2025 January-March

     Three months in to 2025 and I am happy to report how God gave wisdom in a few of the prayer requests I gave in the last Newsletter. First, we had our second half of the beginner English course. We had a lot of questions about how to add on to the schedule and what all we needed to include from the curriculum, and the students received the changes very well. We even had some newcomers come in, which was difficult at first; but since we had added an extra day in the week and longer lesson time, they were able to catch up decently. I was also able to offer some one-on-one lessons for those that wanted extra help with reading. We finished our first book at the beginning of March, and instead of taking a break until our next book, we have an English club just once a week to pinpoint and review concepts. This too has been going well, but if you could pray that we have consistency in students coming.

     Secondly, I had asked for prayers about a devotional book I could use for the single ladies connection group from the book of Proverbs.  However, our church theme this year is “Worshipping God in the Beauty of Holiness” from Psalm 29:2, so I switched gears in searching for a devotional, and was able to find one right away with a company I had worked with before. Before, I hadn’t really connected with what I was thinking on doing, but after God redirected, resources kept falling into place for a study in Psalms. Even my sending church is doing a series on Psalms, and I’ve been able to listen in weekly to help me in both my personal devotions and when teaching the connection group.

     We had two other events at the church go well these past months. In February, we had a couples banquet, and I was placed in charge of organizing the servers which always reminds me of helping at banquets at West Coast Baptist College. We saw at least 5 new visitors come to this event, and we had 6 visitors at the ladies’ banquet in March.

     The ladies banquet was such a sweet time of fellowship when you get the different languages singing together. And I know I mention this often; but even though I still can’t communicate verbally with all of them, I’m thankful for the connection we have through the Lord, and of course food and crafts. Our speaker at this event was Nicole Condra, who is a missionary here hoping to start a deaf ministry at the church. She was been here since 2019, and not only has been learning Romanian, but also Romanian Sign Language, which yes, is different than American Sign Language. She taught everyone just two phrases to show the difference between the two, but it was awesome to have another way of greeting each other on the following Sunday service no matter what language we spoke. My prayer requests from these events is that the visitors will be able to come again, and that we can have a few people in our church become invested in the deaf ministry alongside Nicole.

     The college semester has also been going well. We had a modular course at the beginning of February. Missionary Gib Wood spoke on spiritual gifts, how to understand what your own gift is, and how people can work together in a church with the differences of each gift. I was also encouraged by his sermons during chapel from 1 John about the characteristics of a Christian, which will actually tie in with our Youth Conference theme this year on “Being an Authentic Christian. If you could pray for this event which starts April 22. Our guest speaker is Samuel Weimer, a missionary from the Czech Republic. And for graduation week in May, we will be having a Bible Conference with Bro. Rick Houk from West Coast Baptist College as the guest speaker.

Thank you so much for your continued support and prayer!

In Christ,

Olivia West