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Hello Family and Friends!
After our crazy busy season of church services and youth events over the Christmas break, which ended with a New Year’s Eve youth program that went till 5 am, we’ve been able to get back into our normal rhythm of ministry. This normal rhythm includes serving in the local churches through preaching, youth groups/events, and our other ongoing ministries with teaching English, joining prayer meetings with the YFC Romania staff, and of course the ongoing development of the camp facility and ministry as a whole.
At the beginning of January we celebrated as a Camp Falcon Rock team. It was so encouraging to look around the table this year and see how much our team has grown. We are blessed to have incredible servants of God on our team. They’ve poured out a lot this last year to see ministry grow and operate. We know this celebration could’ve been even bigger had all of you who’ve been supporting the camp been there too. We are continually humbled by the beauty of the body of Christ and the faithfulness of God in His provision and sustenance of this ministry. As we sat around the table we spent some time sharing about all of what has been accomplished this past year. In terms of building, the existing building was finished, our land developing permit was acquired, and our farmhouse renovation began. As for ministry we saw 400+ young people through our VBS ministry, saw 600+ at the Thanksgiving Day service at the camp, ran another two-week English camp for the Baptist seminary students, and saw hundreds of others discipled as churches ran programs at the camp. Praise God for all He is doing and will continue to do in this next season!
Every Friday we continue to hangout with the teens in our village playing games, running events, teaching the word of God, and discipling them. This group has been on fire for God over this past year. It has been so encouraging to see them grow into leaders. This past month we’ve been focusing on what maturing in our faith looks like and encouraging them in their walk with the Lord. One youth night we took them to a Romanian salt mine a couple hours of away, which took us 26 stories down into the ground. At the bottom there was a salty lake that we could take rowboats on. It was hilarious trying to teach them how to work a rowboat!! On our way back we stopped in a big city that many hadn’t been to and found a Pizza Hut to have a dinner. It was such a fun night with them!
During Christmas, we had our annual “Agape Dinner” with our youth. This has become one of our favourite traditions. It’s potluck style, which basically means each teen brings over their mom’s best dish! Again, this year we were not let down as we had a feast of schnitzel, Hungarian meatballs, Hungarian scalloped potatoes, sausage, pickled macaroni salad, homemade bread…. It was delicious!! Partway through our dinner we lost power and spent the majority of the night in darkness. None of us really minded, and if anything it added to our message that night from John 1 as we spoke about Jesus coming as the light of the world! It was a powerful illustration. Another fun part of the evening was when we taught the teens the “White Elephant” Christmas present stealing game. It was hilarious to see their reaction as they learned about the rules and the allowance for stealing presents! We ended the evening by watching “Elf”—luckily our power came back just in time.
Construction continues at the camp. The guys are working on finishing up the farmhouse renovation. This building will be an excellent place to house staff throughout the construction season this spring and then for staff and volunteers in the summer as we hope to run summer camps on the property this June–July. In order for this to happen we need to install our water-sewage system and 2 duplex cabins. Would you pray with us that our permits would continue to go smoothly?
We have been so incredibly blessed by all of your support and prayers! We pray God’s blessing on each of you as you continue to serve Him!
Tanya and Paul