In April I traveled with Heather, one of my YWAM Constanta colleagues, to Medias, right in the middle of Romania. There we spent a week with YWAM Medias' Discipleship Training School. We came to hear our dear friend Don Stephen's share his powerful teaching on Worldviews and the Kingdom of God. Although I have had the opportunity to hear his teaching before, in never grows old. In fact I think the more I hear about the Kingdom, the more my eyes are open to it, and its implications becoming more and more alive in my heart and mind. It was such an encouraging week!

We were also able to spend time with and get to know the DTS students and to pray with them as they prepared to leave for outreach to Macedonia. These were some very special students, ready to serve and to be used by the Lord. Their team was led by a great lady and one of my friends, Beta Mereu. It was a blessing to be around these guys!


We had a special time of intercession led by a friend, Clay, who was traveling with Don as he taught in DTS's around Central Europe. I had met Clay in Bosnia on my first outreach there, where he had been serving in missions along side Don and YWAM Sarajevo. It was so great to see Clay again and to pray for Bosnia. I miss it so much!




When Don shares about the Kingdom, he comes alive!

In April and May I had the opportunity to practice sharing my music in public at our New Wine Cafe! The first time was really nerve racking but the more I do it, the more free I feel to share what God has given me and now its much more fun! I look forward to September when another musician friend will join us here in Constanta!

Apologies!!!

Dear Friends and fellow bloggers!
I am so sorry for neglecting my blog for such a long time. As usual, the summer has been full of activity and I have lacked the discipline to sit myself down and create updates for all of you to enjoy. Please forgive me! I hope to make it up to you this week by filling you in on all that has taken place since my last update. Thank you for your patience with me!
Grace and peace,
Leah

Back from Outreach!!!

Since my last update we have finished our two month outreach in Bosnia, returned to Romania after about 41 hours of traveling, spent a week debriefing and evaluating the entire school, and graduated our four students that completed the entire Discipleship Training School! So much has happened! It was such an encouragement to reflect on all that God accomplished during the outreach and the school, in and through our students and staff. We saw so much growth in the students, each one take big steps forward in their walks with the Lord and in life. Three of them have plans to continue in missions, one planning to return to Bosnia for a season, and the other two planning to do a counseling school to equip them for future ministry. One student will be attending university in the near future and our local student will continue on here in Constanta serving with us and through his own business. We look forward to see how God continues his work in each one and where he takes them in the future.

Special Graduation Dinner for our students at the local Turkish Restaurant. Yum!!!

Handing out DTS diplomas to the students! They made it through DTS...Yeah!!! :)

Peter and his DTS dimploma! What a guy! We will miss you Peppy!

Adin made me a diploma too for being his outreach leader! SO sweet!

Chrissy was my one-on-one for this school. We would meet together every week during the lecture phase to talk about what God was doing in her life and how things were going. She became a good friend and grew so much in this school. We are so proud of her! Good job my little mountain goat! :)

All of our wonderful students: Chrissy, Adin, Leo, Peter and Cosmina. Thank you guys for making this DTS possible! We are so excited for what the Lord has done in your lives and where is taking you!

Friendship in Bosnia

Spending time with my Bosnian Friends

Friendship was such a key theme during our time in Bosnia. We were blessed with so many opportunities to meet and get to know people, young and old, Christian and Muslim. Our desire was that through our relationships with people we would be able to communicate the love of Jesus and hope in Him and I am trusting that this was exactly what the Lord was doing through our team on this outreach. Bosnians are incredibly relational people. You can see this so easily by visiting one of Sarajevo’s many café’s in the middle of the day. Cafes are packed, especially with young people, talking and sipping coffee for hours. It is not just going out for them. It’s a way of life and what better way is there to reach people in this kind of culture than to join them? In light of this, a good part of our time was spent with young people, hanging out, drinking coffee and talking, sharing, and hearing their stories.

