Nearing the End in Portugal

Hello! We've had a wonderful time here in Ersmesinde, near Porto, Portugal. We've been working with a church who are very missions-minded and really want to reach out to their area. We've been helping out practically ( as it's a new building there are a lot of little jobs to do), speaking at church meetings, painting children's faces in the park and getting to know lots of amazing people! We've been really blessed through the people in the church and all of their stories. There are missionaries from Switzerland, the USA, England and Brasil among the people who we've met and God's doing a lot here. 

A point for praise: last night the boys spoke at a meeting in a drug rehabilitation centre with the pastor, Samuel, and seven men gave their lives to Christ! On our last night of ministry God was still working!

We are now debriefing along with the other Transit Team, John and James from Lifehope and Neil Mason (the field leader of OM Portugal). Chris, Mike and Sarah will be heading home on Sunday morning and Marvin, Chorong, Elya and Hannah will be travelling with the van back to Lifehope and going to their different destinations from there.

Keep on praying as we go home and try to readjust to "normal" life, all except Marvin and Chorong who will stay on with OM. Thank you again for all of your prayers!

God bless!

London Has Been and Gone

In the last post we were still with David and Sharon in Spain. Since then we have driven to Porto in Portugal, flown to London, worked for w week with a church in Bromley, Greater London, and flown back to Porto. We had a wonderful time in Bromley (more details will follow). We are now working with a church here in Porto; taking part in their services, singing carols in the street and helping to clean the building.

Thank you for praying for us! We're on the home staight now, this is the last place that we'll be working, but  pray that we finish strong and that God gives us strength until the very end!

¡Viva España!

Vale, estamos aqui, en España... ha ha, don't worry, I won't write this in Spanish. I am quite excited to be in a country where I can speak a little of the language though (this is Hannah speaking) - that hasn't been the case since mid-August! So we're in Spain right now, Villanueva de la Vera in Caceres to be precise. We are staying with an OM couple, David and Sharon, who are from Canada and the USA respectively. Their ministry involves living their lives here how they believe God wants them to, and reaching out to all the friends they have made through farming, being part of the local choir and the English school that Sharon teaches at.

This is the view from our bedroom, out over the olive trees. It is so beautiful here!

On Saturday we spent the day with different friends of David and Sharon's making
Dulce de Membrillo, a jam-type thing made from quince.
Elya's having an awesome time chopping!

Here Sarah is with one of our beloved olive trees. We spent a few days
harvesting the olives on the property and taking them to a co-operative
to be turned into oil. Now, when I close my eyes, all I see are olives...

These are the fruits of our labour on their way to be made into oil.
We picked 400 kilogrammes of olives, which is less than they've
had before, but still quite a lot we think!

We have spent some time in neighboring villages getting to know people and making contacts that we could leave with David and Sharon. We've had some good conversations so far, and we're hoping that we're being of some help to David and Sharon as well. We've had time to get back into team devotions over the last while and we have all really enjoyed getting into the Bible more together and hearing each other's thoughts.

Thank you for taking the time to see what we're doing! Please pray for David and Sharon as they show God's love to the people in this place.

In case you're wondering what the rest of the plan is for Transit, we're driving to Portugal on the 26th November. From Porto we fly to London on the 27th, where we stay for a week, before coming back to Porto and finishing there. We have to go to the UK for visa reasons, hence the time in London.

God bless!

France, Je T'aime!

The time has come to leave another country, and as always we're sad to be leaving but very excited to be going to the next place! Here are a few shots of our last few weeks in France to give you an idea of what we've been up to...

Our two weeks at the OM France base, near Paris, was spent 
distributing for five different churches. It was a very good use of 
our youthful fitness! Invitations for meetings, tracts and information
 about churches were all delivered in large numbers, and now none of
 us can go past a letter box without wanting to drop something into it!

These lovely people along with the team are some of the people we worked with this week - in Carpentras in the south of France. We have loved getting to know all of the wonderful people from this church! We did outreach in both Carpentras and a neighbouring town where they are planting a church, called L'Ilse-sur-la-Sorgue. This picture was taken after the second of two meetings, which we gave out invitations to, on the topic of, "God doesn't exist?!"

