Voices from the Field Paul & Tanya Gericke Get to know Paul & Tanya

Opportunities from the Summer

Published on August 31, 2016
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Gericke1Hello Everyone!

Wow—it seems every spring/ summer that time speeds up here in Romania! The last few months have flown by and we’ve enjoyed the many opportunities we’ve been gifted with for youth ministry! Before stepping into this busy season, I was given a verse from the Lord. Isaiah 30:15a, “In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength.” It seemed like an interesting verse to me as I was gearing up for a busy season. Yet, God humbled me, reminding me that it is through Him alone that His Kingdom will be built and only in trusting and resting in Him that, I can be His tool! God was faithful as we saw Him move powerfully over the past months!

In May, we, along with the NAB Missionary Field Directors from seven different countries, were invited to the NAB Global Summit held by Norm Poehlke and Randy Schmor. We discussed strategies for engaging churches in missional partnerships with the people and organizations we work with on the field. We came away feeling refreshed and encouraged as well as excited for the direction NAB is leading us as missionaries and the conference in living missionally.

We had the pleasure of hosting Chris and Sheena Miller from Lakeview Heights Baptist. Gericke2Their 10 days were packed with preaching, working at the camp, youth programs and helping run a year-end English party where we played the “Amazing Race” English edition around the village. The teens had never heard of the show and couldn’t believe that they had to run around the entire village to find clues and do English challenges! We had a blast and were impressed with how much they’ve learned this past year.

Following the Millers, we headed to Southern Romania to lead a staff retreat conference for the Youth For Christ Romania team. As summer is a busy time for all of us involved in youth programs we wanted to focus less on training and more on spiritual formation and encouragement. We had a great time digging into scripture for guidance of how to be strong leaders this summer as well as for encouragement and words of life as we all looked ahead to the busy season.

Gericke3Next, we began to receive our volunteers for the summer VBS programs! We were blessed to have four individual volunteers come from both Lakeview Baptist Heights Church in Kelowna as well as Terwillegar Community Church in Edmonton. All four ladies were an incredible help in preparing and running our VBS programs. They also joined us as we trained 13 of the teens from our village to be volunteers with our programs this year. It was encouraging to see the teens that attend English class step up and help lead our programs—and even translate!

We were also blessed to have Zion Baptist Church partner with us this summer by sending a youth mission team to help lead our VBS programs! We hosted the team of 11 for two weeks and ran a number of VBS programs and youth events. We were inspired to see the teens’ passion for kids and missions, as well as hear their testimonies and see them step out as leaders. Over the past month of VBS, we were in five different villages and saw over 250 young people! There is no way we could have accomplished this on our own, so we are incredibly grateful for all of our volunteers. We are also grateful to have partnered with Eastern European Mission who translates bibles for kids and teens into Eastern European languages. We received 500 kid and 500 teen Bibles in Hungarian for free and were able to hand them out to every child and teen that came to our program!! We look forward to next week when we will receive Brentview Baptist Church from Calgary, run programs in an additional 6 villages, and potentially see another 300+ kids/teens.

The camp property continues to be developed and even more now as we have finally received our major development permit! Praise God! Tamas was working hard to finish renovations for the existing building to get it operational for groups—yes groups!! As we do not have our operational license to run programs on the property yet (which is why we are running VBS programs in different villages) we are glad that we are allowed to rent the property out to churches to run their own programs. The camp hosted three groups already and will host another 3-4 groups this coming month. This is such exciting news as ministry now is beginning to take form at the camp property!!

Thank you for journeying with us! Please continue to pray for the youth ministry that will take place over the next month. We wait with anticipation of the ways God will change lives through the camp programs!

Paul and Tanya Gericke

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