First Impressions

Alex Bruda made a great first impression on me, serving as my interpreter as I shared at an EGM-Romania children’s worker conference. Almost immediately after meeting him, I confided in a coworker, “He should be serving with Every Generation Ministries!” I’d had just a few conversations with him but already could see that his heart and vision were the same as ours: To see children transformed!  Subsequent meetings confirmed my initial reaction and I began to see all the gifts and abilities that could be of use in the ministry of EGM.  It wasn't long before we were talking seriously about EGM staff needs. 

Alex lives with his wife and two young boys in the Romanian capital city of Bucharest. They are the kind of super busy people who are known to be always ready for a new ministry challenge. With their vast ministry background, they are ready to help wherever, whether it is kid’s camp, a training seminar, a language lesson or some legal advice! They are very active in their own local church but also are eager to help other churches in their quest to do true biblical children’s ministry.

Today, Alex serves as EGM’s Central Europe Resource Team Director. In that role, he supports the EGM partnerships in the Central Region and God has used him greatly! When we added to the team in Central Europe, it made room for a new challenge of coordinating the field research work EGM is doing in the Middle East where we are exploring the possibilities of establishing a regional EGM ministry center. In addition to presenting children’s worker seminars in Jordan, Israel and Egypt, God has used Alex to establish an Arabic language children’s ministry resource website at www.egmarabic.org where isolated children’s workers can get the help and support they need.

I’m very glad that my first impressions have become lasting ones!

-Joe Cox

 

We led a camp in Świętajno for young adults who are learning to teach children as assistants (ACE-assistants). This year, the camp had 26 young adults in attendance, many of which were involved in past camps. The camp theme was 'On the way to maturity'. Our target was leading youth to maturity in: 

Serving special needs children in Belarus

When it comes to caring for children, especially children with special needs, the love of God knows no bounds. Veteran special educator Nancy Wilson and her daughter-in-law, Shasta,

Update on the Romania Website

As we look at the changes in the world these days, we have enough reasons to worry. We have many challenges to adapt to with technology, and especially to raise children in this digital world. The impact is even more severe in Romania as we feel churches and families were not prepared for this.

Our goal as a Ministry is to transform Children in Christ through His Church. Instead of focusing on the obstacles, we have to find a way to reach our goal. We prayed to be wise and see the open doors God has for us in this digital age. We remember that roman roads and the Latin language were the leverages used by the Church of the first century to share Christ’s message “to the ends of the world”.

Learning from this example, we started seeing that Internet, computers, Smartphones and IPad’s can be used as tools to help our Ministry expand. Technology can help us see transformation produced by Christ in children’s lives from Romania and from the Romanian communities spread throughout Western Europe. We started to connect the dots, we already had a Curriculum program based on biblical teaching, we had many people asking for materials, we had a poor distribution in Romania but we had a real explosion of the internet and unbelievable growth of the tablets and Smartphone market. We saw the DOOR – an Internet curriculum website, where every church and every Romanian can have access to all the quality curriculum materials produced by Romanian Teachers.

We stopped looking at the way technology was changing as a threat and considered it as an amazing opportunity. We can now see teachers on the street or in the buses traveling reading the bible lesson on their Smartphone, or we see them equipped as they watch the video training on the display of their laptop or their tab.

In the first two weeks of its launch, more than 250 teachers have subscribed to this platform. We expect next year, over 2,000 teachers to use this tremendous resource.

-Marian Zaharia

EGM US Representative - Hungary

Visiting the children with physical challenges

The orphanage for the children is located on Chicherina Street, which is in downtown Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine. Our team of children’s workers were invited to this orphanage by Stephen Bokach, the regional superintendent of Baptist churches. When we went to the orphanage we brought presents and aid from their Switzerland friends. This time the principal of the orphanage allowed us to hold a special program for the children. We used a puppet show to tell the kids two stories - one from the Bible and another about real life. After this, our team distributed the presents. The children opened up for the conversations and fellowship so much that (by the permission of their pedagogues) we were allowed to spend an extra hour with them. Some children invited us to their rooms, where we learned that there are other children at the orphanage that cannot leave their beds and we gladly visited them on every story of the 3-story building, we gave them presents. Also, for the adults, we had a different type of gift - large format calendars with Bible verses printed on them. 

