Old CIty Kids Club!!!

Woo Hoo! This summer we have continued with one of my most favorite outreaches- to the children from poor families in the Old City of Constanta. We are again joining a church planting effort from one of the local churches here, Good News Church, and also this summer, we have been blessed to be joined by some Romanian young people from a local children’s evangelism organization. Spending time with these children is such a huge source of joy! They love the “kids club” and we are believing that God is touching them in a special way during this time!

Slide Show :)

Summer Teams

Summers in Constanta can be a bit crazy, but in the midst of the craziness we find ourselves as YWAM Constanta so blessed by the young people that come to work with us from all around the world. We have had American, Canadian, Dutch, English, Norweigen, New Zealander, and Romanian guests visiting us this summer and more nationalities are on their way! Some come as individuals, others with their families, some on YWAM teams, and others from churches- but however they come, they have each brought with them a spirit of joy and service, encouraging our staff and sharing their gifts with those we minister too! The teams have been spending lots of time at the beach with the children from our Day Center, praying and interceding for our base, ministry and for the city, put on programs for the kids club in the old city, and joined with our street team and café ministries! Such a blessing each one has been! Thank you to each one!

UniQuip- Training for YWAM School Staff

After my week in Cluj I returned to Constanta for two days, sang in the Café with friend, Martin Axelsson from Sweden, hung out with friends from Constanta and then took off again with a group from our base for Kiev, Ukraine. This time, for training for YWAM school leaders and staff. If you aren’t too familiar with Youth With A Mission, you might not know that the Discipleship Training Schools and other YWAM schools are all part of the University of the Nations. Not long after the start of YWAM, the Lord spoke to the leaders about providing further training for young people, equipping them with skills for serving in all areas of society.

The training seminar we attended was held by leaders of the University of the Nations, to better equip and encourage those who are running these schools. There were staff from YWAM School of Biblical Studies in Sweden, and Ukraine, DTS staff from all over Europe, and other YWAM staff that just wanted to learn more about the UofN and the heart and focus of YWAM schools. Personally I was SOOOO happy to be at this conference! The example of leadership that was shown was amazing and hearing all the background and what YWAM schools are meant to be, finally gave me firm ground to stand on as I look towards staffing future DTS and YWAM schools.

Vishal Mangalwadi on Development vs. Poverty

And if you didn’t think I had done enough running around, after the conference in Slovakia I returned to the YWAM base where I did my Discipleship Training School in 2006. I spent just over a week in Cluj-Napoca, Romania with YWAM Medias’ School of Biblical Christian Worldview, video-tapping the teachings of Dr. Vishal Mangalwadi, an Indian community development worker and scholar who has written many books and spoken around the world on the issues concerning development of the nations and Christian Biblical Worldview. I loved Vishal’s teachings and soaking in the wealth of information and perspective that seemed to bubble out of him. He also discussed the roots and causes of poverty and how the Cross is our hope of redemption from all results of sin, including poverty. It was a powerful, challenging and important teaching. There is much more I could say about this man but I will let you check it out for yourself: www.vishalmangalwadi.com

Freedom Project- Against Human Trafficking

Another special aspect of the conference in Slovakia was attendance of a tenacious young woman who has stepped out as YWAM’s voice against Human Trafficking. Ro, came to Slovakia with Al Akimoff and his team from YWAM Salem, Oregon, and shared in a special focus group and also with the whole conference about the issue of Human trafficking, and opened our eyes to just how relevant an issue it is for us here in Centeral Europe.

Even more eye opening for me was learning that a large percentage of trafficked girls are coming from Romania. In fact, even in the documentary Ro used to expose us to the situations that many young girls experience was based on the lives of girls from Romania and Moldova. Ro has been working state-side to bring awareness on these issues on and around Human Trafficking and is now working to see movements started in our region of the world. Many of us from Romania took a special interest in this project and will be praying about how to take action. Ro, along with a team, is planning to come to Romania this fall to visit YWAM bases, churches, café’s and student groups to share about the issue of Human Trafficking and to motive and inspire people to action.

To learn more about the Freedom project, you can check out the official website:

www.thefreedomproject-ywam.com

YWAM Conference in Slovakia

After David’s wedding and our time in Budapest, we continued on towards Slovakia to meet up about 70 other YWAMers from all over Central Europe. This event is held every two years somewhere in Central Europe and is a chance for more of our YWAM family to connect, spend time together, encourage one another and see what God is doing and saying concerning our region of the world.

I met up with many friends from Romania, as well as friends from Bosnia, and Hungary, and got to know new friends from other parts of Central Europe. It was a spiritually refreshing time and a time of looking back at our YWAM history and God’s original working in us from the beginning.

Al Akimoff, who has been with YWAM since its very early days, shared with us many stories of how God worked in Eastern and Central Europe and encouraged us to go back to those roots of faith and obedience to God. The spirit and attitude of each speaker was so humble and honest- another refreshing aspect of the weekend together. I am so thankful to our YWAM Central Europe leaders for organizing such a great event for our staff to be encouraged to continue in what the Lord has called us to.

Wedding In Budapest

In May almost all of our staff traveled together to Budapest for the Wedding of one of our staff, David McDowell. He married a lovely Hungarian girl named Krisztina who he had met in Budapest last September. It was a really nice wedding and we had a wonderful time in Budapest seeing the sights together and enjoying some team building time together. David and Krisztina, joined us for the summer in Constanta, but just this Friday left for Hungary to continue their ministry and new life together there. Thank you David and Krisztina for being with us and God bless you in your new life in Hungary!

Also while we were in Budapest we were blessed by some dear missionaries, Andy and Phyllis, who have been running a Christian Library in the city. They donated to our base boxes of books to use in our base library in Constanta. These are great resources and we are so thankful!

Support Raising Seminar in Iasi

Soon after I returned from Bosnia and the DTS ended, I headed up to the North of Romania with two other of our staff for a Support Raising Seminar. Long-time Norwegian YWAM Leader Terje Konradsen, taught for the week on the importance of relationship based support, communicating your vision, building budgets and developing support raising strategies. All very helpful for the life of a YWAM missionary. The seminar was attended by about 30 YWAMers from all over Romania. It was a great time of being together, being challenged and growing together, and supporting one another. In fact, at the end of the seminar we were challenged by the leadership to pray about making commitments to support another YWAM Romania missionary for one year. Many people were blessed and are continuing to be blessed through this lesson of generosity.

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!!!!