Appreciation

A short video we made to thank NorthPoint teams that came to Moldova this year and see if they want to come back.

Camp Metroland... The baptism

One of the coolest things that happened in the camp was the baptism last day. Our goal was for this to be something very simple. We want people to get to know about God, salvation, life with him and then, if they want to believe they can be baptized. So, by the end of the last day we had four people wanting to take this step.

As we met at the swimming pool, I was talking to the four that want to be baptized when three more girls came up and asked if they can join. I asked them about their faith and they said they believed in Jesus for eternal life. So then we had seven. After I started explaining to the crowd what baptism meant, two more guys showed saying that are ready to be baptized too. It was great!

We started the baptism. There was so much excitement. People were shivering as they came into the water and it was not because it was cold. It was a wonderful hot day. There was just some kind of awe. One girl started crying when I asked her if she believed she would spend eternity in heaven because of Jesus' death. As I baptized the last person, one more guy came into the water. I said: I didn't think you were going to be baptized. He responded: I did not think that either. So I asked him about his faith, and he said he believed. So I baptized him.

As soon as he got out of the water, one of the guys from the American team came up saying that he wants to be baptized as well. So he came into the water. It was so cool. So simple and so meaningful. People get it, believe and are baptized. The crowd was cheering and clapping, both believers and everybody else. It was like they all got a taste of what true faith and community are like. I totally loved it.

Camp Metroland

We're back home. Back from the incredible six days of the camp. At times I can't believe this is over. All the work, all the stress, all the excitement - all in the past. We're back in the office and can't stop talking about the camp. Everybody's sharing stories, laughing, watching videos and looking at the pictures. Facebook has become the central place for people sharing and commenting on each other's pictures. Everybody wants to go back. We are getting so much positive feedback. People want to make sure they get to go next year. Hopefully, there will be one in 2010. There has to be.

There was a team of high-school students from Buckhead Church in Atlanta, GA that came to help us with the camp. They helped us raise the money and also partnered with us to make this camp fun and meaningful. They did a great job! We will definitely do this again with them.

This is just an intro post just to let you all know what's going on and I think there might be more coming from me and other guys sharing about all that happened in the camp.

Here's the final video we did showing different images of the camp. There's some talk in Russian in the beginning, so please be patient with it. I think you will love the rest.

You can see more camp videos on our Metroland page.

Orphanage kids and the NP team

Pretty often the things that seem so usual to us turn out to be the things we can’t imagine our life without. And it’s hard to believe that someone else can live peacefully without something that you have. Two teams, one from Chisinau and one from Atlanta, have organized a big project for the kids and also for the teachers of the orphanage.

I would like to share with you what we’ve all experienced during these projects.

The first project was held June, 13, 2009. The goal was to spend some time with the kids and their teachers in a natural and a free atmosphere. So we organized a trip to the Zoo. For sure that was the best way for the US team to begin a relationship with the kids. We’ve spent two hours together; we’ve watched the animals, inflated balloons and popped them with great pleasure. Also we’ve had a great time jumping on trampoline, rolling down from the slides, and having fun on the swings. All of that was a pleasure to us and made the kids incredibly happy.



The next project was held June, 15. I’d like to mention that we’ve worked hard on it, and it took a lot of our strength, time, ideas, and preparation. We’ve called it A Fairytale Town, since we wanted to create a fairytale atmosphere in which each and every child would feel like they are in a fairytale. We wanted every kid to get the proper attention. 35 people took part in this project; they all were dressed up and their faces were decorated. Every person had their own zone they had to be in charge of. For instance, there was a track for cars, a magical place where a child could make a wish, a zone for asphalt pictures, a trampoline zone, and many others. In whole there were about 20 zones of that kind.



The third project, held on June, 16th, was dedicated to the teachers of the orphanage. We’ve invited them to a Moldovan cuisine restaurant. It was interesting to watch the teachers get ready for the evening; They worried about the way they look, and that was funny. All the teachers were very beautiful. For me they looked very feminine and they wanted to be noticed, to look beautiful. We wanted to thank them for all their hard work on everyday basics. Actually I think their job differs from any other. It’s not easy to love and to protect kids who are not their own, and to be a mom to those who actually have another mother.



