Home again

Hi, we're home... more or less.... in body anyway.
The flights were good, except for the last one where I think we all felt totally exhausted and realized that United is potentially not the best airline in the world. However, the other flights went well. I (liz) saw the Empire State Building and the statue of liberty for the first time out the plane window as we landed in new York :).
It was a great trip... I think we will take a while to debrief and reflect. The team will meet later this week to check in, and also share briefly in church next Sunday.. meanwhile, here's a letter we received from the pastor of the church in Chisinau where we ministered and where Paul attends and preaches.. bless you and thank you SO much for praying.

Dear and Beloved Brothers and Sisters in Christ Jesus, Hello!

We bring you great thanks for the work your church did here in Moldova. For these ten days when Kate, Liz, Matthew and John were here, we received a lot of blessings. People from our church (also from different churches) were encouraged; many of them received inner healing and other kinds of ministry. Through your team, God opened to me things our church needs to give attention to and to work on.

I say to your church and you all - ’Thank You!’

We hope for a continuous relationship of our Church with your Church.

Blessings,

Zanfir Nita,

Pastor of Christ Church, Chisinau, Moldova.

Another Brick in the Wall

Yesterday, we all hit the wall emotional and mentally. God is faithful in carrying us through a very difficult day (Friday) as we met with the "sister" church in Orhei. It was nice to see the old Orthodox church also in Orhei that is dug into the mountain side. Later that evening we had a nice time visiting one of the home groups (Johnson's) and enjoyed Paul's leading Bible teaching. Today, we are glad not to do any cross cultural ministry. We will just be praying for Paul & Gala. Later, we will have a Thai dinner with the Paul & Gala and Pastor Igor & his wife. We will leave early this Sunday at 8 + am which means 11 pm Calif. time for a long plane ride home. Looking forward to seeing you all again and seeing my cat Fiver! Please do pray for travel mercies and as we re-enter our culture.

Lots of praying

I don't think I have ever prayed so much in my life.... in so many different ways, and I have never taught and prayed for people in short phrases which have to be translated as we go, with myself having no idea if what is being translated is close to what I was intending. Made me think that must be how God thinks sometimes... "Everything I say, they interpret, apart from that brief moment on the mountain with Moses..." Ces't la vie as Jon said.
It's been great to be able to connect with the pastors and leaders here and encourage them with prayer and reflecting on how things are going. We spent two hours last night (Katie and I) talking with our hosts, Tanya and her husband Pastor Igor and their eighteen year old Vika, hearing the testimony of their life... Vika's views on boys, Tanya's experience before she knew Jesus (incredible story) and how Igor feels about what is going on in church and their lives. It felt like family....
And, big news, first time of sleeping through the night.
Today we are visiting the street kids ministry, and teaching (probably) at the prayer meeting...
We are about to have coffee with Paul and Gala (we brought them Peets.. yay). One important piece of news for prayer.. Paul has an incredibly sweet tooth... he was eating chocolate condensed milk from the bowl yesterday...

C'est Maldova

Matthew and I had an interesting adventure yesterday that forced trust building.

Our phone at the apartment decided not to work anymore and we hadn't set up the details of the days plan because we were planning on calling in the morning. We didn't know whether to wait at the apartment (which in hindsight was the right thing to do) or to go the meeting or go to Pauls. We walked down to Paul's apartment, but missed him, because he was riding a mini bus up to ours so that he could find out why we were not answering the phone. When he or his wife were not home, we decided to go and try and find the church office on our own. The other time we were there, it was sunday and all of us were together and talking and so I had not paid any attention to how to get there. So I had to trust Matthew and his ever present map that he has out everywhere to get us there. The map of course doesn't have the mini bus routes and the major buses were on strike. Traffic was terrible yesterday and there were protesters in the city center. We ended up making it there 45 minutes late and had everyone worried about us. We didn't really know where the office was in the building and were wondering around it until we finally found a woman who let us use her cell phone. (We had tried earlier to use the pay phones but could not figure it out. You have to buy a card and punch in numbers from the card, but the cards are in Russian so it is really hard to figure out which of the dozens of numbers on the card are the right ones. We are going to carry Paul's cell phone with us from now on.) We called paul and he called the church office and they came out and found us. we were walking right by the door when they came out. So in the end it worked out fine and Matthew got us there.

