Rachel's Romania Update - June 2009

“And my God will supply all your needs according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus.”
– Philippians 4:19

Hello everyone! I hope you are all doing well. June has been a wonderful month! If you have not had the opportunity to read about the miracle the Lord provided for me this month, please click here and read all about it!

This was a very busy month and as I look back, I almost can’t believe that we were able to fit so much into June!



June 1st was Children’s Day here in Romania. We had 2 friends, Cees and Anne drive over from Germany with a van full of donations for us! What a way to start off the month. And as the Lord would have it, they had a ton of shoeboxes filled with gifts for children and teens. We were able to take many of those boxes and go into the hospital and pass them out to all the children (with and without moms) who had to spend this very important holiday here in Romania, in the hospital. It was so sweet to see how excited the children were! I personally was blessed to have Cees and Anne stay the night with me. I am again so thankful to the Lord for providing me with an apartment here in Brasov that allows me to host people! The 3 of us had a wonderful time talking and walking around town, and they took me out for Chinese food! It was such a treat to be able to eat some international food that actually tasted really good!



The following Wednesday on the 3rd, we had our Teen Girls Meeting. This is the one that was ‘technically’ for May. The weather wasn’t very good, so we went to McDonald’s. We introduced the Memory Verse idea that we are doing with the girls each month now. I also led a short little Bible Study/Devotional. Our Memory Verse and Devo were on 1 Corinthians 13:13 – “And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.” We then made bracelets that helped symbolize the verse, with 3 special beads representing Faith, Hope and Love. It was a lot of fun.



On Saturday the 13th, there was a team visiting from Calvary Chapel Boise. I joined the group to go to a boys orphanage in a town called Dacia. The Team had games planned and a Bible story and some songs. It was a lot of fun to be there. I was also very excited because I found out that one of my little guys who pretty frequently comes to the floor of the hospital that I work on actually lives at this orphanage. I was so surprised to see him, but also totally blessed to know where he lives, it sort of opens up some things to me, as far as his behavior goes.



While it was great with the Team and the kids, I was really blessed to have the time to spend with my fellow Calvary missionaries, Tim, Liz and Amanda. The orphanage is about an hour away, and the drive there and back was really a nice time of ‘bonding’ for us.



On Saturday the 20th, we had our Teen Girls Meeting for June! It was a beautiful day so we took the girls outside of Brasov to this wonderful park area. There were trees and mountains and a little creek. We had a picnic and played games, had prizes, walked around and took pictures! This meeting was the first time the girls actually had to say their Memory Verse out loud to us. We were all curious if the girls would have taken the time to learn the verses. To our very happy surprise, they did! They all learned their verse! When I passed out the new verse for the next month, they were all really eager to get their card and read it out loud. I feel like our time of building relationships with these girls is really growing, and they are starting to open up and be more ‘real’ with us. We want to be witnesses and blessings, and a safe place for the girls to come to, a place where they will feel open to talk to us and to learn about the Love of God! I really love my time with them and am enjoying getting to know them more.

This month I started teaching as well. Once a week, I am teaching my missionary friends Tim and Liz Romanian. While I am far from fluent, I actually get by pretty well and I am happy to be able to share what I’ve learned with them. It is so important to know the language here, it opens up doors at the hospital and in life to share the gospel and it gives you a greater sense of freedom, knowing what things say in the store at a restaurant, and not having to always depend on a translator.

Once a week, I am also teaching my neighbor’s grandson Alex English. He is 10 years old and very smart! He has taken English in school and can read very well, but he has a hard time with conversation. So we work on reading and writing and having conversations. We play games and just have a really great time together. His mom has been with us during the class as well, which has been nice as well! My first class Alex brought me a rose and Nuntii my neighbor made us all homemade donuts! They were so good!

Speaking of my neighbor, things are going great with our friendship. She made me a fabulous meal to celebrate Pentecost. We were not able to spend as much time together this month because she is having her apartment worked on and hasn’t been around. She attempted to teach me how to crochet this month, but I just couldn’t get it. Haha!