Looking back I feel really happy and grateful to everyone who participated and gave all their strength, who has given their free time to make someone else happy. Pretty often they stay unnoticed. I would like to give special thanks to the team from US, to Kelly, Monica, Christy, Kent, Dominic, Deb, and Janice. Your participation in this project was a great encouragement to us all. Thank you for each minute that you’ve spent with everyone. Thank you for your financial help – we wouldn’t have been able to do all that without you. Thank you for every smile that you’ve given to each child. Thank you for your desire to be and to help in a place where it’s hard to help, and thank you for your desire to give a party for the teachers as an encouragement. Thank you for being able to spend time with us.

I would also like to thank my team; Ira, Ann, Kate, Alyona, and Sveta are the girls who are a part of that team. You are very special to me. I understand that I can’t express everything there is inside of me, no words can describe how precious you are to me. I really love you and I thank you for every minute you spend with me and the kids from the orphanage. Thank you for your love and desire to do something good.

Yulya.

Long time no updates... many changes

I don't know what it is about me, but I have such a hard time taking 20 minutes regularly to update this blog and let everyone know what's going on in Moldova. There's so much happening and I leave many of you out of the loop. I'm sorry for that. I will try to do a much better job. So let me update you on the latest changes.

We were kicked out of our building a month ago. It finally happened. We sort of knew that something like this could happen eventually, but we did not expect it now. We were given a week notice. So we are back into searching... but this time we are not really searching for a new building, we are searching for new ways and methods of accomplishing our mission, which is to lead people into a growing relationship with Jesus Christ.

So we are trying new things. We set a goal to have a weekly event for every age that we're serving. We started Kvartal Family Club and do it twice a month. It's a big event where we have lots of fellowship, music and teaching. We also do the Babyland Kids those nights as well. We rent Jazz Cafe downtown Chisinau and it's been a great place for this event so far. The week that Kvartal is off, we invite families to a party in our new office space where they can discuss the last week topic with others, fellowship, eat and play. It's a fun night.

Then we do the same for the high-school students. Once a month we rent a night club where we do our Metro cafe and concert. All the other weeks we invite students to come to our hang-outs at our office space. Every Saturday it's an hour of teaching and three hours of total fun: games, x-boxes, karaoke, disco and more. Our office becomes a rather wild place those night.

I can't believe how much God had everything thought through. We moved into our bigger office just weeks before we lost the building and realized how much we needed that extra space. We don't know how it all will work our yet, but we're excited to try new things.

Debates.

This week we tried something new. We decided to do some teaching through debates. We had two teams at each service who prepared their speeches and were ready to argue and attack the opposite opinion! It came out really well, we say that the experiment was a succes and we hope to use this method more oftem.

New band at METRO.

About a year ago there was a band who played really well and we wanted to invite them to perform in our church, but they asked for too much money and we couldn't afford them. And last month they called us themselves to ask if they could play at one of our events for free, that they whould like to do a charity concert. Of course, we were so excited, they are one of the best bands in Moldova and we knew a lot of people would come to their concert and it would be easier to invite other bands after these guys played. 

So, we had our Metro on March 14. The place was packed with people and the band was awesome. And after the concert they told us that they enjoyed being there and they hope to work with us again in the future. But the thing they liked the most was our people And that inspires us a lot.

               

International Women's Day

8 of march is celebrated every year in our country. Men give presents and flowers to their wifes, daughters and moms. We didn't want to ignore this holiday, so we planned our event to say that we appreciate women in our church. The last song in the program was a very famous russian song "To My Mom" that just came out and we even made a cover-video of it and we sinchronized it with the live performance. It was a new experience for us and a surprize for the audience. 

A glimpse of it:

Baptism

Couple of weeks ago we had baptism. For us this is a very important event because we like stories. And for our church the baptism of each person is a celebration of a story. Dima and Jamal decided to tell everyone by being baptized about their faith in Jesus Christ.

