Heading on...

Hello Prayer Team,

Saturday I attended a Romanian wedding. It was very beautiful. A lot like a American wedding accept the wedding lasts about 2 hours with multiple sermons, but the bride and groom get to sit on stage throughout the ceremony. Weddings always remind me of Christ relationship with the church. How He loves us and protects us, but also how He desires that we hear His voice and follow His direction.

Yesterday I enjoyed worshiping in the Brethern church in Botosani. During the morning service 9:30 until 12:00 I gave a short sermon and sang the old Hymn "Where You There". We also had an evening service from 6 -8. I love worshiping in another language it gives me a glimpse of what heaven will be like with every Tribe, Tongue, and Nation, crying out "Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lamb!"

Multumesc (Thank you) to the Cojocariu family that allowed me to stay at their house and eat their food here in Botosani. It has been a blessing! This is a great family that really tries to seek the Lord in all they do.

Today I will meet with the Baptist pastor in town and invite him to join the e3 and Brethern team next year for a Church Planting mission trip. Then I will head to Suceava (about an hour drive) to meet with Dan Boingeanu another Baptist pastor but also one of e3's Romanian coordinators. Tonight I will take a train bound for Timisoara and have a little bit of time there to tour around before I get up early Thursday to fly home via Vienna and Frankfurt.

Thank you so much for your prayers that fuel my ministry!

Agape,
Chris Truax

Botosani Blessings

Hello Prayer Team,

Thanks for continuing to lift me up while I am in Romania! Yesterday I got the unexpected blessing of going and worshipping in two small village churches that my ministry got to help plant in 2001 and 2002. I was able to encourage them to live for Christ and be a light in their community. I also gave them the challenge of praying Matt 9:35-38. Where Jesus tells us we need to pray for more workers for the harvest. I challenged them to pray for more Romanian workers but also to pray for the recruiting of the team I will be bringing next year to this area. We always have great ministry here but the American teams have always been on the small side. The harvest is plentiful here and a bigger team would be a blessing. So join with the Romanians in these two villages and pray to the Lord of the Harvest that He would raise up more (American) workers for His harvest. I would love to see a team of 30 or 40 raised up.

I finally got some of the pictures of the mountain survival camp downloaded. It was a great time to build each other up in the love of Christ as we faced the struggles of survival in the mountains. I am looking into the possibilities of making this camp an add-on to my mission trip next year, allowing more Americans to experience God's majesty in the Romanian mountains.
Left: Camping under a tarp.
Below: My team on the top of Moldoveanu the highest peak in Romania (2544 m).




Above: Hiking through the fog. Above: a small taste of the beauty I saw.

Please continue to pray for me, I fly home on Aug 3. Also if you could please pray for an 'unspoken request', I have someone close to me that needs to know God's peace and hope.

Agape,
Chris Truax

I survived the Mountain Survival camp!

Hello Prayer Partners,

I Survived! Thanks for your prayers! I am still in Romania until Aug 3, but I just finished the Romanian (and German) led Christian Mountain Survival Camp. It was a lot of fun, but also very exhausting. I got to see the majestic Romanian mountains and climb the tallest mountian in Romania Moldoveanu. I became very close to 16 Romanians and 1 German even though most did not speak English. We were all a family in Christ, and even through the language barrier worked as a team to survive 5 days in the mountains. Soon I will post a few pics.

This next week I will be in Botosani, Romania visiting old friends and setting up a mission trip for next year. Please continue to keep me in your prayers! May God be glorified in everything you do!

Agape,
Chris Truax

Update On end of ministry in Resita

Buna (hello),

The ministry is Resita is over and it was a great week. It was great to minister for God's Glory. On the Bocsa team we worked in two sites, Izgar and Ezeris, and we presented the Gospel to 176 people and of those God added 45 to His Kingdom! For the whole team that worked in the Resita area we had 412 presentations of the Gospel and 128 people prayed to recieve Christ as their Savior! God is good! Your prayers were answered!

I am traveling to the Christian Survival Camp in tomorrow. Please pray for me for strength (I am a little tired after two weeks of ministry). I will be out of email contact for about a week and a half, but will try to update you on my condition when I get back to civilization.

Agape,
Chris Truax

Catch-up Update

Buna Ziua (Good Day),

Sorry it has been awhile since I last updated you on my ministry here in Romania. It has been great but also busy and tiring (so internet has been a lower priority than sleep). I am in Resita now with a new team (some stayed over from the first week). We all made it here safely with all bags but one and it got here the next day. But before I get into updating you on Resita let me finish telling you about Galati.