So on top of all that fun stuff, I was in the hospital everyday M-F as usual. I truly love my time with ‘my kids’ and with Cami.

I also submitted my paperwork for a year long Romanian Visa to continue living here. I am praying that everything will go through with no problems so that I don’t have to leave the country to renew my Visa again (like I have been doing ever 90 days since I moved here, it’s much harder now that I live 12 hours from the border and not 20 mins!) Please pray that everything goes smoothly, if I don’t get the visa in time, I do either have to go cross the border or pay a late fee.

Well that is it for now! Thank you so much for all of your prayers and support. It has been wonderful to see how the Lord provides for me and takes care of me and uses me here. It’s very humbling.

Please keep July in your prayers. I will have some friends visiting from Oradea. I will also be turning 30 (!!!!) on the 9th! WOW! I still can’t believe that! I actually received a gift already in the mail yesterday and it was such a huge blessing! A great way to countdown to my birthday! Please do keep this in prayer though, it can be a little lonely being away from family and friends on special days, I am truly thankful though to be surrounded by good people here and I know that I will have a good time with them.

I hope you all have a great month and wonderful 4th of July!

Grace and Peace,
Rachel

Prayer Requests:
1. For my Romanian Visa paperwork to go through without any problems or fees
2. Kids and staff at the hospital, that I would be a witness and example to them
3. Nuntii my neighbor and our friendship
4. Teen Girls and our time with them
5. Time with friends visiting from out of town
6. My birthday!
7. That the Lord would continue to supply all my needs, as He has been so faithful to do!

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On Prayer

Just some stuff from Oswald Chambers on prayer that I loved:

"The real business of your life as a saved soul is intercessory prayer. Wherever God puts you in circumstances, pray immediately, pray that His Atonement may be realized in other lives as it has been in yours. Pray for your friends now; pray for those with whom you come in contact now...begin to do as Jesus Christ said, pray for the saints, pray for all men. "

"And the LORD restored Job’s losses when he prayed for his friends. " Job 42:10a

A Miracle...

I know my monthly update letter is going to come out at in a week or so, but I really want to share something with you and just don’t want to wait! Plus this is so important that it deserves it’s own letter.

I normally do not talk about financial things with people, mainly I just ask you all to pray that the Lord will provide for me. I do this, for a couple of reasons, but mainly because I want to be sure that it is the Lord who is providing for me to live here in Romania.

I want to share something with you, in order to give God the glory for how awesome He is. These past couple of months have been a little tight for me financially speaking, as the cost of living here in Brasov is double what it was in Oradea, and when I moved here to Brasov I had lost some of my support from home. June has been the most tight month out of all of them. I owed my taxes for all of 2008 this month, plus my quarterly tax for 2009 plus the money for my year long visa for Romania and then just daily things like rent, utilities and food. I honestly started the month with no clue how I would be able to pay for all of these things and still have enough money left over at the end of the month to pay my rent for July!

I knew that none of my financial issues were a surprise to the Lord and that He is in control. I wanted to trust Him to take care of me. So I asked some of you to pray for me, not saying why, just trusting the Lord.

Then the Lord gave me these verses to meditate on:

"Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time, casting all your care upon Him, for He cares for you. Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour. Resist him, steadfast in the faith, knowing that the same sufferings are experienced by your brotherhood in the world. But may the God of all grace, who called us to His eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after you have suffered a while, perfect, establish, strengthen, and settle you. To Him be the glory and the dominion forever and ever. Amen."
1 Peter 5:6-11

"Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.”
Matthew 11:28-30

"And He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore most gladly I will rather boast in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in needs, in persecutions, in distresses, for Christ’s sake. For when I am weak, then I am strong."
- 2 Corinthians 12:9-10

"And my God shall supply all your need according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus."
-Philippians 4:19

“Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? Which of you by worrying can add one cubit to his stature?
So why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; and yet I say to you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Now if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will He not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?
Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For after all these things the Gentiles seek. For your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble."
-Matthew 6:25-34

"Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us, to Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen."
-Ephesians 3:20-21

"Our fathers trusted in You; they trusted, and You delivered them. They cried to You, and were delivered; they trusted in You, and were not ashamed."
-Psalm 22:4-5

So I prayed and you prayed and I really trusted the Lord that His Word is true and that He would provide even though I had no clue where the money would come from.

