I Grow new Equipment

Thanks to a generous donation, needy children in Ukraine have some great new facilities.
Read here New-facilities-T2;2

 

Salt Mine Excitement

Carmen writes to us from Romania :
“We hope you enjoyed the Easter very much, and celebrating Jesus’s death and His resurrection filled you with peace, joy and hope.

In Romania Easter falls on May 1! So, it is very late on this year…. A few more weeks to wait…

The spring found us with some activities that children enjoyed a lot. They learned to sew headbands, and to make their own cross keychain with special knots, and to do a very nice tableau.

Even more enthusiasm was last Saturday when we visited Slanic Prahova salt mine. It was a day trip, and it was fun to travel together with a group of more then 40 people (kids and volunteers). Children were so thrilled the entire day! They walked and ran around into the salt mine, swung on the swings, played football and ping-pong, played in a large inflatable slide, drove pedal go-karts. And, of course, they enjoyed to lick the walls! Besides these, all of us benefited from the saline aerosols. (The constant 12 degree temperature, the humidity rate and the air quality is reputed to be beneficial for respiratory and rheumatic conditions.)

Thank you for reading this and for being partners with us in this work!

Laurentiu and Carmen Mateuca,
D3G

PS. We are preparing the third training meeting for the volunteers (which will be on April 16). If you have ideas for funny games and team building activities for students (20-24 years old) please let us know. That will help us a lot! Thank you!”

 

The Joy of the Lord is your Strength

The Joy of the Lord is your Strength

From Pastors2Pastors in Poland, Wojtek greets us this Easter season : “The Lord lives and may He be lifted in and through our lives!”. His latest newsletter above, shows how the Lord’s name is being lifted high in Poland through their ministry.

 

A Time of Trial, and of Blessing

Bartek is not able to come on his planned trip to UK this week, because he needs to stay close to his family, as he explains :

The time of trial…

The last couple of weeks for me and for Zhanna was not simple time. Our tiny Ines for a long time had a high temperature, we were at several doctors (not easy to find “good” in Ukraine). We got the medication and I could just gather a team of young people from Rivne and Orzhiv to go to lead Winter camp in Zamosc in Poland. 7 people drove without any problems, we arrived there, we had an intense two days of preparation in order to understand the specificity of place, service, better understand Polish team. On Sunday, the Lord gave me the opportunity to share God’s word, but as soon as I finished I read a text message from Zhanna that Ines is very bad, it urgently needs to be done the operation – a very serious operation, because her condition is very bad. It turned out that she had a very severe pneumonia and pus accumulated in her lungs. Not thinking about anything I quickly went to Rivne leaving the youth by themselves at camp …

It was a double trial for us as parents, and for young people from Ukraine who had to cope without me and without translation. The operation was quite difficult, Ines had 250mln oil lung edema by so much that her heart a little dislocated. I’ll tell you that we were very afraid, we were afraid that we will not see more of her, writing this is very difficult for me and I have still tears on my eyes. God is Great !!! and Faithful !!!, together with us, prayed half of Europe, in Poland, Ukraine, United Kingdom, Norway … good to have friends, good to be part of the Church of Jesus Christ. Before Ines is now a few weeks of treatment, but the Lord takes care of her and the treatment goes very well.

Young in Zamosc did a good job, from morning to evening with children. This trip has taught them a great deal:

“God taught me patience by different situations. He showed me that I needed to look differently at people who are around me, I love them as God loves me. At this camp, I think I’m a lot more serious than I was. Also, I have learned, that you gladly do all what you ask for and that you can not be lazy ” Pasha Artemiuk

Every day, God speaks to us and wants us to learn. It’s hard to trust when it’s really bad when nothing we can control and do not have any influence, but that’s when God speaks most and penetrates to our hearts. Please remember us in your prayers, Please pray for Ines’s health, about youth from Rivne and Orzhiv.

It’s been five years since I came to serve in Ukraine. Time flies, and you need, from time to time, to stop for a second and look back on all the wonders that God has done in your life. These few years of my life I contributed to serving the young people of Orzhiv. Thanks God for each one of them. I’m praying for them to live their lives with Jesus, so that they would be the light that changes reality around them. I pray for this light to shine over Orzhiv, Rivne, Ukraine and the ends of the earth. Therefore, we ask each of you so that you would have our family in prayer for growth of Gods wisdom in us, for our perseverance and sincerity of our service in Ukraine. Please, also pray for the youth of Orzhiv and their families.

If you would like to join us in building God’s kingdom among youth in Ukraine, we would be so grateful. You can send your financial support to this account :Bank name-CAF Bank, A/c name-Central Eurasian Partners, Sort code-40-52-40, A/c no.-00016282. Any amount of support is greatly appreciated. Regardless of whether you decide to support financially or in prayer, we want to thank you in advance for your interest and obedience to God’s calling wherever He has led you.

