St. Christopher's Church, Southbourne

Friends and Projects we Support in Romania

In August a group of 10 people travelled to St Laurence’s Hospice in Cernavoda, Romania, with the aim of spreading the Word and the love of God to the children and young people at the orphanage and the surrounding area. The group then split into two groups on the Monday and one went off to Cataloi whilst the other stayed at Cernavoda to work with Pastor Claudiu and his wife Corina in his two churches in Seimeni and Cernavoda and a local area called Columbia.

Seimeni - We worked for three mornings with 12 children in this small Church and did a range of activities with the children including a puppet show of the lost sheep, a craft of a cross which said ‘Jesus loves you’, fun games and face painting. On the last Saturday we ran a bible study on the Fruit of the Spirit and the children produced a tree with fruit on it representing each fruit e.g. love, patience, kindness etc. This was then displayed on the previously empty Church walls.

Columbia – One of the poorer areas of Cernavoda, just down the hill from the Orphanage was Columbia. We spent three mornings and five afternoons working with 20-40 children and on the last Saturday afternoon there were 60 children. We had a lot of fun with the aid of puppets and drama, telling bible stories such as the Prodigal Son and Good Samaritan. We also did numerous crafts, face painting, singing songs and playing football, basketball, water balloons games and many other games. It was especially great when one of the children brought us an album of pictures he had drawn to show the story of the Good Samaritan which we had done the previous day.

St Laurence’s Hospice – We spent the evenings with the young people from the Orphanage. We enjoyed fun and fellowship together singing songs, drinking hot chocolate and playing uno. We joined them on two evenings on their camping trip by the Danube River, where they fished, played games and had a barbecue. We also spent some time during the day with the special needs group at the Orphanage and played parachute games, sang songs, did painting and played with the puppets.

The trip was a very successful one and everyone worked very hard. Although it was tiring due to the busy schedule it was very rewarding working with the children and seeing their happy faces as we spent time with them during the week and taught them more about Jesus. We hope to send another group to Romania next year and your continued prayers for the children and staff in Cernavoda and Seimeni are appreciated.

Mark Inkpen