25 Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live. 26 And whoever lives and believes in Me shall never die. Do you believe this?”
John 11:25-26
Spring has finally come to Romania and the warmth of the sunshine is nice to feel once again after a rather long and hard winter. The winter has now passed and the trees will soon be in full bloom as we are now celebrating the Easter Season.
May you find great joy, hope and peace in the knowledge that we serve a Savior that is risen!!!
The last few months have been filled with many different projects and activities. The highlights of our weeks tend to be the Saturday afternoon kid’s outreach and the Saturday evening teen outreach. We have been blessed to be able to share the Gospel via this avenue, now for 10 years here in Sebis and it is always a joy to see the parents bringing their children. We have been discussing the life of Jesus at the kid’s outreach and have been really focusing upon “Knowing and Discerning the Will of God”, at the teen outreaches. God is doing a really good work within our teen group and this weekend we had a evangelistic outreach that went incredibly well with 10-15 new teens in attendance.
In a few weeks, 15 of the teens will be attending a national youth conference hosted by the church in which we are a part of in a city 1 ½ hours drive from Sebis. We are looking forward to what God will do in their lives while there. Please pray for the outreaches that we have for the Children and teens of Sebis.
With the arrival of spring comes much work for us at the kid’s camp in the village of Laz. Most of you know that the camp was originally an apple orchard with about 150 trees, which requires quite a bit of upkeep (trimming and treating for insects). With the fruit from this orchard we make 100% natural juice, in which we are able to use for ourselves, we also give to poor families, several children’s homes and sell some of it; investing the profit back into the costs of the camps. Most often right after the trimming is finished; the battle with cutting all of the grass begins and unfortunately continues throughout the summer.
During this time we also plan for and organize our summer camps. This summer our camps will have the theme, “Christmas in July”! We will organize three camps this summer in the month of July and will have approximately 100 kids attending. We are still in need of about 60 sponsors for these camps, which are $50 per child, for a week of a Christian camp experience.
Several other churches that we work with will be having camps at the property in the month of June, right after the school year finishes! We will also be hosting several mission teams that will be helping with the camps and will be doing some much needed renovation/construction projects.
In Romania, Woman’s day is celebrated on March 8th every year. For this special day, we talked with a local restaurant and were able to provide coupons to the children of our kid’s outreach. This coupon enabled the kids to take their Mothers out and enjoy a one-on-one time alone with them. Later in the afternoon we organized an outreach, working together with our church Pastors in which approximately 25 ladies were able to be ministered to and spiritually encouraged during a special service at Casa Ezra. While this was happening, us men provided a good Bible based program for their children as well.
Two weeks ago the boxes of toys collected from the December toy drive arrived at Casa Ezra from America. Since then we have sorted them and now have them boxed and prepared to be given out to our local pre-school, kindergarten, hospitals and poor families. This year our Easter is being celebrated two weeks later than in America, which makes perfect timing for us to distribute the toys and share the story of Jesus’ resurrection.
We will also be visiting many of the poor families that we help throughout the year during the next few weeks. Recently the Lord helped us to buy over $2,000 worth of food for about $500 so we will be able to bless these families even more. Please pray for these outreaches and home visits.
We have started the long difficult process (Phase 1 of 3), of renovating the building that we plan to use for an afterschool. We hope to have this phase done by September and start helping kids from there when school starts in the fall. At the moment this looks to be impossible, but we know that God is able to do the impossible! We still are in need of $10,000 to cover the costs of phase 1 which will allow us to finish the rooms for the afterschool program.
Last week as we were visiting a home, we heard of a situation where a father (Calin) is trying to care for his four children alone because his wife left over a year ago to another country. His youngest daughter is four years old and at the moment he is taking her to work with him every day as he has nobody to help him. He works in construction and it is not a good environment for a child.
The next day we heard of another situation where a 10 year old boy whose mother had passed away about 6 months ago is not doing well in school and is in great danger of being kicked out. There are so many situations like this here in our community and for this reason we feel that it is a worthy cause to invest in this building for an afterschool/daycare center. Please pray that the Lord will bring abundant provision for this project.
Thank you so much for your prayers, support, encouragement and friendship!!!
Love,
Dan, Maria, and kids