One of the ways in which we made contacts with people this week 
was by going to the park in L'Ilse -sur-la-Sorgue and doing free 
face-painting for kids and playing football with teenagers. This gave the 
French speakers really good opportunities to talk to the parents of the 
children and the boys they were playing football with. Chorong was able 
to pass on her face painting skills to people in the church, like Camille in 
the picture, so the church will be able to keep on using this to reach out!

We spent a couple of afternoons in the main square of Carpentras also, doing similar things to get talking to people. Chris and Marvin both used their musical giftings to make passers-by take a second look, and possibly stop and chat. And they aren't collecting money in that guitar, it was filled with free literature!

Here you can see Sarah, Mike and Hannah from the team along 
with Clement from the Carpentras church doing a mine in front of a 
crowd of people who were passing by. This one used the picture of 
getting stuck to a chair of wet paint to illustrate how we can get stuck in 
sin and only God can help get us out of bad situations.

Marvin spoke at the church's youth group and used hats and other props to give us all a more realistic view of world missions! He challenged the young people to be open to where God may be calling them, and to get involved in missions in whatever way they can.

We take off at 4 am on Monday morning for Villanueva de la Vera in Spain, so please pray that the journey goes well, and that Rex (the van) doesn't give us any trouble! Pray also for the contacts the church has made this week, that they will be fruitful! Ask the Lord that the people who heard the gospel in the meetings this week will respond to it, and pray that the church plant in L'Isle-sur-la-Sourge will get the rooms that they have been planning to buy.

God bless you!

Greetings From France!

Since Saturday 6th October we have been in France! We are staying at the OM France offices in Pontault-Combault, near Paris, and we have been having a great time! We had the pleasure of being joined by a few other team mates for some days, which we really enjoyed. Here are some photos which capture a few moments from our first while.

Meet Tabea and Naemi, two wonderful German girls who joined us for the first few days here. They were a joy to work with and helped so much!

This is Elke, another German lady who was here with Tabea and Naemi and then with her husband. She also worked hard and served alongside is in whatever there was for us to do here. Getting to know her was a great blessing for all of us.

Here are Sarah and Chorong working hard  - cleaning the walls in the church in Saint Denis! We were so glad that we could do this for the church and fro the ladies coming to the classes, because we were able to make a real, visible difference, which was satisfying!

Elya takes good photos.

One of our days was mainly spent in prayer for some towns nearby. Here we prayed for a church that is being planted in the town, that they would get a building and that God would provide all that they need. We also prayed in Romainville for that town as were giving out information the next day about events that the church is running to celebrate their 30th anniversary.

Here we are in the home of a wonderful couple, Rachel and Rich Hendrikson, who gave us lunch after we helped disrtibute information about their church around Pontault-Combault. Protestant churches are viewed with a lot of suspicion by some people in France, so it was great to be able to inform people about what the church does and who they are.

Thank you for taking the time to find out about all that we're doing. Please pray for the OM France team, you can find out about all that they do here: http://www.fr.om.org/eng/.

Pray for outreach that we are helping with in Val d'Europe among the English speakers living there next week, that God would lead us and use us in all that we do there. 

God bless you!

We're in the Alps. The Alps!

We've traveled around 30 hours altogether to get here, with an amazing day in Budapest in between, and we're finally in Forterocca in Italy! It's a beautiful place, we're delighted to see the other transit team and John (from OM Lifehope) again, and hopefully it will be a useful time of review and rest!

Go bless you!

On The Road Again!

It's 5 o'clock in the morning, and Transit Team 4 are setting out on another epic drive. As Chorong said in our first video, "Transit is about adventure!", and we're sure that another adventure awaits us as we travel from Moldova to the OM Hungary base near Budapest! The trip will take between 18 and 22 hours, but we're aiming to beat all expectations! Pray that it goes well and that we all get enough rest to make use of the training time in Italy.

God's richest blessings to you!

Our trip so far....

Greetings from Moldova! We having a great time here and finishing soon. The new video about Moldova is coming soon. Enjoy meanwhile a little summary about the last two months of Transit!

Moldova Baby!

On Sunday 3rd September we arrived at the OM Moldova base in Chișenău and were welcomed by some of the team there. We stayed in Chișenău until Tuesday. On Monday we were briefed on Moldovan culture, Moldovan church culture and what we would be doing in the village of Paicu.

