Summer Programs!
Hello Everyone!
Wow—it seems that every spring/summer, time speeds up here in Romania! June and July especially, have flown by and we’ve enjoyed the many opportunities we’ve been gifted with for youth ministry. Before stepping into this busy season, I was giving a verse from the Lord. Isaiah 30:15a “In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength”. It seemed like an interesting verse to me as I was gearing up for a busy season. Yet God humbled me, reminding me that it is through Him alone that His Kingdom will be built and only in trusting and resting in Him that I can be His tool! God was faithful as we saw Him move powerfully over the past month!
We began to receive our volunteers for the summer VBS programs at the end of June. We were blessed to have 4 individual volunteers come from both Lakeview Heights Baptist Church in Kelowna as well as Terwillegar Community Church in Edmonton. All four ladies were an incredible help in preparing and running our VBS programs. They also joined us as we trained 13 of the teens from our village to be volunteers with our programs this year. It was encouraging to see the teens that attend English class step up as leaders—and even translate! We are sure that these teens have never received any leadership training before. It was an incredible opportunity for us to teach and discuss about how to be a leader for Christ and dig deeper into our VBS theme "Jesus is the Light" and we are to live as His light!
We were also blessed to have Zion Baptist Church from Edmonton partner with us this summer by sending a youth mission team to help lead our VBS programs! We hosted the team of 11 for two weeks and ran a number of VBS programs and youth events. Hosting the Zion youth was especially special for us as we had spoken to these teens just a few years prior when we visited their youth group to share about our desire to move to Romania and help develop Camp Falcon Rock. We were inspired to see the teens passion for kids and missions, as well as hear their testimonies and see them step out as leaders. Over the past month of VBS we were in 5 different villages and saw over 250 young people! There is no way we could have accomplished this on our own, so we are incredibly grateful for all of our volunteers. We look forward to next week when we will receive Brentview Baptist Church from Calagry and run programs in an additional 6 villages and potentially see another 300+ kids/teens.
The camp property continues to be developed and even more now as we have finally received our major development permit! Praise God! Tamas was working hard to finish renovations for the existing building to get it operational for groups as well as convert the old dilapidated barn into a maintenance garage. The camp was able to rent the facility to 3 groups already and will host another 3-4 groups this coming month. It was extremely busy for Tamas as he worked on construction at the camp and hosted groups at the same time. Again, we are grateful that we had volunteers to help us this summer, which freed up Tamas to be at the camp full-time.
Thank you for journeying with us! Please continue to pray for the youth ministry that will take place over the next month. We wait with anticipation of the ways God will change lives through the camp programs!
Tanya and Paul