We spent several hours in the orphanage and the people who were impacted the most ended up being the older children from our Sunday school who were with us. After this trip they sincerely thanked God that they have a mother and a father, that they have a healthy body, and they know God who cares about them. 

Mikhail Lozovoi, 

Director for EGM-UA, 

Director of Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine FBC Sunday school

What is the connection?

Last week Cami and I coordinated a camp for our church with 65 children and 15 leaders with the theme of “Rome”. Sixteen of the children (25%) came from Orthodox families, and for many of them, this was their first contact with an Evangelical Church. Cami and I were responsible for regiment I (6 to 8 years old). On Wednesday, the lesson came from Romans 5:1-11 “only Jesus and His Love can give meaning to my life”. The children each received coins they could use to bid on auction items. There were really popular items children could recognize the logo and there were “cheaper” candies wrapped in white paper. In the end the winning bidders received their prizes. Big disappointment – the popular items, were just empty containers and what was supposed to be in them, was actually wrapped in the white paper. We talked about our feelings and went to visit Paul. We found Paul in prison talking to Brutus about the love of Jesus and about salvation. In our small groups, Mihnea (8 years old) had a question that he could not wait to ask even before we started reading from the Bible. He asked me: “Alex, I really do not see the connection between the game we played today and what Paul told us. I know there is always a strong connection – please let me know what the connection is.” I realized then, how important it is for children to be taught consistently. Before you know it they demand to be taught the right way – the Biblical way. I asked Mihnea to have a bit more patience and to wait until we read from the Bible. We started reading Romans 5:1-11. “This hope does not disappoint us, for God has poured out his love into our hearts by means of the Holy Spirit, who is God's gift to us”. All of the children realized that only Jesus and His love is our hope that never disappoints anyone.  The children then wrote a request for God to book a place for them in heaven. I was surprised how many children understood that only Jesus and his loving sacrifice is our reason to be with GOD eternally.

The undersigned Mihnea, “please book a place in heaven for me because I believe in Lord Jesus”
The undersigned Bianca from Bucharest, “please approve a place in heaven for me because I don’t want to be disappointed”
Request: “Lord please accept me in Heaven because you are full of Love and the best, plus I do good things.” Signed Loana

Children can understand the Bible, all of it, including Bible passages like Romans that are considered, by some, to be for adults only. We just have to find the way to connect the Truth with their life experience. Continue to pray for all children and their families and that the seed planted in their hearts will grow and bear fruits.

Alex Bruda

Romanian website launches this month

 

Every week there are children’s workers in local churches trying to come up with some way to impact the lives of boys and girls for Christ in their communities and their church. During the week they are carpenters, bank tellers and taxi drivers. On the weekend they are challenged with connecting the Word of God with the real lives of children that God has entrusted into their care. Every Generation Ministries is working to provide those children’s workers with great training and quality Bible teaching tools that they can use to to touch the lives of children.

If you are reading this blog you know the power of the internet as a content delivery tool. This phenomenon is not limited to the United States but a fact of life in many of the countries where EGM is serving. EGM is harnessing the power of the internet to expand the reach of our ministry. We are working with our national ministry teams to launch websites to provide streaming training videos and Bible teaching materials for children’s workers. Just a few weeks ago, our Romania ministry launched a new website where children’s workers can subscribe and receive Bible teaching materials and also streaming training videos. The teaching materials were developed by our Romanian staff and are biblically sound, developmentally appropriate, super creative and most importantly help children’s workers in local churches connect the Bible to the real life of children in their Romanian context. We already have over 300 subscribing churches and are excited to see what happens in the fall.  We have been very fascinated by Romanian churches in Austria, Italy, Spain, Greece, Moldova and …….the US who have subscribed to the website! Check out the website at http://resurseegm.ro/ . The website is in Romanian but you will find a translator button in the upper right for you to explore a bit in English. Every Generation Ministries has plans for launching Spanish and Arabic websites in the next few weeks. Find out more about our internet initiative and other EGM news at www.egmworld.org or like us on Facebook.

