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Happy Thanksgiving!
Happy thanksgiving to everyone! As we celebrate thanksgiving we are reminded of God’s overwhelming faithfulness in the further development of Camp Falcon Rock, the ongoing programs that are running, and the transformation that is taking place in peoples’ lives. It is in this that we have so much to be thankful for. Following an incredible and full summer of programs up at the camp, we hit the fall not having a chance to slow down or catch our breath. But we praise God for all the opportunities for ministry that continue to come up with the camp and village ministry! We were grateful to have Bismarck Baptist join us to finish off our summer. Bismarck brought a team of 22, half which helped with construction at the camp and the other half which spent time developing a sister-church partnership in a Roma village with one of our local Hungarian pastors. Paul joined the construction team and I joined the village team. We were blown away by the sheer skill and passion on the construction team. Because the crew stayed up at the camp, they were able to work long days and get a lot of work done on our water tank and a new and large storage shed for our existing building. The team was full of non-stop workers—except of course when they went to the new restaurant down the street each night for team donuts! The village team ran a week-long VBS program in a Roma village where the local pastor is developing a church plant. This village had only ever had one VBS program before which was led by another NAB church last summer. The kids were full of energy and were not accustomed to structured and organized programs. But instinctively the Bismarck team poured out the love of Christ on these kids through their patience and engagement with each individual child. It was incredible to see that on the following Sunday, most of these kids showed up to the church–all who had not previously attended! Praise God!
This summer we were overwhelmed by all of the churches and foundations who came brought kids and youth the camp for their own programs. Throughout the last part of July as well as during August, the camp was fully booked! I mean FULLY booked! We told each group that wished to come up that we could only accommodate for 70 people yet multiple weeks we had over 90 kids!! One week in particular we had two churches join together to bring up kids for a camp program. They brought 91 kids!! Near the end of the week the teachers were really worn out and didn’t know how they could survive the final two days of camp. But praise God another village nearby sent up their youth leaders to support this group. The team of youth leaders came up and took over the entire program for that day giving the church leaders a much need break. It’s so inspiring seeing how the Hungarian Baptist Conference churches truly work as the body of Christ to move forward with the mission in Romania. Another inspiring group was a foundation who came to run their own programs with impoverished, neglected, and abused children. They brought up their own cook to provide meals for the kids. Their cook told us that she had bought a lot of meat so the kids could have 3 nutritious meals per day. Surprisingly, the kids didn’t eat the meat because they were not accustomed to that in their diet. They didn’t know how to eat it or digest it. We praise God that the camp can be a place where kids in Romania can experience the redeeming work of Christ through physical and spiritual nourishment, love, and care.
Again this year we hosted our annual Thanksgiving Day service at the camp and again we had over 600 people attend. It was beautiful to see so many people gathered together to give praise to God for His goodness. At the service, Tamas gave a ministry update of all that God has been doing at the camp. In that, he explained the season ahead and the goal to begin development of the main lodge in the spring. We held an offering for this and we were overwhelmed by the local financial support. Over and over again we heard from people “we need to build this lodge!” Everyone can see it… we have a problem at Camp Falcon Rock… too many people want to use it and we are constantly over booked. The main lodge will provide an answer to this challenge so that more may be able to experience God at work in their lives through the ministry of Camp Falcon Rock.
This fall the camp team is focusing its construction efforts on a couple of key projects that when finished will set us up for beginning our main lodge in the spring! The crew is working tirelessly to close up and tie in our water lines to our water tanks before the snow comes. This will allow for us to have running water to our main building, which means we will not need to use our old temporary system nor will we have to haul jugs of water from the spring up to our main building. We are very much looking forward to this project being completed. The team is also working on finishing the existing building large storage shed and a container house which will be Tamas and Tunde’s staff house so that they can move up to the camp this Spring. This is vital as the camp operations continues to grow and include year-round ministry. We are so encouraged by the amount of people using the camp each week but it does mean we need more staff to be on property full time.
Thank you for your continued partnership with the ministry in Romania!
Paul & Tanya Gericke
Prayer
- Pray for winter to hold off another month so that the team can tie in the water lines so that the spring can flow freely into our water tanks
- Pray for our teens as we step into a new bible study with them on the book of James
- Pray for our team as we focus on vision casting for this next year
Praises
- For all the Hungarian Baptist churches that came to use the camp for their ministry
- For all the NAB mission teams that came and blessed the ministry and construction this past summer
- For the shipping container that arrived with many vital items that had been donated by NAB individuals
- For the Thanksgiving Day service at the camp where we had 600 people out
“Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise; give thanks to him and praise his name.For the Lord is good and his love endures forever; his faithfulness continues through all generations.” Psalm 100:4-5