What is love? part 2

Alongside the previously mentioned activities of last week, where we visited a further education college, a school and the university to do a valentine's day programme, this week on Wednesday we also had an evening for the students here dedicated to the same topic of 'What is love?' One of the high school students here planned a programme connected to this topic, which included various interactive activities such as in teams preparing a song about love and then in the same teams making a poster to represent the same topic. We also watched saw some things from the internet, the culmination of which was a clip from the film 'Most'. This is a film about a man who has to make the decision of whether to close a railway bridge thus crushing his son who has become trapped in the bridge's closing mechanism or leave the bridge open thus saving his son, but causing an accident as a train full of passengers hurtling towards the open bridge. The idea is that this is an analogy for Christianity, as at the cross God crushes His son in order to close the bridge between Him and us. It was good to have been reminded of this profound truth and the fact that love, although it involves feelings and emotions, is ultimately about sacrifice. There were 9 students present at the meeting, of which one was new.

Grub's up

Working out what to eat in a new culture can be a tricky business. Fortunately, Moldova is well endowed with a wide variety of products that can be bought from either a traditional market or, for those of us from a western cultural background, there are a handful of western style supermarkets. One such supermarket is situated less than a minutes walk from my apartment block which is handy and hard to resist. Whilst not dissimilar to a supermarket in Romania, the products are nevertheless a bit different and it's taken me a few months to start to work out what the best things are to buy, taking into consideration value for money, health and palatability. As in Romania the undoubted winner is pasta in a tomato sauce with pieces of meat and/or vegetables. The runner up is omelet and last, but not least is rice mixed with the aforementioned pieces of meat and/or vegetables. This is not terribly different to Romania except I have discovered two interesting bonuses. Firstly, here there is a somewhat wider selection of reasonably priced fruit juices than in Romania and secondly, there is сгущенное молоко! молоко is Russian for milk and so this is basically milk with sugar and some fat mixed in. As delicious as it sounds and especially the version with cocoa powder as well makes for an interesting alternative to milk or yogurt on fruit and cereal.

St. Valentine's day at the university

As mentioned in the previous post, on the 14th February I participated in a Valentine's day celebration at the foreign languages department at the university of Balti. The main programme was similar to what we had done the previous days at a further education college and a school, except that because this was the language department at the university the message about God's love as opposed to the passion promoted by Valentine's day was a bit more direct and also they wanted things to be in English as much as possible. So I gave my short talk about English traditions connected to Valentine's day in English without translation. I wasn't exactly sure if people were following what I was saying, judging by some blank looks in my direction, but they seemed at least to appreciate the opportunity to hear some 'London English pronunciations' and at the end of the meeting I saw that a number of people came forward to leave contact details. One idea for follow up would be to try and organise and invite people to an English themed evening. Here are some photos;

What is love?

Yesterday and the day before yesterday, I participated in a meeting for students at 'Professional School nr.4' (like a further education college in England) entitled 'what is love?' A team from one of the penticostal churches in Balti organises from time to time programmes for students at different schools and colleges in Balti and this time they got in contact with us from CSC and invited us to help. The title was to do with love as Valentine's day is coming up. At the meeting, there was a music band that sang a few contemporary Christian songs about love, they had some video material promoting the idea that love is more than just feelings and the person who led the meeting also gave a short talk emphasising the idea that love is about commitment and sacrifice and not about feelings and desires. They got me to participate by presenting some information about the history of St. Valentine's day and English traditions connect with it. I think they partly got me to do this as the fact that an English person was present possibly encouraged more students to come and attend the meeting! The aim of the meeting was more to get people thinking rather than enter too deeply into the Bible and what it says about love, and also to try and get contact with the students there. At the end of each meeting a handful of people did leave their contact details. Today, we are doing the same thing at a different school in Balti and tomorrow at the university!

Images of Leadership

This past weekend in Chisinau we participated in the conference 'Images of Leadership' given by Richard Lamb. He took five images from the Bible for a leader, starting with the leader as a shepherd, then patient, servant, sage and watchman and showed us where these ideas are to be found in the Bible, what they meant in the Biblical context and finally how to apply them to our everyday ministry. The seminars were very interactive with lots of questions from the front and time to study individually and then discus in small groups, and also the speaker presented the material in a lively, engaging way. From Balti there were 7 students who participated plus around 30 from Chisinau.

Planning 'Retreat'

This week I spent three days in Chisinau together with the others who work, full or part time, for CSC in order to plan for the coming semester. Unfortunately, for financial reasons, which didn't actaully retreat to anywhere, we had the meetings in Chisinau, one day at one of the leader's house and two days at the CSC office. It was nevertheless a good and positive time. We planned a number of things for this coming semester, both at the local and national level. The first of which will be the weekend after next, that is 8th-10th February. Richard Lamb, a well known speaker from America, is coming to Chisinau to speak on the topic of 'Images of Leadership'. This is a material, which looks at different aspects of being a christian leader from a Biblical point of view. There is room for about 50 students to attend the conference and so far a number of students have shown an interest in coming. One challenging thing for me is that I might need to help out with translating, due to a lack of other possible candidates, which is something I have done a number of times from Romanian to English, but it would be my first serious go at translating the other way around!