Not What I Expected (Part Two)

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

Greetings Again,

Here is part two of my newsletter:

While it was difficult for me to adjust to living in Bucuresti I enjoyed the adjustment to serving in the church. After going through the challenge of starting a church from scratch in Brasov it was great to be able to serve in a church that was past the start-up phase with over one hundred people attending the church. In the beginning I taught on Sundays and Wednesdays occasionally and after being there about a month I started a class on the gospel on Tuesday nights. My main goals at first were to get to know the people in the church, help in any way I could at the church and to start getting everything ready for when we would start the School of Ministry in the fall. Once school started I expected that would be my main focus with some time for developing media ministry stuff.

During this time Shane Herman, the pastor of the church, and his wife Randie were in the process of adopting Brennan, who had been placed with them since he was a baby. In early June the adoption was finalized and they took him back to the States for a visit till the end of August. A week before we started up the school in September Shane called and said he was having serious heart problems and wouldn’t be coming back for awhile. Shane had serious asthma problems and living in Bucuresti had put his body through a lot of stress with the dust and pollution. So we had to make some adjustments.

There were three of us serving as assistant pastors at that time. Adi, who had combined his church with Shane’s a few years before, Florin, who had just moved to Bucuresti in July to be the worship pastor, having been a pastor of a Calvary Chapel in Severin for twelve years and myself.

So we started the school and together the three of us worked to take care of the church in Shane’s absence. Things went pretty good for the most part though we did have to deal a handful of sexual immorality issues with some serving in the church. But I sensed in my spirit that things were going to change and that it was not going to be easy but that God was planning on doing something different with the church and taking it another direction. I sensed correctly!

The first week of November Shane came back and gave the church to Florin as his heart problems were not getting better. I wholeheartedly agreed with Shane’s decision but unfortunately Adi did not. So Adi left and started his own church and many went with him. We had many foreigners in our church but the majority left with Adi which I took as God working to get our focus on reaching Romanians. While this whole situation was hard on everyone I think it was for the best long-term.

So there we were Florin and I, the new boys in town, kind of in a daze, having just started the school a month before now the pastors of the church which had shrunk to about 30 people. Not what we expected!

In part three I will share some of the challenges we went through.

God bless,

William

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

Blog: godswillromania.blogspot.com

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Calvary Chapel Boise
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