We are learning to be flexible and to let things develop and happen as they happen. Don't worry be happy. C'est la vie. (That's life!) One Moldovan told us that everyone has such a great sense of humor because there are so many things that don't work the way you would hope, that the only thing to do is to laugh. If you get mad, you would always be angry.

Thanks for your prayers. We can feel them guiding and protecting us.

What a mess

What a mess! Mot-to-mesk (just say what a mess) means thank you in Romanian or Moldovan.
Yesterday, was a mess. Our land line was down, so Jon & I had to find our way to the church office in the morning via trolley bus and minibus. We made it there only to not know which door goes to the church office. However, we found someone with a cell phone, and called, and to our surprise as well as Pastor Igor, we were standing right outside. I suppose we just chalked that one up to Moldovan time for being an hour late to the church planting meeting.

On a personal note, I am becoming more aware how the Holy Spirit prompts me to speak up. At home, I think I tend to dismiss His promptings. So at this particular meeting, our team met with their leaders (pastors Igor and Zimfir, and evangelist Johnson with Paul). My initial thought was I don't know anything about Church Planting so I will just listen and defer to Jon, Liz and KT. Then the Lord started to prompt me to speak up. At first, I tried to have Liz say something about what the Lord was speaking to me about, but quickly realized that I just need to speak up. So I did. I shared about the need to have organized the leadership around ministries that flow from one's giftings. If we are not leading/ministering out of our giftings, the church will not grow as well and one may risk being burned out. So I shared how we can diagram one's giftings (have a frank discussion about that), followed by the current assigned tasks, and see if there are ways to re-delegate ministries that better aligned to ones' gift clusters. Then Jon spoke more about this as well as KT and Liz. It was interesting to see us as a body working together as we "spoke from the seat of our pants" with wisdom that God gave us for the moment.

The night before we had this wonderful time with Pastor Zimfir and his wife Allah. It was really good relational time which I think is helping build some trust between us and the leadership here in Moldova. Yesterday afternoon in spite of the traffic jam due to some sort of protest - it took us a couple of hours to go a few blocks on a bus - Jon and I managed to make it in time for one of the boy's youth home group meetings. Great group of guys who are passionate in prayer and their love for Jesus. BTW Bible training is a huge area of need, as well as relational inner healing training. Just scratch the surface, and their is a lot of relational pain which I believe Jesus wants to heal.

Interestingly, most young people speak only Moldovan (Romanian) and not Russian. So establishing a church for the Romanian population is critical. Viorel (home group leader) and Serghei are both wanting to plant a Romanian speaking church. I might add they are younger than Jon!

Liz and KT, yesterday went to minister to the girls youth group. Today, Jon & I will be doing evangelism with Johnson (Nigerian). Liz and KT are planing to visit the street children ministry.
Tonight Liz will be speaking at the all church prayer meeting. It has been quite an adventure so far.

Marshruka and other amazing phenomenon

The marshruka is coming. Sounds like some aliens being but really they are mini buses that take people everywhere in the city. Unfortunately, they get very crowded and is standing room only. The top ceiling of these mini buses are carpeted. It's a good thing, since when you stand up, one's head is right against that ceiling.

Today, we had a rather serious day of discussion with the team and then prayer. Later, we met with the church leadership. I am simply amaze how God met us and really answered our prayers. I am also really blessed to be on this team. Thank you for your prayers for us. It's hard to tell you all the details, but let just say that God really moves as we seek Him in prayer. I think something really, really big happened tonight in the spiritual realm for this wonderful church here.

God is Moving

Everyone,
thanks for your prayers. They were evident. We really had a powerful prayer ministry teaching session on Saturday, with people from several churches attending. We had somewhere around 60 people come. Our ministry time at the end lasted about 2 hours. We were trying to train and equip the Moldovans while praying for people to be healed from physical and emotional issues. KT talked about unforgiveness and dealing with that was the key to several people being healed of physical problems. Prayer ministry through translation is always interesting. God did some amazing things.

Sunday Paul taught on Luke 4 about the Spirit of the Lord being on Jesus (which was an awesome message by the way) and then we did ministry time with the people who were trained up the previous night. Again, lots of good stuff happened. KT rocked with giving words and called men up to the front to be equipped and empowered to have compassion to care for the poor as well as some specific words for healing. It was cool to see her step out in faith.
It was all very tiring and we really needed the long wonderful lunch at the pastor's house that kt and liz are staying at. Please continue to keep us in prayer as we seek God in what he is doing and how a partnership might be formed that will benefit both our church and the church here in Moldova.