Even though that it's in russian you can see the baptism and more than sure you will understand it.

Take a look.

Bringing Christmas spirit.

Three weeks ago we asked people in God's Design to help us make this Christmas brighter for the kids in the orphanage. Our goal was to collect Christmas decorations and put the up in the kids bed-rooms and their play-room. Many people were very generous. They brought lights, little Christmas trees and Santa-Clause statues and everything else.

On Thursday our team took all the boxes with Christmas decorations to the orphanage and spent 3 hours with the kids and their teachers. They had an incredible time. See for yourself.

The new series and six screens.

Three weeks ago we started a new series on Sunday nights. We are talking about the invisible spiritual world that impacts the visible one. We got the whole idea from Andy's Stanley series TWISTED that he did at North Point Community Church. We are talking about how this invisible world twists the truths about life, pain and relationships in order to push people away from God. It's been great so far. People seem excited and challenged.

We came up with a pretty cool idea for the stage. We made six screens, put them up in the back of the stage and projected video on them via one projector. Basically, when you look at the stage you think that there are six different screens that work independently. At one time each screen will show a part of the same video and at other times all different images. We had people ask us: Did you buy six plasma screens? It was pretty cool and impressive. The idea was to get a look of the headquarters of the organization that watches the world where we live and twists the truth. I think it turned out pretty good.

Two new bands at Metro.

Last Saturday we had our youth event Metro. We invited two bands to play and they were awesome! They invited so many friends - the place was packed even an hour before the concert started. We had about 180 people there. The show was great - the technical support was really good, girls who served coffee and tea were smiling and welcoming, and the performance was the best ever! 

But the most wonderful thing was that after the concert was over our church people were at every table - though it wasn't coming from the organization, it was their own initiative. I was really proud of our people, cause they understand that in the end it's not about show - it's all about building relationships. 

Now I feel free to organize any event or a show, knowing that our people will do their part - build relationships.

Fall celebration at the orphanage.

About two month ago we hired Yulya Liberda to organize people of God's Design to help the community around us. It was her passion that started all this and I am so excited that many of our people got involved right away. Here's her story:

Probably every person wants to have their own place they can come back to and feel that someone cares about them, love them, needs them. But at the same time a person also learns how to give the same things to others. And it's a pity that our world can be divided into two parts: people who do have that special place and those who only dream of finding it.

Not long ago our BabyLand team visited an orphanage. There are about 100 kids and babies starting in that institution. Some are a month old, others are 7 years old. These kids are the ones who don't have that special place in this world. The diligence and efforts of the mentors and tutors will never be able to substitute a mother's sincere love. But the desire those mentors have and the desire of other people to help those kids will fill the hearts of the little ones with joy and will bring a smile on their little faces.

I can assure you that our team has succeeded in helping those kids experience joy. And I am sincerely grateful to them for that! Our team has prepared a special program with contests, a clown show, and the most important part - they talked to the kids. We are planning to continue working with the kids, maybe make some shows, entertaining programs, just taking the kids out to some place and spendeing time with them. There is something that will never leave us and that is the desire to be with those little kids.

Yulya Liberda.

Auditorium rent.

It has been a while since we had to shut down some of our environments. 

We managed to rent a space for café, storage room and a room for our Kids environment directly from school administration. We had been renting from the school for several years and starting this January conditions have changed.

Today we can't use anything but the main auditorium. There is a law that requires us to go through a process in order to receive a permission from City administration to rent from a public school. This process could take up to one year. A month ago we discovered that our fate is in hands of one clerk. He has to sign the papers that will allow us to gain allour environments back. It should happen this week. I know that God has it all in His hands. Nevertheless it has been a difficult period for our church: knowing that we could do more and not being able to physically accomplish our goals. 

The pictures show how the Baby Land used to attract many kids in good old day. We are hoping for the best!

A move to interaction.

About a month ago we decided to try something different at our Sunday events. For years we pretty much did the same thing. People would listen to some songs (or sing long) and then would sit and listen to a 40 minute speech. We always assumed that we had something to say so they needed to listen.