Through talking with many of our friends, I have seen that they have an interest in spiritual things but fail to see the connection between the spiritual and the natural- how God really has anything to do with their day to day lives. They don’t understand that God wants to be our friend. It’s a blasphemous thought for many Muslims, but for us who know Him, it is life. God cares enough to know us. He is longing to spend time with us, to hear our stories and for us to listen to Him and all that he longs to tell us. Genuine friendship reflects His character and communicates volumes about His love. This is was my second time in Bosnia and again I am impressed with the fact that we must love people into the Kingdom and that our lives are our tools for Gospel message. God is using us to help people make this connection between the spiritual and the natural and to show them who He is and what He is like, and to invited them to their own relationship with Him.

Also we were blessed to be able to share with many Muslim children through our English Clubs on Saturdays and celebrated this with a carnival for them and those from the neighborhood. This was a great time of fun and blessing. We even had professional clowns making balloons and painting faces with us! My highlight was sing with the kids for their parents "Yes I love my Jesus deep down in my heart!" They loved this song and even though they may not understand completely, the words and the joy they experienced singing it are still the same and hopefully are watering the seeds that have been planted in their hearts and will bear fruit in time. It was a great carnival!

Thank you so much for being a part of our outreach in Bosnia through your prayers and giving! Please continue to pray for this amazing country and for the precious people there- that God will continue to work in our friends’ hearts, revealing Himself and working through His people as they share Jesus and His love with those around them J

Girls reaching out at the cafe

Last Week in Bosnia!

Well, our outreach is coming to a close! We have had a great time enjoying friendships with so many people, doing practical work for a local church, enjoying their youth, finishing up our kids English club (tonight we will celebrate with a carnival!) and more! This is a short post but I will get more pictures and stories from our time up here soon! For now, just want to thank you for your prayers and support! I will be back in Constanta next Thursday!

(Pictures above are: Sarajevo, Making picture frames at a Saturday English Club, Turkish Area "Old Town" in Sarajevo, Singing with English Club, and Chrissy from our team at Sunday school with kids of some missionary couples we have been working with and getting to know!)

New Friends...Praying for Healing

It’s been over two weeks since we arrived here in Sarajevo. Though we have not been as busy as I would have liked to be, we are enjoying meeting different young people and missionaries in the city. The past few days spent helping out practically at a local church, passing out flyers for an upcoming seminar on relationships that will be held at the center where we are working, and visiting university students and discussing faith and spirituality with them! There are many, many students in Sarajevo, all working very heard this time of year to pass their exams that are being given this month. Campus Crusade is a student ministry that has been working here in Sarajevo for over 5 years. They regularly go to the universities to meet students, share with them and invite them out to coffee to build relationship and share the Gospel with them. This Thursday they took us with them to be a model for this kind of outreach. For me it was great to see how open they are about their faith and how open the students were to share their ideas of God and spirituality.

While talking with some of the students I realized that many of them are very wounded, from the affects of the war that was here in the 90’s and also from broken families and all kinds of painful situations. One of the young guys we talked to said that he didn’t believe in God because he had just experienced too many terrible things, as he pointed out the many scares on his face and head. How could a God allow all of that to happen? There is such a big need here for people to experience the healing power of God in their lives. Not just for their physical lives but for their hearts. They have experienced so much pain and suffering, and this, along with all the different religious influences of the region have painted a very different picture of God than the one we know. My prayer is that the believers here and our team as well, would have the opportunity to paint new pictures for those we meet of God’s true character- through our lives, through our words and through our love.

I shared a little bit with two guys about how God longs to heal us, to touch us in the places where we are hurting and to set us free from the things that we do just to cover up the pain we feel. Their response was, “Sounds like a nice commercial for Mc Donald’s”-too good to be true I guess. But it is true and it is the Good News that we need to keep on sharing. Please keep praying with us for healing for this nation and for this Good News to be spread to each and every heart…

We made it to Bosnia!