Thursday ministry was great in Tecuci. It actually started out really hard. We had two team members join our group that dressed up as clowns with the idea of them drawing a crowd and the rest of us being able to share the Gospel with them. We went to what we thought was the perfect spot, the public park where many were gathered, but the grounds keepers kicked us out. Yes they kicked us out of a 'public park'. We tried to walk down the street but it did not seem to be working. We went back to the church for lunch and were trying to decide if we would even use the clowns in the afternoon. We prayed for awhile before we went back out. We decided to take the clowns but only send two groups with them (instead of the whole team) so as not to look like an army invading. The Lord blessed, while I was witnessing (talking in circles) to a very knowledgeable lost man, the two teams with the clowns were swamped with people to talk to and many prayed to receive Christ!

I do not have the stats in front of me for Galati but I believe we planted or revived about 6 churches!

In Resita we are working with three mother churches. My team's mother church is actually based out of a neighboring smaller city named Bocsa. We worked for the past two days in a village named Izgar and saw about 20 pray to receive Christ as their savior! We start in a new village tomorrow, please pray for open doors and open hearts. We got to go back to houses today of individuals who prayed yesterday and do some discipleship. It was very cool to show someone how to use the Bible for the first time. Most of us forget that someone had to show us how to use the Book, Chapter, and Verse system of reference in the Bible, but that is the first step needed to feeling comfortable reading the Bible on your own.

Hopefully I will be able to update you again tomorrow or Thursday!

La Revedere (Good Bye),

Chris Truax

Wednesday Update...

Hello Pray Team,

Thanks so much for praying for me (and thanks to those that sent me notes of encouragement). Tuesday and Wednesday were good. Tuesday was our second and last day in Culdabi. I got to share with a lady named Marianne. She is the mother of some of the kids that came to our children's service. She was very receptive and looked like the Lord was really working on breaking all the barriers in her heart. She did not pray with us but I feel with follow up she might pray soon. Her she is...

After visiting Marianne we had a few minutes before lunch so I suggested to my small team of two that we stop and pray for the rest of the day. My Romania friend Nicolai suggested we go just down the street to a lady's house who has been a Christian since 1953 and would love to pray with us. I thought that was a great idea so we went to her house. We found her studying her bible! We asked her to pray for her neighbors and country and I felt like I was going to explode with the power of God being called on from her prayer, and I could not even understand a word she said. My translator afterwards told me he shivered and the power of her prayer also. I felt blessed being in the presence of a real Prayer Warrior so passionate about God's Glory and her lost neighbors. Her name was Tinka and her is a pick (she is the one in the middle she is 91 years old)

Please pray for us in Tecuci for Thursday. Wednesday was good there but harder ministry because we are doing park and street evangelism in a larger town. Pray for divine appointments and boldness!

Agape,
Chris Truax

A great day of ministry...

Hello Pray-ers,

It was a great first day of ministry. Thanks for praying! We did have a few glitches along the way but that is typical for a first day. My team enjoyed ministering in Culdabi today. We presented the Gospel to over 50 people and 18 accepted Christ as their savior!

On the way out to the village our van stopped and we were able to admire God's beauty. Sunflowers! This is me with my teammate Ashwin.

This afternoon I got to help lead a children's service. It was a lot of fun and 15 children got to hear the gospel. Here is a pic of some of the kids...

Continue to pray against the spiritual forces at work in these villages. These people are in bondage thinking they are Christians (Orthodox) but their twisted knowledge of scripture only seems to confuse the Gospel message in their minds. Please pray that the Lord gives the villagers wisdom and clarity to understand His simple message of Hope.

Agape,
Chris Truax

Great day of worship!

Hello Prayer Team,

My team made it safely to Romania. We had a few bags delayed but they all arrived today! We had a great day of fellowship and worship with the Romanian church. I got the privilege of preaching! I gave a motivational message about the Gospel from Romans 10 and a bit about the church being the body with many parts from Romans 12.

We had a great training meeting where the American team got to meet the Romanians they will be working with for the week. We also reviewed our schedule and tools for evangelism.

The best part of the day was the evening service. We got to go to the village church of Tudor and attend their baptism service. This was extra special for me and another couple on our team because we had worked in this village two years ago. I got to see how God had been working and growing the church. God had even blessed them recently with a church building (they had been meeting in a member's house). Here are a few pics from the baptism service. Thanks for your prayers and please continue! We will be going out for our first day of ministry tomorrow. We will be working in two villages: Sendreni and Culdabi. Pray that God grants us boldness and wisdom and guides us to the homes He wants us to visit.

Agape,
Chris Truax