While we’ve been in Romania our partner here in Craiova has been Hope Church. My entire squad of 34 people is staying at the pastor’s house. His name is Raul and his wife’s name is Ana. They are amazing people.
Raul has so much knowledge and wisdom about the Bible and the Lord. He will challenge you in making you know why you believe what you believe. I don’t think there has been a day where he doesn’t question someone about why they said something. To make sure that what we believe isn’t from ourselves but that it comes straight from the Word of God.
His wife Ana is also pretty amazing. I haven’t got to spend much time with her but she is a lot of fun. While I got to go out with her last night to evangelize in Downtown Craiova, she really pushed me outside my comfort zone. She can get to a person’s heart in just a few questions. She is not afraid to share the Gospel with anyone and everyone.
Hope Church has a lot of ministries. Just like church’s back in the U.S. They have a youth ministry and I was told they are starting a new youth discipleship class for middle school and high schoolers at the end of the month. They have a Roma ministry. (You might know them as Gypsies but they see that term as offensive). Roma are one of the least-reached and poorest people in Romania. Just a few days ago we went into a Roma village and passed out clothes and housewares to families there. We also shared the Gospel with families there that we knew were not believers and we got to provide for those who were believers there.
I’m not sure if Hope Church only does this when they get World Race teams but we are spending our last few days here doing events. We had a very successful youth event last night and invited the youth to come to church and wanted to see if any would join Hope Church’s discipleship program that was starting up. They are doing a women’s event tomorrow night which is our last night of ministry. I don’t really know much about that one for obvious reasons but if it goes as well as the youth one last night it will be amazing.
As I mentioned earlier with Ana being a great evangelist, Hope Church is really good at equipping people and sending them out to the streets to proclaim the Good News. They’ve been sending us out the last two weeks to build relationships with young adults and to share about the youth event that I mentioned earlier.
Hope Church is doing a lot of amazing things. If you want to be praying for them here is a few things you can be praying for:
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Missionaries for a mission base in Thessaloniki, Greece they want to plant to reach refugees coming there from the Middle East
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Coffee Shop ministry they plan on starting in Craiova
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Raul and Ana’s son Sami is also going into full-time ministry so pray that he can get the funds he needs to do that well
Here is the link to Hope Church’s website: https://www.hoperomania.org/
Thank you for sharing about Raul and Ana’s ministry. We were with them for 1 week during a Parent Vision Trip (when our daughter was on the WR) and I was so impressed with their servant hearts. Ana and a few women in the church cooked for us for 4 days straight and we had about 70 people there. They are amazing and I am so glad you shared what you have seen and their current prayer requests. BTW, I love, love, love this picture of you. You look so healthy and happy!
this sounds so fun. I love that Ana took you out of your comfort zone some. Also praise God for the ministry you were able to do with the Roma people!