Our students at the center in Sarajevo!!-->

Today is Thursday, our fifth full day in Bosnia. We are still getting adjusted and finding out about different ministry possibilities here in the city, but we have been warmly welcomed by a missionary couple that is hosting us and by all of the friends that I had the privilege to meet last spring when I was here. I am so happy to be back in this beautiful city and to see these wonderful people again! There are actually two missionary couples hosting us, Tom and Kristie Trowbridge, who I worked with last time and a new couple working with them, Larry and Jill Couch. They are running the community center ministry here in Sarajevo and we will be helping them out with all of the happenings at the center for our two months here.

Besides helping with the community center we hope to join up with some of the other ministries going on in the city, being a blessing wherever we can! Some other ministry opportunities include: serving at the International Church here, at a church for Roma (Gypsy) people, English clubs for children, building relationships with young people through sportsJ, student ministries and hopefully visiting a local orphanage. Pray for the Lord to lead us to the right ministries at the right times and to be a blessings and help to the local ministries in their outreach to Sarajevo! And pray for the relationships we are building with the young people. May God use us to love on the people here that he loves so much!

Thank you for your prayers and support! It is great to see God's provision for this trip and I am excited to see what He will do in this time! Okay, this is all for now....keep posted for more info!

Team Building in Budapest!

Last week we had a great time at YWAM Budapest, Hungary enjoying a week of teaching on team building and outreach preparation. Nic and Marion Barella, an American/English couple who are on staff with YWAM Budapest, were our teachers and they did a great job helping us to reflect on our different gifts and passions and then challenging us to think about how we can use all of these gifts together on outreach in Bosnia. It was a very helpful week full of discoveries about one another and some practical information on how to prepare for the next two months. We discovered that many of us have hearts for people in need and I am sure that this is not by mistake J I am eager to see how this gifting will come out and be used as we serve in Bosnia.

<--- There you can see us doing a fun team building activity. Trying to get all six of us on one piece of paper! Good times! :)

Discipleship Training School...creativity

Arts and Creativity… If you remember, the special focus of this discipleship training school has been on creativity and in November we had the opportunity to travel to the West of Romania to visit some local artist to see first hand how God is using creativity in their lives. We first visited a Romanian sculptor named Liviu Moran, www.liviumocan.com and had the privelge of seeing his studio with all kinds of sculptures, finished and in progress. I was so inspired by his spiritual depth and how his art truly flowed out of his relationship with God. His art is now all over the world, reflecting the glory of God and a message of life coming out of death. He is currently working on a project that will bring some of his work to the States as well. You can learn more about Liviu at his website.

That same week, Heidi Schmidt, a musician and missionary from Colorado who has been serving in Romania for the past 7 years, came and shared with us her testimony and music. This was also such an encouraging experience to see how God is using her gifts and talents to shine his light and life in this world. She is making an impact in Romania through her music and has been invited to sing all over the country. Check out “Heidi Schmidt” on www.youtube.com to see her sing. You can google her too but most of the articles are in Romanian!

New Beginnings at YWAM Constanta!!!

Discipleship Training School- Oct. 2007


I am excited to share with you that Sunday night, Oct. 14th was the beginning of my second experience as a Discipleship Training Staff, and the start of a powerful adventure into the heart of God for our five new students from four different nations! This is our Discipleship Training School- three months of teaching on God's character, nature, heart for missions, etc. and 2 and a half months of practically applying all that has been learned by reaching our to the nations with the love of Jesus! Our students are: Chrissy, 19, from USA; Cosmina, 24, from Romania; Adin, 20, from Romania; Leo, 31, from Norway; and Peter, 18, from Canada. They are a great bunch of people and I am really enjoying getting to know them and have great expectations for the aweseom things God has in store for their lives!