This Summer...from Daniel Watts, President Every Generation Ministries

This summer in Eastern Europe thousands of non-Christian children will attend summer camps and Vacation Bible School programs.  We need your help to make that possible!

My son, Caleb, is graduating from High School tomorrow and like all parents we have been reminiscing about his life. His first summer camp experience was the summer of 1993 in Poland; he was a just a few months old. Over 150 children from cities in northern Poland attended including a group of boys and girls from an orphanage in Koszalin. About two days into the camp, those children discovered that Marla and I had adopted a child; that news led to a heart wrenching experience.

Children began to appear at the door of our room in the main camp building. They would step inside and after exchanging a few awkward pleasantries would bluntly ask if we would be willing to consider adopting them into our family. They wanted a family, to experience unconditional love and have a place where they belonged. On one occasion, when I opened the door, there were 3-4 precious little children lined up waiting their turn to pose ″the adoption question.″

This summer, there are thousands of children who need to experience the unconditional love and forgiveness that God has for them and know that they belong in God’s family. Unlike that camp, Jesus is standing at the door of their hearts knocking to come in and transform their lives.

Ensenada, Mexico update...from Krysten Norkaitis

No One Is Too Poor To Give...

This is one of the topics that Daniel Watts, Jan Kraushaar and Krysten Norkaitis are teaching to a group of church leaders in Ensenada, Mexico. These materials were created with the intention to help national leaders raise funds for their EGM ministry work. We had originally planned to teach these materials exclusively to the EGM leaders but several local pastors and leaders were invited….bringing our total to 25 participants!! The leaders are soaking in the Biblical truths that we are sharing and several of them have shared great ideas of how they plan to put them into practice.

We watched an amazing video today about a movement that was started in a poor village in India in 1910. It is called Handful of Rice. If you haven’t seen it, I want to encourage you to watch it. It is amazing and will give you a glimpse into the topics we are teaching. Here is the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z__tqQXiKD8

The real transformation that God offers...

I am sitting at the desk of our EGM-Romania Director praying for our field research team in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo. The ministry in Romania is thriving and is celebrating nearly ten years of fruitful ministry. We are taking our first steps toward launching a new ministry in the DRC. In both places, we are working to see children transformed in Christ. Praying for the children of East Africa and serving alongside our team in Romania, I am reminded of the vast world of children and their varied needs. In Romania, there is an emerging middle class and along with the economic advances comes the hollow promise of true happiness through material wealth. In the DRC, our team is confronting the material plight and spiritual darkness that is so evident. In all of that, I am reminded of the real need shared by all children.

My colleague, Joe Cox stated it eloquently when commenting on the DRC "Their physical needs (though alarmingly acute) are not their greatest need." The Congolese have been broken by war, disease, poverty, corruption and violence. Enormous efforts from outsiders have been dedicated to meet the need for food, education and housing but most have not had any real long-term effect. Hopelessness has destroyed a spirit of initiative, even among Christians, and as a result, there abides a great spiritual need as the children are hungry to know the love of Christ and the life giving truth of God’s Word.

This is the greatest need; to introduce children to Jesus Christ and help them experience the forgiveness and new life that He has for them. Children here in Romania, in East Africa and at home in Southern California can experience the love, joy and hope that comes only through Jesus Christ. This is the real transformation that God offers and desires for boys and girls across the globe. I am praying that boys and girls can have all of their needs met in Christ Jesus! Thanks for joining in that prayer.