Saturday, December 25, 2010

Christmas Time is Here!

Each year there are many activities happening as Christmas approaches.  Here are a few that we have been involved with:

OSCEB Christmas Concert

Once again the students in Bucharest hosted a Christmas carol concert.  For 2 weeks before the concert the students went through many of the dorms doing a survey with students and inviting them to the concert.  They found students open and often had great in-depth talks with the students about the Gospel, but we find it very hard to motivate them to come to a meeting or study to discuss more about Christianity.  Please pray for us to have insight into how to reach this new generation of student in Romania.

We also passed out over 4000 invitations to the concert and were pleased that about 300 students came to listen to the Carols and a short message.

Other Student Groups 

This month Mike was asked to speak in Pitesti to the students, about the topic "Who is celebrated at Christmas?"  It was a good meeting with both university and high school students in the group.  The meeting was a week before their big outreach meeting that attracted many students.

We both traveled to the city of Craiova to visit the student group there.  They had a big outreach meeting with about 120 students in attendance.  One extremely encouraging thing was to see how the churches have come together to support the student group.  They had students from four different churches, which is a great step forward for the group.  Please pray for unity as the churches work together to reach students in their city!

BCA Christmas Program

 The students at BCA had a fun Christmas program as they presented an adaptation of the Christmas story with songs from the group 'ABBA,' changed to reflect the Christmas message of Christ's birth.  Rebekah played the part of the innkeeper's wife as well as one of the angels that appeared to the shepherds.  To see more pictures click here


Caroling in Romania
On Dec. 23 we went caroling with some friends to other friends of ours in the city.  We had a great time singing in the apartment building hallways, where there are beautiful echos.  We must have sounded pretty good as people we didn't even know handed us money and said we sounded good.  The tradition in Romania is that you carol people and they give you a treat or sometimes money!  We enjoyed mandarins, cookies and chocolates!! It was a fun evening.


Wednesday, November 24, 2010

OSCER National Conference 2010 ReImagine the Christian Student

Nov. 11-14, we had our first national conference in 5 years.  We inaugurated the "Imagine" conferences that we plan to hold every two years.  Our Conference theme this year was the Gospel, and the three main talks where "What is the Gospel?", "The Gospel and Me", and "The Gospel and Others".  Each talk was well presented and we had small groups after each talk to help the students process the information.
 Kris was asked to present "The Gospel and me" where she focused on our need to "preach the Gospel to ourselves daily and to battle with the sin in our life.

The conference took place in a beautiful location in the north-western part of Romania.  One highlight was our service time on Saturday afternoon.  We split up into teams and were given jobs to do around the conference center. It was a small way that we could serve.  Here are some pictures of the jobs we were involved in!










 Overall, we were very encouraged by the conference and look forward to how we can develop this conference and make it a much anticipated event every 2 years.
 We were greatly encouraged that many students from Bucharest were able to attend since we had to travel the furthest.

The first evening we had some games to get to know each other!


The times of worship were led by a Romania Christian group Decean.

Thank you for your prayers!

Wednesday, October 20, 2010

OSCER National Conference

Please pray along with us for the upcoming OSCER National Conference "Re-imagine the Christian Student"!  It will take place 11-14 Nov. We are praying for 150 students to participate in this conference from the 10 groups across Romania. The theme will be the Gospel, with talks focused on "What is the Gospel?", "The Gospel and Me" and "The Gospel and Others". We will also have a variety of seminars centered around Understanding today's culture, and motivating students in evangelism and discipleship.

Please be in prayer for us and the conference as we work at organizing all the details of the conference as well as raising up the deficit of the conference budget, which is about 2,000 euros. If you are interested in giving to help out you can send a tax deductible donation by check made payable to IFES/USA and designated for OSCER: IFES Romania and mail to:
IFES/USA
PO Box 748
Monument, CO 80132

Thank you!


Thursday, September 2, 2010

Summer Fun!

This summer we had several trips to the mountains. At the beginning of the summer we
spent a week with a dear friend we work with at her parents vacation house in the west of Romania.

Visiting the Romanian "Mount Rushmore" alongside the Danube River!! (It's really the face of Decebal, one of the early Romanian rulers)

A picnic alongside the Danube (that's Serbia across the river!)

Swimming in a naturally heated pool (heated by a hot spring)

In early July we spent a week camping with some friends and saw very beautiful areas of Romania!!

Inside the "Bear cave" in the north-west of Romania!

Blueberry picking!!

On the Trans-Fagarasan Road where there was snow at the top in July!!

Along the highest road in Romania (over 2,200 meters high)


Monday, June 28, 2010

2010 University Year ends & 20 Year celebration of OSCEB!

Each year we celebrate the seniors who graduated. They work hard and often face difficulties trying to "do the right thing" in an education system where many people get by, by cheating and often compromising their values! This year the economic climate is adding another difficulty to graduation. We heard recently that 3000 students finished the Engineering school and only 150 of them had jobs at graduation.


In May OSCEB celebrated 20 years of ministry to students! It was a wonderful evening with many former students coming out to celebrate God's work among students in Bucharest in the last 20 years!

We had a great time visiting graduates. Here Mike talks to Cristi, who we met in 1992 when he was working as a volunteer with OSCEB!



Monday, May 17, 2010

Seussical!!

BCA's first musical was proudly presented by the students on April 24. All the students worked so hard on this and they were able to present it once at a small theater in the city. The owner of the theater remarked after the performance that he had never seen anything like this musical and was very impressed by the hard work of all the students, the directors and everyone who worked behind the scenes to make it a successful.
Rebekah was a bird-girl and had a lot of dancing parts. Her best friend, Daniella, was Gertrude!

All the Whos down in Who-ville included Hannah!!

Andrew was the Grinch!

A few weekends later the students were invited to present three of their songs at an International Festival.

Ravi Zacharais Conference


A number of OSCER leaders were invited to a Conference featuring Ravi Zacharias. It was a very stimulating conference and offered us time to be together and think more about evangelism and apologetics.


We gathered one night for a late night snack of sausages, bread and soda. It was a time to relax and share a bit more of what we were learning, and get to know each other better.


Gabi and Ionut, two leaders from Pitesti. Gabi was Mike's roommate during the conference.


It was also possible for us to invite 5 staff from the, IFES, student movement in the Republic of Moldova to come to the conference. Just a few weeks before the conference a small group from Romania had been to the Republic of Moldova to help them with an evangelistic conference. It was amazing for the team to see how many nonbelievers came to the camp. It was very encouraging.