In the classroom with Tony Hedricks

Our other great beginning here at YWAM Constanta, was the official grand opening of NEW WINE CAFE, our students/youth outreach ministry! God has been more than faithful to provide all that was needed to get the cafe up and running and our YWAM staff team really pulled together to get everything done by October 19th, opening night. The evening was kicked off with a live performance by our talented YWAM staff and student, Eugen Petcaru and Leo Chaparian. The evening was full with friends from YWAM, Campus Crusade for Christ with their friends, and young people coming in off the street. It was great to have so many people there, sharing together and having a good time. We are privileged to be the ONLY place in Constanta like this- a coffee house where students are wanted, welcomed and loved with the Love of God!!!!

Training and Outreach in BUDAPEST, Hungary!!!

Hello Friends!

Two weeks ago I set out for Budapest, Hungary with my Discipleship Training Staff team from Constanta, Romania, for a week of training and evangelism. We joined up with the staff team from YWAM Budapest- enjoying sharing our experiences in working with discipleship schools, learning how to better work together as a team, and praying for God to move in our schools to reach the lost and see His Kingdom come in Budapest.

During our time in Budapest we also had the amazing blessing of reaching out to the city with the Catholic church. Two years of preparation had gone into this week long "City Mission" outreach to the people of Budapest and all over the city you could find Christians sharing the Gospel through music, art, preaching, scripture reading, liturgy, clowning, face painting, and conversation.

Our team from YWAM Constanta, and Terry Williams from YWAM Budapest had an awesome week working along-side "New Jerusalem" a charismatic Catholic church in Budapest. I was a butterfly for the week, painting kids faces and some adults too! Terry was the clown standing next to me in the picture to the left and we had a great time shining the love of Jesus on the people we met.

The rest of my team had many conversations with people about the Lord and we even met some Romanians that we could share with in Romanian! It was an awesome time of seeing how God moves when his people are in unity. Some people responded to altar calls that were given and a lot of precious seed was sown into the hearts of the people. Keep praying that the believers in Budapest will feel free to continue to share about our Saviour and the new life we have in him. God is moving in that city!!!

Thank you for being a part of what the Lord is doing in Eastern Europe through your prayers and finances!!! Stay tuned for more on what the Lord is doing in Romania :)

To the States and Back Again!

I was homein the States in June and July and had a great time. I was so blessed to be able to visit my grandparents and aunt, uncle and cousins in Florida, then went to Colorado to see another aunt and uncle and more cousins, and then went to Oregon with a side trip to California! Yeah I was all over the place but it was so good to catch up with people after being gone for almost 2 years! I wish I had more time to share about my time at home, but that will have to wait for the time being. I just want to catch you up really quickly on some of the recent happenings around here.



Now I am back in Romania and for the past month our ministry team here at YWAM Constanta has been hosting outreach teams. We had a total of 8 teams, but I was only here for two of them- one from England and another mostly from South Korea. Its been great and they have really helped us with reaching out to some of the kids here in Constanta. We've been focusing on two poorer neighborhoods here in the city and it has been such a joy to bring life and hope to these communities through loving on the kids. It is one of my favorite things!!!



There are pictures of my time at home that you can see through my flickr link to the left and below you can see pictures of the kids outreaches we've been doing. I was also able last month to see one of the girls from our Day Center ministry get baptised! Praise God for the fruit he is bringing in the lives of the kids there! And also at the elderly people's ministry run by the local church I have been attending- Good New Church. (The older men in white below are from their ministry!) Thank you for your prayers and support! You guys are a part of this awesome work that the Lord is doing here in Constanta, Romania!

Friends in Sarajevo

Here are some dear friends we made while in Sarajevo! Don Stephens- working with YWAM Sarajevo, Veska from my team, Lorraine- my team, Ahmed- my adopted Bosnian Brother, Mario- my team, Aldin- Bosnian friend of Don's, and Alan who sounds like he could be American but is really Bosnian and really cool :)

Back in Constanta

Back in Constanta … Leah Lewis serving with YWAM Friends in Sarajevo
Hey all! I am back Constanta, Romania after an amazing, stretching and eye-opening outreach that I have to say was completely arranged by our good and loving Father in heaven. He put together my team in such a way that we had many different life-experiences to share and gifts to use in serving, and God met us up with just the right people so that we were a blessing, naturally through who we were. So thank you God for blessing us with so many awesome opportunities to love people and to serve, and thank you folks out there who have all contributed financially and through prayer to make this trip possible. It was awesome!