The spiritual sense here is not dark or evil, but brokenness. When Paul talked about Jesus being annointed to lift up the brokenhearted, that really seemed to hit home. Moldovans have been conquored and oppressed by so many physical outsiders for most of their history. I got the sense that the spiritual situation is the same. They need hope and healing. Thankfully, Jesus can give us and them both of those things.

monday

its a relatively quiet morning here.. we did a fair amount of prayer ministry over the last few days. Interesting to pray with folks we had never met...
We had the chance to attend part of a Yom Kippur jewish service last night. It was quite an experience to be attending synagogue in Moldova. We wandered around afterwards and had our first experience of ordering food on our own in Moldova.Thank God for menu's with pictures. Ironically,pizza here has no sauce..
We are planning to pray today as a team with Paul and Gala and talk about the rest of the week.THis evening we will attend a church leaders meeting.
Overall we are well. Looking forward to more of what God will do this week.
We miss you, but are glad to be here.

sunday in moldova

from Katie :
The last two days have been a bit of a whirlwind of prayer ministry. a 5 hour prayer ministry class on Saturday (teaching via translation takes a bit of getting used to!) and a great sunday morning in church. Met wonderful Moldovans and saw God move as we prayed. Enjoyed an awesome sunday afternoon lunch, with our hosts, and Paul and Gala,a 3 hour meal! Heading to Jewish celebration and walk in the city tonight (surprisingly high jewish population in Chisinau and our host is part Jewish)
Jet lag hit some today.. but not badly. thanks for prayers , we sense them.

Day 1

from Katie: It looks like we are all posting. There is lots to say.. :) Liz and I slept for 12 hours and the best part of waking up was drinking Peets coffee we brought. Our hosts are awesome, a great pastor and his family. 18 year old daughter is our translator. Jesus presence is obvious in this house, and I am humbled by their hospitality and generosity to us. I have the sense of being welcomed as an alien and stranger, in a wonderful way. Last night, in a wild twist, this family celebrates the Jewish Sabbath and we did that with a feast and ended with communion. I sensed perhaps what Paul meant when he wrote that we were members of one body, realizing we share the love of Jesus, and the forgivness of our sins, no matter what language we pray in.Been a great time.more to write soon. my ankle contiues to be ok. I brought only right shoes, since its been broken I have only needed one,but in faith brought a one left shoe in case I get healed. thanks for praying friends, we feel it!

First morning in Moldova

Our team seemed to have slept well last night. We were all quite tired.
Our friends here kept us up to at least 9pm so that we could battle jetlag better.
We will be doing the healing seminar today in a few hours from 4pm to 9pm or so here.
Please pray for us that God will show up and do awesome things today.

The guys are staying in an apartment that is on the 8th floor and the elevator sometimes works. It feels safer to take the stairs, however. The elevator makes all kind of uncomforting sounds when it moves. Chisnau is filled with towering concrete apartment complexes. It was nice to see that the Soviets hired an architect, it just happens to be one architect, one design and it has been used for the last 50 years!

Planes, Trains and Automobiles

Everyone seemed to sleep well after our very tiring and long trip.
Matthew and I had a bit of an adventure in Frankfurt on the way here. We had a 4 hour layover and we decided to go into the city for a short visit. By the time we figured out how to get out of the Frankfurt airport, we only had 3.5 hours. We managed to get on a train heading to the city. We had only changed enough money for our train fare, because we forgot about lunch. While in Frankfurt we found an outdoor street fair that looked good. Unfortunately none of the booths took credit cards, so we used our return train fair to eat lunch. It was a great lunch, btw, of german rindwurst and fries. Then we went back to the train station and discovered that the train ticket machine only took European credit cards. Not to worry, there were several banks nearby. We went to the first one at 1:02 and discovered that banks close from 1pm to 2pm for lunch! I begged the clerk to just change $20 to Euros for us so we could get back to the airport. She said, no of course not, come back at 2pm. We are closed for it is after 1pm! All the other banks also were closed. Since our plane was leaving at 3pm and we still had to get to the airport and go through customs and security we were in trouble! We decided to hail a taxi. The taxi took us on the Autobahn and was going 180 km.hr (about 110 mph) while we whipped through traffic. When we got to the airport we ended up having to go through 3 separate security screenings because the airport was layed out in a really strange manner. So much for German engineering. We made it back in time for the flight, but realized that was a very expensive hotdog lunch! But, who knows when we will ever be back in Germany, so it was OK. It was an exciting part of our trip. Too exciting probably.