We are now in Paicu, a village in the southern Moldova, working with an evangelical church.  

A lot of our ministry here has been through physical work and helping the congregation with the infinite number of tasks that they have to do. Gardening, shovelling dirt and moving a car – the Transit team can do it all!

Another crucial part of what the church does here is an after school club for children. Every week day we have around 25 kids who come to have a meal, play games, have teaching from the Bible and an English class. It's been a lot of fun and the kids have been learning a lot.

We have also helped with OM's food deliveries for the elderly in the area. The ladies of the church prepare hot food each day which is taken to elderly people struggling to look after themselves. It's not physically draining, but it is emotionally very hard to see how little some people have. It's a blessing to be a part of helping them and showing God's love to them.

One of our ministries has involved going to the kindergarten and doing games, songs and a story with the children. It was a lot of fun, and best of all the kids learnt more about how much Jesus loves them!

We are having a wonderful time here at the church in Paicu, although we're all pretty tired. Pray that God will continue to supply us with he energy that we need for everything we're doing, and please pray that God will really use us to bless the church, reach out to those who need Him and glorify His name!

God moved in Romania! - Videoblog 2

Dear Followers, we made a Video to summarize our time in Romania! God worked powerful! Watch and enjoy! We already arrived in Moldova and started our Ministry today, more on that in the next view days.

Hard Circumstances, Huge Blessings.

Although they face poverty, They are more blessed than we will ever be in so many ways. God’s love for them is overwhelming. He loves them so much and their faith is proof of it. With the abundant blessings the Lord reigns down on them, it would be impossible for them not to have such faith though.. . Honestly I don’t think many of those kids could live, if it weren’t for the Christians sent by God to this area of the world. I especially don’t think that any of them would have a single fun moment in their lives if it weren’t for the love of the Lord all around them. . God is so good to these people! !

Romping Romania Gypsy Stylie!!

 

 

These kid’s came by the hundreds, and the love of the Lord came even more abundantly. We got to cycle from village to village sharing the love, hope, and peace of the Lord.

Once Upon a Time in Romania...

Here are a few glimpses of what we've been doing in Romania so far:

You never thank God for an indoor shower until you don't have one! This is our shower whilst at the base for the cycling outreach in the base at Pitesti,  Romania, and Gabby (from OM Romania) has fixed it up wonderfully! It's sometimes warm, sometimes cold, but it always has a beautiful view! Showering under the stars - it's not something you get to experience very often!

This is the whole team on the bikes. For this outreach our team consisted of 18 people from 11 different countries, which is an excellent experience! On Thursday we left Pitesti on the bikes and headed for the gypsy village of Pauleasca. We worked with the kids, youth and church in Pauleasca and cycled to one other village on Friday to do a kids' programme.

On Thursday night we took part in the service of the church in Pauleasca. A young group from Pitesti also came and led worship. We four different langauges and eleven different nationalities all singing How Great is Our God. The Romanian gypsy children drowned us out and it was fantastic!

Just a glimpse of how happy we made the children and how happy the children made us. They were full of joy and appreciated everything we did for them, and they captured our hearts with their beautiful faces and brilliant smiles!

During the last kids' programme, Edme, a young woman from South Africa on our extended team, asked any kids' who wanted to give their lives to Chrsit to come forward. Most of them did - it was amazing. God used us there.

This is most of our team for the week - minus most of the OMers - along with some  people from the Pauleasca. The people blessed us so much. They made us feel so welcome and, even though we couldn't speak the same language, we were able to communicate how much we appreciated each other.

Prayer points:

• That the people working continuously in Pauleasca would be blessed and that the people would see through that how mush God loves them
• That the children who committed their lives to Christ would keep on growing and learning to serve God every day
• That the rest of the work we will do in Romania (we leave on Thursday) will be glorifying to God!

We hope you enjoyed the pictures! Please keep on praying for us, thank you for keeping up with what we're doing. Remember to subscribe - that way you will get an email update when we post so that you don't have to keep on checking!

God bless!

God moved in Germany!

After 27 hours of driving through 3 different countries, we arrived in Romania! But more of that another time. We want to tell you today about how God moved Germany. It is just incredible and we are so thankful what he did! Some people don't like to read a lot, because of that we made a Videoblog! Check it out:

A very, very brief update!