In September I read a book by Jim Henderson and Matt Casper called "Jim and Casper go to church", which caused me to rethink a bit what we do on Sundays and how we do it. Casper is an atheist that goes to different churches and writes down what he sees. One of the thing that he thought we should do more in church is listen to people. That got me thinking.

I decided that since we don't have a whole lot of people yet, we might try another way of communicating - discussion. I made up some questions on the topic of the series we were going through and asked people on Sunday to think about the question, discuss it at their table and there share their opinion with the whole group. It went great. People got so engaged. They were talking (in church), laughing and most important - they were thinking.

On Sunday, October 12th, we decided to only do Q and A time. We got people to ask me questions about church or why we do (or don't do) something. It was incredible. People asked questions for two and a half hours. We did not get to answer all of them that night. It was a great lesson for me. I used to be afraid that if people start talking, then we will never get the the subject. It turned out that it wasn't people that would get me off track, but I would do that myself.

So, it was a great change. We've done it for five weeks now and we are going to continue to play with it to see how we can do that better.

Live at Metro.

Here is a song we recorded on October 4th at our Saturday night Metro concert. The sound in this video is from one of the cameras, so the quality is not all that great. On the other side you can get the feel of what you would hear in the auditorium. It's pretty cool to hear the kids sing along.

We will have the "sound board" version soon and will upload it then on youtube.

This song was written by Jenya Uvarova, the keyboard player. She is also our home group director.

Enjoy.

MetroLive at National Festival

Well, today our band METROLIVE performed at a big festival near Chisinau. I came to only one conclusion - next festival should be hosted by us! First of all, we couldn't find it, then it started late, it was really cold and not whole lot of people!

We were the fifth band. The bands before us were good, but of course they don't have a lot of practice, so they looked worried and nervous. So, when we came on stage, we didn't care how it would sound (and the equipment was not good, neither the people who worked on the sound) we just wanted to have a great time. And we did!

We saw many people who attend Metro or used to come, they were really excited - we got so much support, they screamed and sang along. We performed well and after that there was a crowd of people waiting to take some pictures with us or just talk!

We are really glad that it came out this way, because that way we can stay in touch with people who know us but they don't go to church. They asked when is our next event and we gave them our web site and phone numbers, and we met new people who really liked our performance. One thing is when you play in your own club or place, but another thing is when you take part in something big, something community does and appreciates when you support it.

Here is a picture of the festival.

Learning about rewards.

This week we invited Bob Bryant, a pastor from Marshall, TX to teach a course to our leaders. The seminars went for five nights, from 5pm to 9pm. We studied the rewards that God promised to give to the faithful Christians. I personally was looking forward to this study, because I wanted to know more about this topic. I tried several times to study the rewards on my own, but still had many questions. So, it was great to talk about it read lots of passages.

There were about 50 people attending the seminars. Most of them were home groups leaders and others might be starting one soon. Everybody got into the subject, asked tons of questions, and every time we had a break people gathered in small groups to continue discussing the passages. It was great! Bob Bryant did a great job by providing all the passages that talk about rewards and commenting them in a way that got people thinking.

I know that it was a good time for our guys to learn and be challenged. I'm thankful to Cypress Valley Bible Church in Marshall, TX that made it possible for this to happen. They not only provided for Bob and his wife to come to Moldova, but also covered all the expenses of the seminars. We would not be able to do it on our own.

The blogging starts.

Those of you that know me, remember that I've always had hard time keeping you updated about the progress of God's Design ministry. There are always a lof of things going on in our ministry. Some are exciting and some are challenging. Every time that I wanted to e-mail an update, something else came up. So, I hope that having this blog will help us keep you up to date with everything that happens here at God's Design.

I also asked Lesha, Alyona and Jenya to help me keep this blog fresh and interesting. So, we will see what happens.

I hope you will be back to learn more the ministry of God's Design in Moldova. You can also subscribe to receive the updates automatically in your inbox (see the link at the bottom).

Welcome to our blog!