The eagle has landed (w/o a crash)

Katie, Liz, Jon and Matthew all have arrived safely - with our bags. We survived each others jokes on the 10 hr. flight to Frankfurt. Jon and Matthew are having a light dinner with Paul & Gala tonight, and Liz and Katie are having a dinner at Pastor Igor's. Chisinau looks little bit like cities Albania according to Jon, and to me looks a little bit like TJ. I am a little brain dead right now so I sign off. We thank you for praying for us!

In Frankfurt airport...

...finally . Jon and Matthew running around the city for a few hours having fun while we faithfully update the blog.... Good flight over and now waiting 3 hours for connection to Chisnau, Moldova. Please pray for a good seat for Katie and her ankle, which is achey now... Frankfurt airport is very clean and full of German things :)
Coffee tastes great thoug and we are trying hard to stay awake. Bless you, we miss you

here we are

In the airport. Had a great time getting thru security.remind us to tell you what matthew had in his carryon and when jons passport got taken. Flight delay, god willing we are all sitting together

one more thing.

We are hoping to update this blog as often as we can on our trip. Its a way for us to share what God is doing in us and through us in Moldova. We leave on 19/24 and return on 10/4. We will be doing some prayer ministry training, and participating in ministries that already exist in Paul's church in Moldova (outreach ministries and home groups) as well as lots of other cool stuff. We would love prayer, there are lots of things that should be pretty interesting about the the trip. Biggest prayer needs for the moment are: Traveling mercies. I've still got a broken bone in my ankle and Liz is still coughing. Planes, broken bones, and coughing are not the best combination. Pray too for good communication between us as a team and for quick recovery from any jet lag.

How did we get here?

Over the last year, a few of us have been talking to Paul Lindstedt , a former VCFP member, living and serving in Moldva (near Romanian, which I didn't know till a few months ago :) In the course of those conversations, we started to feel like it would be a great thing to go on a scouting trip to Moldova and see if there was any way our two churches could connect and partner in ministry. After a year of prep, four of us are going! Its hard to believe its actually happen.. and there certainly have been a lot of bumps along the way. But the team (Katie Fantin, Liz Milner, Jon White and Matthew Young) are ready!

Houston, we have lift off... I think

We're going this Thursday morning. I think. As you know, KT is on the mend from a broken ankle. Yea! Liz is hoping to be well from her flu. Go God! Jon and Matthew, we are planning to staying well and not break a leg in the process. Do pray for all of us as we finish up the last minute details. Please pray for travel mercies especially for KT. Her doctor recommend her to have her leg elevated during the flight. We are hoping to find a good spot for her to do so. My vote is in the cockpit. Doesn't the pilot's cushy seat recline way back where you could stick your foot out that window?

BTW a shameless plug for Paul's prayer meeting, we were reminded of 2 Cor. 1:8-11.

Welcome to Team Moldova. We are in training with God.

Our power healing teachings are completed. Yea! Right now Gala (Paul's wife) is translating the teaching to Russian. Do they speak Russian? Yes, but also Romanian and Moldovan. Moldovan is a local dialect which apparently is very similar to Romanian. During the Soviet rule, Romanian and Moldovan were surpressed. Russian became the state language after 1924 when Stalin ruled with an iron fist. Learning Russian became mandatory as well as adopting the Russian culture. After Stalin's death in 1953, the Romanian language was allowed again. Then in the mid-1960's, an anti-Romanian campaign started. The emphasis was independence from Romania. This is rather strange to me. Moldova was a state within the Soviet Union while Romania always existed as a separate country. It was until glasnost (1985) that the Moldovan language was allowed to be used again. Then in 1989 after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Moldova became a country again in it's own right. They declared that the Cyrillic script be officially used rather than the Roman script be used. However, what I am told, practically speaking Russian is used in the capital, Chisinau - that's where we are going. Say kitch-i-now.
Elsewhere, generally speaking, they speak Romanian. So a trivia for you. Name the five romance languages in use today.