Student Christmas Celebration

On the Friday before Christmas, we had a special student Christmas evening in Chisinau together with students from both Balti and Chisinau. 9 students came from Balti and in total there were over 30 students. The programme was games, some Christmas sketches, carol singing, a short message, a trip into the city centre to see the Christmas lights and tree and also some special Christmas food! Below are pictures of firstly, students singing carols together, then the group from Balti carol singing and finally, the group from Balti doing their Christmas sketch, 'we can't see Jesus, all about the fact that lots of traditions get in the way of the true Christams message.

Back in Balti!

After a break of three weeks in England and then Romania, I am now back in Balti. The new university term starts next week and the further education colleges and high schools are already up and running. In CSC we will be having a national meeting in Chisinau at the start of next week, that is a meeting between the workers in Chisinau and those in Balti (pictured below), and we will be planning our activities for the coming semester. The first big event will be in the second weekend in February, when a well known speaker, Richard Lamb, will be in Chisinau and will hold a conference about Biblical Images for Leadership.

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.