Our last month of outreach was spent in Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia working with an American couple who have a community center called Nova Nada, “New Hope”. Through this community center and through friends we were able to build friendships with many different people- young people, older people, Muslims, Christians, and mentally and physically disabled people. These friendships have taught me so much about loving people into the Kingdom of God. The love that God put in our hearts for the people in Sarajevo is so strong and we are going to miss everyone there so much. We are praying that the seeds we sowed into each life will bear fruit in time and that the love we showed each one will remind them of the incredible love that God our Father has for them. Already we have had word that one of our dear friends there has accepted Jesus as his Savior!!!! May many more follow!

Back here in Constanta, we will be spending the week finishing up the Discipleship Training School with debriefing and evaluation on the school as a whole. As DTS staff I have been so blessed to see God grow the students in such an amazing way and to see their passion for serving God grow more and more. Please keep the students in your prayers and many of them are looking for their next step in life. Specifically I would like you to pray for Mario and Veska, the two Bulgarian students who were on outreach team. Pray for God’s provision for both of them and for his leading. These are two very special people and I am going to miss them so much!

As for me, I will be heading to AMERICA as soon as the school finishes! June 16th I will arrive in Florida to spend time with family and get some much needed rest. Then I am on to Denver for more family visiting and finally July 3rd I will be in my hometown, Ashland, Oregon until the 28th of July to reconnect with my church, friends and family there. The 12-15th of July I will be in Redding, CA visiting college friends. Please let me know if you want to meet up during my time home. I would love to see as many people as possible as it has been almost 2 years since I was last in the States!


Fundraising update…Praise God for his provision during outreach! The cost was much less than we expected and I still have enough money to finish the DTS and get me to the airport and on my way home. So far I have had two families decide to join my support team with their monthly support and this is such a blessing! Please pray for me as I seek out opportunities to share all that God is doing here in Constanta and in all of the Balkan while I am in the States. I am praying that God will continue to add to my support team and that together we will be able to make a difference in the lives of the people here in Constanta and in all of the Balkan- loving them into the Kingdom and helping them to grow into givers of hope and life. Please remember that you are a part what God is doing here. Through your prayers, encouragement, gifts and love, you are making a difference. Thank you so much!


Resident at Pazaric Home for the disabled in Bosnia
http://www.zavodpazaric.ba-/ orphanage website

Blog: http://leahinromania.blogspot.com/
YWAM Constanta Blog: http://www.ywamconstanta.blogspot.com/

Bulgaria, Macedonia, Serbia and Bosnia!

Hey guys! This past month I have been on a crazy adventure, serving the Lord, learning soooooooo much and experiencing so many new things! As you know, I am leading a YWAM Discipleship Training School outreach team of three students: Mario from Bulgaria, Veska Also from Bulgaria and Lorraine from England. We started off in Sophia, Bulgaria where Mario and Veska are from. There we met with some of their friends and did some team prep. for our outreach. Then we had a change of plans and ended up going to Kratovo, Macedonia for a week where I had been for my DTS outreach last fall. It was so good to reconnect with people and to encourage the growing church there. We also met with two young guys, who gave their lives to Jesus just few days after we left Macedonia. It was so cool to see God working in their lives, showing them the truth. Macedonia was a huge blessing for us!

After Macedonia we went to Nis, Serbia where we had all kinds of opportunities to serve: in an orphanage for teenagers, at a public pre-school for gypsy kids, in a village with kids and young people where they have no church, visiting elderly ladies who needed encouragement, in the local churches, and visiting families! Lots of variety for just two and a half weeks of being there. It was so interesting to learn about Serbia and the issues they are dealing with. There is such a big need there for encouragement and hope...Pray for this nation!

