to Balti with us, as she said that she's a student there. She did indeed come with us and since has been to a couple of our meetings. It turned out to be an interesting story. She had been given one of the invitations that we passed out, but instead of phoning us here in Balti, she called a friend in Chisinau and they decided to come together to the conference. Her friend in Chisinau got in touch with the people from CSC and registered them at the conference. The girl from Balti (Aina) then must have gone to Chisinau and travelled to the conference together with the group from there, thus we only found out at the end of the conference that our efforts in passing out invitations weren't in vain! Below Aina (left) with her friend Lili and together with the group from Balti

Ruskii Iazik

Although, the Romanian language (technically Moldavian, but this is just a dialect of Romanian - similar to comparing English spoken with a strong Scottish accent to Oxford English) is the official language of Moldova, there is an extremely large Russian speaking community in the country. Indeed, in Balti the Russian speakers predominate and so in the city the main language of communication is Russian. Thus for example, if you go into a shop to buy something, almost certainly the person serving you will speak to you in Russian. If they see that you are not very comfortable in Russian they will often switch to Romanian, but not always, thus creating some awkward and indeed amusing moments. One time for example, the person serving me spoke only in Russian, but all of a sudden, when I nearly left the shop without paying 2 Lei for a plastic bag, she started speaking Romanian! The Russian language is interesting to learn, but quite tricky. Partly, because you need to get used to a new alphabet in order to be able to read the words, but also because the words are Slavic based thus if the languages that you are familiar with are Latin or Germanic based i.e. Romanian and English, it's very hard to recognize and work out what all the words mean. For example if you are familiar with the English word 'success' it doesn't take much effort to understand and get to grips with the Romanian word 'succes' but the Russian word 'успех' takes a bit more getting used to. Finally, Russian seems difficult as there are very many word endings. The Russian language uses six cases and often each case has different endings. As an example, in Russian there are six different types of masculine nouns. Each type can be plural or singular and be found in one of six different cases. Thus, by my calculations there are 6 times 2 times 6 i.e. 72 different possibly states in which a Russian masculine noun can be found for example an animate, singular noun in the dative case which would have the ending -у or an inanimate, plural noun in the instrumental case which would have the ending -ами. Admittedly, things are not quite that complicated as quite a few of the noun endings are the same. In the example above, an inanimate, singular noun in the dative case also has the ending -y and an animate plural noun in the instrumental case also has the ending -ами. Nevertheless, things are still tricky compared to English where the only change to noun endings is to add an -s (with a few exceptions) in order to show plural or Romanian where there are four different masculine noun endings depending on case and number (singular or plural).

University or college?

Here in Moldova alongside the university system, they have a very well developed further education college system. This means that at 16 years old young people here have the possibility to study for two more years at school to obtain Baccalaureate qualifications and then go onto university. Alternatively, they can go to a further education college where as well as studying standard subjects like maths, geography, science, languages etc. you also have a specialist subject, like electronics, music, car mechanics etc. After college people then have the possibility to go to work or to go onto university. The college system seems very popular, partly I think for financial reasons, as it means people can get out to work sooner than if they went onto study at university. The vision here at CSC is to work than not just with university students, but also further education college students and even high school students. Indeed, here in Balti the majority of the students involved in the ministry at the moment are from colleges as opposed to from the university.