Friday, December 19, 2008

Not What I Expected (Part Three)

Below is part three of my newsletter that I sent out recently. If you would be interested in getting my newsletter and prayer requests you can subscribe here.

Dear Friends,

Here is part three of my newsletter:

As you could imagine the challenges were indeed intense at first. While I didn’t enjoy the situation we were in I had a certain hope and excitement that I would see God would move in the midst of our situation. Because Shane had been busy with the adoption process and dealing with his health problems, many things regarding the church and its ministries had gone undone for some time. Then with both him and Adi gone we just had to deal with the mess the best we could. It kept us in prayer which was a good thing.

Some of the challenges for us were dealing with getting the legal papers for our religious association in order, continue the process that had been started to close down the foundation which had focused on helping orphans adjust to life when they left the orphanage, getting the accounting figured out and in order, making changes and improvements in our ministry building, dealing with the expectations of those coming to the church and their adjustment to the new situation, the offering going to almost zero which affected certain people who were being helped out by the church, and now having only two teachers for the School of Ministry instead of four.

We felt the Lord wanted us to continue the school so we did. It would have been a lot easier on us if we would have stopped the school but looking back we both know that it was indeed good that we continued. Not only for the students but for Florin and myself as well as God used everything to stretch and grow us.

The biggest challenge was the time to do everything. My days usually were 12-14 hours long with rarely a day off. To give you an example during the spring semester my teaching load alone involved the equivalent of preparing three hour-long sermons, two inductive Bible studies, teaching church history and developing and teaching a class from scratch called “Living the Gospel. I also was administrating the school, helping to pastor the church, and developing gospel projects, websites and media. Most things we couldn’t do as well as we wanted but we did the best we could with the time we had. As I look back I am amazed we got through it all but realize it was only by the grace of God. Praise be to Him forever and ever!

In part four I will share what happened with the school and the changes we made.

To God be the glory,

William

Email: godswillromania@gmail.com
Website: godswill.ro

Blog: godswillromania.blogspot.com
If you would be interested in giving a one time gift or supporting me regularly you can do so online or by mail. If online go to my church's Donate Online to Missions page and click on the arrow next to Romania. There a drop-down menu will appear where you will see my name. If by mail make the check out to "Chapel Missions" and attach a note saying it is for "William Anderson". On the envelope write:

Calvary Chapel Boise
ATTN: Jana Patton
123 Auto Drive
Boise, ID 83709



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