And now we are are in Sarajevo, Bosnia...my favorite place so far. The whole country is full of gorgeous mountains and green green trees!! The river Drina is the most amazing green blue color I have ever seen in a river! This place is really breath-taking. The great missionary couple we are working with here, Tom and Kristie Trowbridge drove us up into the mountains around the city and see where the 84 Olymplic games were held, (most all of the sites now destroyed from the war).

There is really too much to say about this place for this short update, but i can tell you that I am so glad God has brought our team here. Our prayer is to bring hope, life and light in Jesus to the people here and we need your prayers. We will be working with Tom and Kristie's ministry center, which reaches out through all kinds of creative activities: english classes, community nights, worship nights for seekers and more...with the intention of building relationships with people where we can share the hope of Jesus. A lot of missionaries here deal with division and so we need prayers for unity and love. This is a Muslim nation and in Sarajevo alone there are 150 mosques. A new one is built every month.

Our good friend from YWAM, Don Stevens lives here and has been introducing us to his friends, some, young muslim guys that are quickly becoming part of our team family. Pray for God to use us in this place and for him to continue to work in the lives of the people we met in Bulgaria, Macedonia and Serbia.

For those of you interested in supporting me for this outreach I am still in need of about $800. You can send a check to His Hands Foundation, 1045 N. Main St., Ashland, OR 97520...Thank you so much for your prayers and support! Oh and keep in mind that I will be in the States June 16 through July 28th! Blessings to you all!

Outreach to Bucharest

This past week was AMAZING! Last week, we traveled with our team of four to the capital of Romania where we had the opportunity to share our lives and love with some very special ladies at a girls home in a village outside of the city (the same place where I was with my DTS for a week), Teen Challenge- a ministry to young people living in the street and those struggling with addictions, Calvary Chapel's neighborhood kids outreach, Stepping Forward ministry to orphans, and the YWAM National Office. We had a very full week but were so encouraged to see God using us to bring his hope, life and love to everyone we met.

My team was made up of Sarah Buchkosky, my closest friend here in Romania (also from the States) and myself, leading, and two people who are greatly impacting my life: Veska and Mario from Bulgaria. These two grew up together in an orphanage and have powerful testimonies of God's grace and changing power. Their hearts for others are amazing and it was such a blessing to see them sharing with the people we ministered two. God has such amazing purposes and plans for these too and I am blessed to have them on my team again as we go to Bosnia and Serbia for our big outreach.

Please pray for us as we continue to grow in the Lord and in the gifts that God has given us. And praise God for using this past week in Bucharest!!

Discipleship Training School

I LOVE DTS!!! It is such a blessing to be staff for the Discipleship Training School here in Constanta! We have just finished our fourth week and I can hardly believe it! We have a group of 6 students and 6 staff for this school and it is going very well. The students are sooo special, coming from Romania, Bulgaria, America and England! The youngest is 19 years and the oldest is 55 so it is quite a mix of people and cultures. It is amazing to see the Lord working in their lives, healing them and letting his truth soak deeper and deeper into their souls. It is really an honor to be here with them and to be an encouragement for them along the way.




And of course they are not the only ones being changed during this school. The Lord is touching my heart as well, encouraging me to use the gifts he has given me with boldness and to continue learning what is means to serve WITH him in ministry. I am so blessed to be here right now.




We are currently planning a week long outreach for the week of Feb.26 to March 3rd. We will be reaching out here in Romania and look forward to being a blessing wherever we go.

During the week days the students have been joining in with different local ministries reaching out to street people, older people, children at the Day Center, with the poor families and to the youth of Constanta through a film club held here at our base! So lot of great stuff is going on and we can really thank God for this. He is blessing us in so many ways and drawing us closer to him.


















Thank you for praying for us during this time! And be blessed with the Love of the FATHER!!!