Also please let us know by email so that we know to look for your contribution… MANY thanks!!!

Bartosz, Zhanna & Ines Szymczyk

 

Volunteer Enrichment

Carmen tells us about the most recent part of the Volunteer Development Programme with the students in Romania, and some encouragements from it :
“Last weekend we had our training meeting with our students. It was a two day retreat in the mountains. We had a group of 27 people, 21 students and our organising team of 6. This meant a lot of preparation beforehand but was really worth it. God blessed us with beautiful weather, a very constructive atmosphere, and willing collaboration from the students. At the end everyone was happy and enthusiastic and most of them said they would like to repeat this sort of training weekend. Allow me to share with you a few highlights of the time…

We had a number of team building competitions with prizes – tasks in the forest, problems to solve, questions to answer, testing and developing knowledge and skills. Students realised that it’s important to work in teams, to help and encourage each other. They were surprised to learn that they can achieve more than they initially believed.

We watched a movie and we discussed issues in it, about violence in society and how to respond to it, about what we have received from our parents, and what we can offer them.

Then in a time we call “food for the soul” we read and discussed the Lord’s prayer and the context in Matthew 6. Students were surprised that they can pray in their own words, that the prayer does not need to used in some particular form. It was helpful for them to think what their Orthodox Christian background actually means. A number of them conotated this prayer with their grandparents because they went to church and prayed this prayer and were more sensitive to give to others more than the younger generation. So it was a surprise for them to learn that this prayer also relates to their own reality today. Also the question arose if they had such a relationship with God as their father.

As well as this we cooked and ate together, went for a hike in the middle of the night, various games and fun and getting to know each other.

These next weeks as we meet together please pray for wisdom for me to return to some of these topics
to help them relate the concepts to their own lives and development.

Thank you for reading this and for your prayers.”

 

Expansion in Ministry

Pastors2Pastors in Poland has seen a growth a ministry since becoming part of the “Golden Apple Institute”. Wojtek explains how God is working is his latest blog post.

 

Successful Christmas Market

Hello dear friends!

We have started the volunteer activities during the last week. The students were very happy to meet again after the holiday! Each had something to share about the Christmas time, or the New Year Eve, or about some travels they have made.

As you know, we organized a Christmas Market in December at the University of Ploiesti. All the volunteers were involved. Each one had the opportunity to contribute as well as learn something. We have worked together for more then three weeks, almost every day, at the office, at our homes, in campus, even at the shelter with the kids!

The result was a big variety of handmade products: decorations for home and for Christmas tree, origami, jewelry, purses, paintings, Christmas cards etc. All the products looked so lovely and quite professional!

Between 14th and 18th of December we stayed every day in the main hall of the University with Christmas music, pictures and cheerfulness, selling the handmade products and coffees, and sharing with others about the volunteering project of D3 Generatii! We also sold tickets for tombola as part of this project. And, for prizes, we got the support of different companies and institutions from Ploiesti and Bucharest. We’ve got tickets for opera, theatre, museums, vouchers for car-wash services, escape room games, gym, tennis or swimming, hairdressing, and many other things (106 prizes)!

We are very pleased to share with you the fact that, in the end, we raised about 2300 euro! Thanks to God! We are very grateful for that!

The students are very proud about the final result! So do we! They also are still very surprise to see how many things they have done with their own hands! Last week we had an evaluation about this fundraising project. And everybody said that it was hard and a lot of work, time and energy were involved, but it was worth it!

We are very thankful because this project gave us (volunteers included) the opportunity to become friends, to get to know each other better, to work together in a friendly, nice and warm environment!

Best regards,

Laurentiu and Carmen Mateuca

D3G

 

Requests for help

We had a big response from our Partners to a request to submit proposals for the offer of a grant from a UK fund. 10 Partners have mentioned specific needs with costings ranging from a few pounds to a few hundred pounds. Obviously, the grant will not cover all these, so if anyone might like to help and would be interested to see the full list, please contact us!

 

Navigators across Central Europe

News from Ralph & Bonnie 1.12.16

Ralph and Bonnie have been living in Sofia for 10 years now, travelling to support the many small mission enterprises under the “Navigators” umbrella in several Central European countries. Not all of these are “official” CEP Partners, and most have a different name in the setting where they are, for instance D3Generations in Romania (Carmen, pictured in Ralph’s letter) which is one of our designated Partners, which means we can direct donations for them from the UK. Ralph’s latest letter is above.

 

Youth Work in Ukraine

Bartek and Zhanna in Ukraine had a wonderful year in 2015, knowing much blessing from the Lord on their work with youth – read about it here
Let’s pray for all those young people we can see in the photos as they embark on a new year in their young lives, and for the influence on them of Bartek and Zhanna in their commitment to God’s work with them.