This is the team on our way from Lifehope in Halesowen - spot the difference - we now have Mike from the USA in our team instead of Jeremy from Australia! Of course we miss Jeremy, but Mike's awesome too!

As I said, this is a very brief update on what we have been doing since we left the Eden Valley on Sunday 5th August. We traveled south to Halesowen, England, where OM Lifehope is based. OM Lifehope is the part of OM in charge of the Transit team. In Halesowen we spent time bonding as a team, resting, and training in preparation for the continuation of our journey.

On Wednesday (15th August) we left Halesowen and traveled to OM Belgium where we stayed the night. The next morning we came to Simmern in southern Germany. This is where we are currently. We have been working with the church of our team leader, Marvin.  We will leave Simmern tomorrow on our way to Romania where we will be participating in an outreach event involving cycling! Some of us are very excited, and for some it will be a bit of a challenge!

God bless, keep praying for us, and make sure you subscribe!

In the Beautiful Eden Valley

From Friday afternoon we have been blessed to be in the beautiful Eden Valley in the north of England. We're working with local Christians in both Methodist and Anglican churches to make contacts in the local villages and spread the love of Christ around! There are 8 Anglican churches and 12 Methodist churches in this area with a short supply of ministers and small congregations. It's wonderful that we can be an encouragement to these believers and help to encourage the breaking down of barriers between the denominations and villages.

Already this week we have had the Olympics opening ceremony shown on a big screen in one church, a ceilidh on Saturday night, two youth events for 11-18 year olds on Monday and Wednesday, open houses in three places with people in the villages coming to a house and meeting us (and each other, for the first time in some cases!), singing and hand-bell ringing workshop yesterday and a film night tonight (Wednesday) in a local primary school. And Chris dressed up as John Wesley and rode a horse around a village where Wesley had preached, which was certainly an event (see the picture)!

Chris on his high horse, ha ha!

We've had some great conversation with young people through the Decathlon (as the youth events are entitled) and made contact with many people who the church haven't had contact with before, which is excellent! Pray that God will use the things we've said to people to work in their hearts.

We're very grateful again for the wonderful hospitality that we're enjoying. We are all staying at people's homes and being looked after very well! We have more food than we should eat; it's all wonderful!

Thanks again for your prayers, make sure you follow the blog, share it on Facebook and watch the video!

Some Impressions!

Our van, called "Rex"!

The Team!

The Team with our Scottish Friends (first Outreach: 21.07-27.07.2012)!

Welcome!

Well hello! Welcome to the blog for the "team of 7", one of the two transit teams currently travelling around Europe. We're glad that you have taken an interest in us and chosen to catch up on our blog, and we will try to update it as often as we can so that you can pray for us and, hopefully, be encouraged by us.

We are currently in Kirkintilloch, Scotland, just outside of Glasgow, having just got back from the Transform conference in Rome, Italy, yesterday (Saturday). The Transform conference saw almost 300 young people from all over the world meeting together for a week of fellowship, teaching and outreach in Rome, before being sent out on outreaches in the nations around the Mediterranean. It was here that the Transit teams first met the people with whom they would be living for five months. It was a wonderful week, with lots of fun as well as useful seminars, thought-provoking messages and heartfelt worship.

As we have mentioned, we're currently in Kirkintilloch. We are working with a church here until Friday, Harestanes Baptist Church, which is the only church which meets in a housing area of around 5000 people. The congregation is wonderful! They are fairly elderly, but they love God and they have a genuine heart for the community around then. We have already enjoyed meeting the friendly people and getting to know them over lunch together. We thoroughly enjoyed this morning at church and we're excited about working with these people over the coming days.

This evening we did a prayer walk around the area, which was a very important thing. We realise the crucial role that prayer has in ministry and would appreciate it if you would partner with us in prayer, if you're not already doing so!

The church and OM workers have arranged a programme of outreach for this week which involves kids' activities nights, a movie night, door-to-door work and the Tuesday Friends, which is an event for mature people that the church runs weekly (On Tuesdays, in case you didn't guess).

Pray that non-Christians will come to these events and experience God's love through us, pray that Christians would come and be encouraged, that Christian people in the community who don't attend a church would be encouraged to seek fellowship with other believers and that those of us who are fearful about anything would feel God's comfort and strength.

Thank you again for praying for us, God bless you.