Then things started happening. I had some guests come to visit for a day and they left me some money, I have some new people who have signed up to sponsor me on a monthly basis, I had some friends who wanted to give me money towards my lost camera, but because I had enough, they told me to use the money for my taxes, and I even had friends here in Romania bless me with some money. The Lord just kept opening up doors and the money came in just in time to pay off my taxes, then came the Romania visa situation and Rent for July, all of which I need before I receive my monthly support from America (I receive one check for all my support at the very end of each month), so once again, I asked the Lord to provide, and He did, I have some friends in Europe who sent me money directly to my Romanian bank account, and my aunt randomly blessed me with some money, that along with the money from my friends who visited at the beginning of the month is enough to cover rent, pay for my Romanian Visa and to be able to have some money so I can call my parents at home.

This is all truly a miracle. I went from having not even what I needed to cover my taxes to having exactly what I needed for the month. While things were a little tight, I realized that I didn’t need to have extra money for “things”. It was a month of seeing how the Lord provided for everything. Even to the point of having friends invite me over for meals or having my neighbor make me a fabulous meal one day. All of these things contributed to my being able to pay for everything and still eat! Hahah

These verses from Matthew came alive to me this month more than ever before in my past:

“Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? Which of you by worrying can add one cubit to his stature?
So why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; and yet I say to you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Now if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will He not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?
Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For after all these things the Gentiles seek. For your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble."
-Matthew 6:25-34

Then yesterday I was listening to a Bible study by Pastor Chuck Smith, and he was talking about Gideon and how God wanted Gideon who was already outnumbered with his small army against their enemies, to send even more of his army away. And how God won the battle with so few men, in order that the Israelites would not be able to say they won in their own strength. When I heard this, I was struck with something…this has been my “Gideon month”. I have always made less money as a missionary here in Romania than any of my other missionary friends here, and I have always been ok with this, because I always had enough. Then I move to Brasov, lose some of my support and have even less than I did when I lived in a city half as expensive. BUT, I have still been able to make it. Then June comes along and it was as though the Lord was saying, “No you still have too much, I am going to make it so that it is humanly impossible for you to have enough money to get by this month, and I’m going to do this so that you will know that I am God and that I will take care of you and provide for your needs.”

I will say, that at the beginning of the month a little bit of panic came in (that’s when I sent out the prayer email), so I spent a day with the Lord, just praying and reading the Bible and that’s when I got all those verses I mentioned above. And that is also when the Lord gave me peace about this month. I still had no clue where the money was going to come from and it was a tremendous test of my faith in the Lord. He could have given it to me all at once, but right after one thing was paid for, I didn’t have enough for the next thing, and that is how my month has progressed. But He has provided for me! What a miracle this month has been.

I know that this has been a novel of a letter, but the Lord is real and true and He is not just a story in a book. And He deserves to be praised for who He is. And I just could not help but share with you how He has provided for me this month and to give Him all the glory that is due Him.

Thank you to all of you who support me financially and with your prayers. Both of those things are vital to my ministry and my life here in Romania. Thank you for allowing the Lord to work though you to bless me to continue His work here in Brasov.

I hope you all are blessed by this and that you will join me in praising Him!

Grace and peace,
Rachel

A Prayer Request

Hello Everyone
I have a prayer request. I finally have found a wonderful organization to work with here in Romania, and am able to apply for a year long visa to live here in Romania now. I have had to leave the country every 90 days since I moved here in order to renew my visitor visa. I am in the process of completing the paper work now, it will cost about $250-$300. Please pray that all will go smoothly and that I will be able to get my visa before August 1st so that I don't have to make the 12 hour journey again to renew my visitor visa, or pay a late fee. Please also pray that the Lord will provide and that my Romanian contact who is helping me do this will have no problems.

Thank you guys!

