Colorado Bound

Hello Prayer Family,

I get the joy of going with my church family (Watermark Community Church) to Estes Park, CO for our annual church wide retreat. I leave early tomorrow (June 1) to help drive up the trailer of sound equipment, and will be there until I help drive the trailer back on June 9 and 10.

I am looking forward to serving in Colorado in the Children's ministry. I will be part of the worship band for the kids (5th grade - Kindergarten), and when we break out into smaller groups I get to minister to the Kindergarteners. Please pray that the kids will be attentive and able to learn more about who God is while having a lot of fun, and pray that I am able to share Christ in a way that is understood by all and many come to know Christ as their personal Savior.

Agape,
Chris

News from Catalin

Hello Ministry Partners,

I wanted to share the following email with you that I found encouraging. It is from Catalin Covaci one of the Romanian heads of e3 Romania. Just in case I have not shared this in the past, the Lord has opened up some great opportunities for us (e3) to partner with our Romanian brothers. They had a vision for a nation wide movement to get churches excited about missions just as we were looking into how we were going to try to expand our work in Romania. It was such a God designed partnership. e3 is now partnered with the Romanian Baptist Assoc. in a plan they call Torch Mission. We are coming alongside and providing training materials and Evangecubes as well as coordinating all of our teams to work within the Torch Mission network. Catalin is going around training up pastors and lay-leaders with the training materials, and here is an account of just a portion of what is happening over there...

Last week I was in a small tour. As I was invited to preach in one of the churches in Bucharest, I also wanted to use this opportunity to meet the E3 Instructors in the areas I had to go through: Nicu Sotir and Radu Oprea in Bucharest and Daniel Patru in Craiova. I emailed them, I talked to them at the phone and we planed the meetings.

On saturday april 8 I called Daniel in Craiova to see if the plans to meet on tue morning, April 11, are still ok and if will be possible to also present the E3 to some pastors in Craiova.

His answer prooved that all these plans were from the Lord.
Whithout our knowlege, the president of Craiova Association scheduled the General Assembly of the association exactly in that tuesday morning. I called the president, Pastor Nelu Maior. He is an old friend of mine, since I served as a pastor in South Romania in Giurgiu. We know each other and we appreciate each others ministry in that part of the country. I call him and explained to him what I intend to do while in Craiova that tue morning. He answered that will allow me to speak to the General asembly for 45 min or more.

I arrived from Giurgiu in Craiova on time for the meeting, little bit after 10.30 am.
The surprises that the Lord had for us were not yet finished.

Before my presentation, the subject discussed was regarding the little growth of Baptist churches in last year, and ideas, solutions, problems to be faced.
I will write here some of the issues that some of the pastors who partricipated were saying. (I especially wrote them down in order for you to be happy as I was and see the mighty hand of God at work in Romania with/using E3 and Torch Mission.)

"We need a country size mission strategy!" said one of the pastors, after a long speech with his sorrows related the small growth of baptist churches in Romania in 2005.

"An evangelistic tool that will be good to reach adults, but also youths, teenagers and kids, as these are the future of the church. We don't pay enough attention in transmitting the message of the Gospel to the other generations!" said another pastor.

One of the pastors actually used "our words" in a sentence when he was trying to explain how important is to offer a vision to churches, like a mentorship from pastors with much experience to pastors with smaller experience. He said: "It was not enough promoted the concepts of extend and evangelise, even in association meetings."

All this time, I was sitting there like on springs. Several times I wanted to stand up and almost say like Paul in Athens: "What you are looking for and don't know I come to bring to you!". I hardly waited silently and took notes, even if at a certain moment I wanted to quit writing as almost everything that was said there was preparing the very presentation of Torch vision and E3 ministry. During this time I was praying: "Lord, help them to see, put the words in their mouths!" And finally, the Lord answered my prayer and somebody stood up and said:
"We need to personally build up and involve the church members. We need to re teach the church members that they need to be disciples.!"

Not long after that I was invited to speak.

I introduced using powerpoint presentation - praise God for Laptop and VideoProjector! Powerful tools! - the Torch mission Vision and GMF involvment in Romania since 1991. I explained the E3's: Equip, Evangelise, Establish (in Romanian, Expand) presenting them First Steps manual. I was very happy I came prepared from Timisoara, (even I didn't knew why I carry all these materials with me all around the country) and I offered to each of them the First Step manual. I saw them moving their heads as approval. I also introduced them the E-Cube and I gave to each of them a Cube and a Workbook manual. You should saw these pastors; They were enthusiastic like children, like their prayers were finaly finding answeres! I also took the opportunity to introduce Daniel Patru as E3 instructor in their association and I encouraged them to contact us to start working together.

Even it was the time for lunch, even I was invited to speak for 45 min, after 1 hour and 15 minutes of presentation (they kept interupting me, adding details, becoming enthusiatic, asking me related questions), when i was done with the slides, they still kept me 30 more minutes to talk with some individuals.

I am very grateful for all of you who were praying for this country trip.
It was very worthy, as another association was exposed to E3 vision and ministry.
It was worthy as we have the opportunity to see that indeed, God is in control and is using this ministry to help Romanian churches to be more and more dedicated to His Kingdom.
It was worthy as we have now a new and fresh assurance that this vision is from God and is His answer to many pastors and leaders that are crying and praying for church members that need to be more mature and for many unsaved people who need to be transformed into discipols of Christ.

Rejoyce with me seing the wonderful works that our Lord and Savior is ready to do with those that are ready to serve Him.

Catalin Covaci

Agape,
Chris Truax

PS I will be leading two teams to Romania soon, the first will be in Galati from June 30 - July 8 and the second in Resita on July 8 - July 15.