Another Year in Romania

In October I celebrated 12 years of serving the Lord here in Romania. It has been quite an adventure and nothing like what I expected! I came over to work with young orphans but ended up eventually planting a church and later helping to start a Bible school. Through it all God has been faithful and in my weakness He has used me as He has willed. On the mission field your weaknesses are made more obvious and it is very humbling. But I wouldn't trade it for anything. My life has been made far more richer for having come to Romania.

This Past Year
Now in regards to what has been going on this year my responsibilities at the church have increased as I took over the youth group and our street evangelism ministry in September. One of the young guys from our church is going to Calvary Chapel Bible College Europe in Hungary and during the summer he was back and started these ministries so when he went back to school in the fall I took them over. There are only three boys that come but I am really enjoying my time with them. We spent the first three months looking at the gospel and now we are studying what it means to be a disciple of Jesus.

(to enlarge click on photo)

So my main responsibilities for the church are as follows: on Sundays I open our service with a Bible reading and prayer and at the end of the service I do the announcements. In between I video the sermons and later that day I edit the video and put it online. Since my Romanian is not so good during the service while I am videoing I spend a lot of the time praying for everyone in our church and for our church. Tuesdays we meet as a staff to pray and fast and focus on ministries of our church. On Wednesdays I host and lead our home fellowship so I spend time cleaning my apartment and going and buying drinks and snacks beforehand. On Thursdays I host the youth group at my place. And Fridays I lead those who show up on sharing the gospel in parks and places where ! people h ang out. In addition, on the third Sunday of the month I invite everyone over to my place to watch a movie.

In addition to these things I help coordinate our monthly meetings of all the Calvary Chapel pastors here in Romania, as well as organize workshops we do in order to better equip the people coming to our churches. In November I did two evangelism workshops, one in the south and the other in the north. We do this to make it so people don't have to travel so far. I also video the workshops we do and put them online for those who can't make it. I don't do all the workshops myself as I try to get all the pastors involved in what we do.

Evangelism Workshop, Bucuresti, November 20-21, 2009

Developing Romanian Gospel Website
I am also continuing to develop my Romanian gospel website called despreisus.ro (about Jesus). Also related to this is the making of a variety of videos for use with the site, for our church here and for outreach in general. The development of the site is going way slower than I expected but it is coming step by step. One of the challenges is getting enough people willing to translate and do other stuff for the site. But God is using the site already even though I have not tried to promote it yet. Once I am happy with the home page and that the blog is up and running then I will do a lot more to promote the site. In the last 5 months there have been 623 unique visitors and 830 visits from people from 49 cities here in Romania. In addition to these stats I have 111 videos on Vimeo that are being watched around 300 to 400 times a week though this figure can vary quite a bit. On YouTube I have 19 videos that have been watch 42,482 times since I added them. I also have added a few of my gospel oriented videos on three Romanian social networks and video sites and they had been viewed 9,978 times. I have videos also on despreisus but do not have a way yet to know how many times they are being watch.

Another thing I have been working on is updating the teaching materials and powerpoints for the gospel workshop I do. I still have a few Calvary Chapels here in Romania to do this workshop at but after that my vision is to do it in as many other churches as possible outside of Calvary Chapel.

So this gives you a good idea of the main things that have been happening here in Romania with me. Thanks to all those who have prayed for me and supported me financially to be able to serve the Lord here in Romania.

I am on Facebook so if you are as well please add me as a friend: http://www.facebook.com/dulcewill

In the second of three posts I will share what I think the future holds for me and my ministry. Until then God bless.