Had a great meeting with Baptist brothers who want to begin a Roma ministry in St. Petersburg. It was a fruitful trip. Exciting flights with canceled flights and last minute dashes to the gates to catch my flights. A blizzard with a lot of snow. Spinning, sliding and extreme driving were also part of the adventures. This is a monument to the Russian defeat of Napoleons army in 1814. This monument marks the place of the furthest advance Napoleon made into Russia. Due to security reasons I can not write to many details on this blog. Praise God for this time. Pray God will open doors and hearts of the Roma people in St. Petersburg, Russia.
This past September we asked you all for prayer about the ministry center we have in Nowa Huta, Poland. We will have to move out of the center at the end of this month (December).
Pray the Roma school program will be able to find affordable room to continue the program. The Roma church group will return to meeting on Sundays in their homes. The Roma donations of clothing, household goods and food distribution will be located in our garage where we kept our van.
We thank you all for your prayers. I was really worried the city would throw our stuff out on the street and we would have lost all of our ministry supplies.
Praise God nothing happened while we were in the USA.
This is a photo of Krakow's medieval old town square. Today it is covered by snow.
Our family is smaller here in Poland. We had to leave another daughter in the USA. Jacquelin, we miss you! We know this is the next chapter God has for you in your journey with Jesus. Roma ministry update; Many Roma have moved to England. Those that are still in Poland are doing the same as when we left on September 7, 2010.
Wednesday I will be flying to St. Petersburg, Russia to meet with Russian brothers who have a desire to reach the Roma there. Pray God will use my words and experiences to motivate our brothers to reach cross culturally. God has a plan for the Roma people. His plan is that the Roma people will become disciples of Jesus and go and make more disciples. All of this being done for the glory of God!
We thank you all for praying! Z Bogiem, Jerry and family
It has been a long time since my last post. We had just spent 9 weeks in America. With intermittent internet availability and on the road a lot, left me with little time to post.
We drove a little over 8000 miles by car and flew from Ky. to California also.
Our time with family and friends was great. We were able to share in a couple of churches about what God has been doing in Eastern Europe.
God's people are great and the best family to be in.
It was a bitter sweet time in the USA. We have to leave another daughter behind (Jacquelin) in the USA. But we also got to hug or new Granddaughter for the first time also.
Our time in the USA was busy, but fruitful.
Now that we are back in Poland, it is time to roll. We have a busy schedule with a lot of places to go and a lot of work ahead of us.
I like the fast pace of life. No time to get bored. The only down side is that time flies by to fast.
Thank you all for your prayer support and love for the Roma people and our family.
The Mayor of Krakow is pressured by the Catholic church to evict us from our ministry center for having prayer meetings in a Government owned building. We rent from a private man who rents the whole building from the city of Krakow.
The city has sent out control officers to validate the claim that we are praying and worshiping in our ministry center.
Of course the claim was found to be true, now the Mayor told our land lord of our ministry center to evict us or they will evict him from renting the entire building.
We fly to America on Tuesday, so we may loose our ministry center while we are in the USA and I don't know what will happen to our ministry supplies???
Pray that God will allow us to continue to rent this space for our ministry center and that the government officials will not evict us or remove our ministry supplies while we are not here in Poland to save our stuff or to defend ourselves.
Andrzej and I have recently been in the mountains of Slovakia for a few days. Andrzej Mirga (Roma Christian leader in southern Poland).and I went "fishing for Roma" and we found around 2500 Roma in an area in north central Slovakia. It was the first time they ever heard the real gospel message. They knew only some catholic teachings about Mary and the church is the way to go to heaven. The street side meetings began with them having great suspicion of who and why we we want to talk with them. Then it got ugly with drunk men and women screaming about "Mary is the mother of God and we only pray to her". By God's grace as we shared the scriptures, hearts began to change and open up. We shared the whole gospel message and there are now a few homes that are open for us to return to. After 2 1/2 hours of many people coming and going, the crowd would become huge with over 300 people pressing all around us, then it would dwindle down to a couple hundred people, then increase again. A core group of 100 or more people stayed the whole time and listened intently.
As we reentered Poland we were by a Roma village were 5 years ago, they said they would kill me if I ever returned. I saw a Roma women from another village I work in sitting out by the road, so I pulled over quickly and Andrzej said " Are you sure you want to stop here?" "This is a real bad place" I said, "I have a good feeling about this". So we got out of the van, walked over and began talking to the women I knew and a couple other women. Then I asked the women if we can walk through the village. They looked at Andrzej and told him "he (me) can go if he dares to" As we were walking through the village, Roma men would cuss at us out the windows, but we just kept walking and praying. When we arrived near the end of the village a man yelled to us and told us to come to him. We did. He was the "king" of the village. We spent 3 hours talking with him and his many family members. He is 72 years old and very rich. God truly blessed our time there. We shared the gospel message clearly to them all and we also talked about how and what God had done for us through Jesus. We are welcome back to his home again! He is active in the Roma communities and he is one of the representatives for the Roma at the annual Roma day at Auschwitz. The Auschwitz Roma day is August 2, so I will be there to see him again.
We are praising God for what He did there and for His protection!!!!!!!!!
God's word is alive and active, sharper than a two edged sword....... Hebrews 4:12
