Abundance in Romania
Russell Bennett celebrates the encounters his team had working with children and young people in Romania at Easter.
Most of our team calls New Life Church in Milton Keynes their home church, and two of our team are members of our active youth group. What an awesome privilege it was to be able to share this opportunity to pray and play with the young people of Romania together with them.
Our trip took place in the jam-packed week squeezed between Easter in the UK and Easter in Romania (which fell a week later), so we were able to catch the school holidays in both countries.
Meeting practical needs
We were blessed to be able to help do some care and maintenance around our partner church’s building and join them in delivering groceries to four local families in their homes. A great success story is that of a family with two boys that we have been ministering to for five or six years now. Recently, the family moved into their own house, and the parents have accepted Jesus into their lives and have plans to evangelise their entire village.
One day, we went to a village and fed 60 to 70 of the children. They loved having pizza followed by games in a local park. Each child was given a large bag of Easter sweeties, too. We hope it helped them to think about Easter, and why it might be important enough for a bunch of strange English-speaking people (who originate from four or five different countries) to come to Romania and spend time with them.
Sharing the good news of Jesus
At the next village we gave a message to a group of amazing young adults. I talked to them on how God blesses the work of our hands, and how the supernatural power of God works through us. When we went on to pray for each other, we were able to bring before God those who needed to find jobs.
These young adults were invaluable in helping us reach out to local children. It’s a small town, so they literally walked around and told the local kids a couple days beforehand what we had planned for them, and sure enough they turned up in force for the two days of activities. On the second day I invited the kids to give their lives to Jesus. And eight children responded – praise God!
The next day we travelled to the camp site ‘Casa Harului’ (‘House of Grace’, the location of all of the camps we’ve held in Romania to date), where they were holding a day for families who had children with special needs. We were blessed to be able to pray for one lady who’d had a miscarriage not too long ago, but was now pregnant again. We asked God to give her peace, commanding protection and health for the baby and mother. We declared that it was God’s will for this child to live, and prophesied that a child’s laughter would be heard in her house. God is so good!
Being team together
At this point I really want to make mention of a few of our team members who really stepped up. Our two youth group members did everything we asked of them and more. They prayed for the families we visited, helped with maintenance work, and played a lot of football!
There’s so much more I could mention of how God moved and blessed the team and those we encountered, so if you’d like to know more or would like to join us on a trip yourselves, you can find our charity page on Facebook, under ‘Credinta Tare’, which is Romanian for ‘Strong Faith’.
Big thanks go to New Life Church Milton Keynes, Family Faith Centre Church in Australia, and all our partners in prayer and practical needs – your support allows great things to happen. I know that God has planned big rewards for everyone who has been a part of this. Thank you.