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Hello Everyone!
We had a number of opportunities come up for us to preach the Gospel to young people during the past couple of months, both in Romania and Hungary.
In February, we partnered with Youth for Christ Hungary and Vancouver in running Youth Evangelistic concerts all across churches and even SCHOOLS in Hungary! Sam Rowland from YFC Vancouver travels all over the world leading Evangelistic concerts to allow young people to hear the Gospel. We were honoured to get to help him in leading these programs in over 15 schools seeing over a thousand young people! Sam’s presentation helped them know and experience God’s love and we saw many turn to Jesus for the first time! Praise God! The trip was extra special for me as my Dad, who works for YFC Vancouver, was able to join Sam and us on the trip!
Easter was another fruitful time for ministry. We were a part of the 5-day celebration here having church services twice a day. Paul preached a lot, we led worship and we shared meals with many people. Two young brothers were baptized on Easter Monday and our 60-person church grew to 150 people that day to celebrate their decision. It was a 3-hour service of preaching, worship, brass band music, a men’s choir, testimonies and of course the baptism itself! We also had the opportunity to travel to other churches to preach for Evangelistic meetings, Palm Sunday and other services. In total, Paul preached over 13 times in April and in six different villages!
For April, Paul went to Sioux Falls for a week of seminars to work towards completing his Masters and spent the rest of the month visiting some churches in North America and spent time with his family. We had to spend nearly a month a part! During that time I fully embraced the Romanian-Hungarian culture. I bought some baby chicks as well as 5 bigger hens for eggs. One of the ladies taught me how to plant my own vegetable garden in the church’s community garden. They also wanted to teach me how to cook Hungarian-style food, so I spent a number of afternoons in their homes learning their delicious recipes! Another young pregnant lady wanted to learn to sew because there are few options for maternity clothes here. We had a lot of fun together as I showed her how to operate a sewing machine as well as make clothes to accommodate for pregnancy. All of these cultural experiences for me were times where I had no translator! I was excited about my progress with Hungarian as I was able to be with these ladies for hours at a time and navigate conversation somewhat well!
One other ministry that Paul and I started is leading a worship team with some young people, as they’ve had a desire to learn newer worship songs. We have been teaching each other worship songs in English and Hungarian. There have been some powerful moments as we worship together during the service in both languages and sing new songs declaring who God is, His goodness, and our desire to follow Him.
On a personal note, in March we received some hard news from home. Paul’s older brother Geoff has been diagnosed with Mesothelioma, which is a rare cancer that exists in the pleural lining of his right lung. Geoff is 33 years old, married and has two young daughters. He underwent 5 days of radiation and then a major surgery on April 25 where they removed one lung, the lymph nodes and the pleural linings around his heart, diaphragm, and remaining lung. Praise God that the surgery went well and Geoff is now recovering! It was a stressful couple of weeks of treatment and it will still be a tough road ahead to recovery but we praise God for His faithful provision of great doctors, an incredible community of support, finances and other resources that have come to his aid. We also praise God that Paul was already planning a trip to Sioux Falls at that time and was able to extend it to stay with his family for those weeks. Please continue to pray with us for Geoff’s recovery, that the cancer would stop spreading and that the test results would come back clear! The Doctors will be deciding shortly whether he will need chemotherapy in the coming months.
Thank you for being incredible supports and encouragements to Paul and me. We feel the effects of your prayers and we are grateful to have this huge community around us!
Paul and Tanya Gericke