Grace and Peace,
Rachel

The Secret of a Disciple's Life

Just some things that stood out to me in my devo this morning.
:)

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"We count as service what we do in the way of Christian work; Jesus Christ calls service what we are to Him, not what we do for Him...People do not want to be devoted to Jesus, but only to the cause He started...

Our Lord's first obedience was to the will of His Father, not to the needs of men; the saving of men was the natural outcome of His obedience to the Father. If I am devoted to the cause of humanity only, I will soon be exhausted and come to the place where my love will falter; but if I love Jesus Christ personally and passionately, I can serve humanity though men treat me as a doormat.

The secret of a disciple's life is devotion to Jesus Christ..."

Oswald Chambers

Mary, Martha and Abiding

So this concept of Mary and Martha has really been on my mind this past week or 2. A lot of times in the ministry there is almost an expectation that you need to be constantly busy, that running around like crazy is a sign that you are doing what you are supposed to be doing....and other times we ourselves seem to put that onto us. Some of us are of that personality type, where we see a need and so we assume it is "our job" to fix it. Like Martha, she saw that she had a group of people coming over, and a very important guest, Jesus Himself, and so she was running around being busy, preparing things, which is all good if that is what the Lord has for you to be doing at that moment. But I wonder how often we see a need and want to "fix it" out of our own strength. We don't seek the Lord's will in the matter at all.

Mary was the one who choose the better thing, to sit at the feet of Jesus. To abide in Him and in His presence. How often we choose work and being busy "for the Lord" over actually just being "WITH the Lord". Obviously there is work to be done, the harvest is plentiful and the workers are few, the Lord wants to use us, but He doesn't NEED to use us. He wants US. He wants us to know Him and abide in Him, and that is more important to Him than the work.

As we grow in Him and as we abide in Him the work we end up doing for the Lord will come out of our time with Him, it will overflow with His Spirit. Because after all, anything we do "for the Lord" should be done FOR HIS GLORY, not for our own glory, and the more time we spend in His presence the more of Him we will want to share as we go out, and the less of us. Everything we do in His name, should be about Him, not how good we are, or how busy we are, or how many people say we are "good". We should always be pointing the way to Him, not to ourselves and not to the work. It matters very little if we feed the world if we don't tell them who Jesus is. To be blunt, what difference will a full stomach make in Hell?

It can be a dangerous position when that balance gets upset and we are "serving the Lord" to seek our own glory. But no matter where He places us, whether it is at school, sitting in an office 9-5 or out on the missions field, if we are constantly abiding in Him, and taking that time to sit at His feet, we will be able to truly shine for Him and to give Him the glory.

Anyway, below is a little clip from My Utmost For His Highest from my devo time this morning...it's what got me thinking again about the Mary and Martha thing.

Be blessed!

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" It does not matter what my circumstances are. I can be as much assured of abiding in Jesus in any one of them as I am in any prayer meeting. It is unnecessary to change and arrange my circumstances myself. Our Lord’s inner abiding was pure and unblemished. He was at home with God wherever His body was. He never chose His own circumstances, but was meek, submitting to His Father’s plans and directions for Him. Just think of how amazingly relaxed our Lord’s life was! But we tend to keep God at a fever pitch in our lives. We have none of the serenity of the life which is "hidden with Christ in God" ( Colossians 3:3 ).

Think of the things that take you out of the position of abiding in Christ. You say, "Yes, Lord, just a minute— I still have this to do. Yes, I will abide as soon as this is finished, or as soon as this week is over. It will be all right, Lord. I will abide then." Get moving— begin to abide now. In the initial stages it will be a continual effort to abide, but as you continue, it will become so much a part of your life that you will abide in Him without any conscious effort. Determine to abide in Jesus wherever you are placed."

-Oswald Chambers

Come!

And the Spirit and the bride say,
“Come!” And let him who hears say,
“Come!” And let him who thirsts come.
Whoever desires, let him take the water of life freely.
Revelation 22:17

I was just totally blessed by this verse tonight as I was finishing up Revelation in my daily Bible reading.

The Lord is so good to us!