april newsletter

Dear friends prayer partners and supporters,
Greetings from Cluj-Napoca Transylvania,where Spring is trying hard to arrive, we still have below zero in the morning and chilly winds but we have bright sunshine and lots of lambs being born. Other parts of Cluj County had a quick melt of the last snow and a big mess with flooded fields and houses. Spring floods are normal but Romanian houses crumble away when flooded.
Easter is being celebrated here by many different traditions, some have bonfires to burn away last years sin, many light candles and paint eggs and some simply rejoice that we can worship a risen and living Lord Jesus.
At Pata Rat shanty town we are upgrading the doctors surgery, putting a new cement floor in the church hall and repainting all around. This work is funded by Wels Bible school from Austria and is being done by some of their mature students. They brought with them a load of warm clothing for the Church congregation at Pata Rat, they helped out at our Thursday womens program and then went home visiting with a warm meal to some of the single elderly.
The new nearly democratic Romanian government is trying to improve the health of the nation and fill the treasury at the same time, taxes have been raised on alcohol, tobacco, leaded petrol and digital cameras, we can appreciate the alcohol,tobacco and the petrol taxation but don't understand the health implications of digital cameras.
Our own medical program at Pata is going well, we have a sympathetic young doctor, Aaron George, who is supported by two health mediators from the Romi community. One of these young women we already knew as she attended our summer Bible school youth camp in 2004. The job of the mediators is to make the community aware of medical services, encourage childhood vaccinations and try to make sure births are registered. We have just received official approval for the doctors surgery to be in our building, even though we have been in operation for 4 months already. We would be very happy if a dentist wanted to volunteer to help the doctor. Alongside the health program we are trying hard to find work for as many as possible of our Romi congregation, we are helping them with the paper chase that goes with every part of life in Romania, making bulletins of identity, finding school records from 30 years ago and encouraging our friends not to give up, not be discouraged and to have confidence in themselves. With God on their side everything is possible
Our church at Pata Rat serves a very disadvantaged community who have many hardships to overcome but this is where our church is thriving and where our sermons are given great attention, Scripture references are all looked up ( even if some help is needed) and we can ask about a previous weeks teaching and always get an answer.
Part of what we do can be seen on the web at www.faf.ro
When you look at our web page please remember it was put together by those whose first language is not English, we hope you like it anyway and we will try to keep up to date
Last week we were privileged to be invited to the official opening of the new Blythswood Daniel Cent re building in Flores ti and after the opening we had the chance to show Charlie Macleod of Blythswood some of our ministry. Charlie has arranged for a work team from Saltcoats Church to give us a hand in September and we also have a team from Inverness Christian Fellowship coming in October, hope they bring some oatmeal for breakfast brose.
Our schedule is fairly full right now as Pastor Rufus is in America meeting supporters and preaching and Pastor Bert is in India delivering the money collected by our church to help some of the Tamil families left homeless by the Boxing Day tsunami.
Fresh wood is on its way from the dryer for our house building project, we are hoping to build some of these cabins in other locations rather then just in the shanty town. Whenever possible we will help people to live where they can work or can have access to land to grow food rather than growing an ever larger shanty town. We look forward to a busy summer and will try to keep our news up to date
Thank you dear friend with all our love and every blessing.
Post script
News from Larisa
Larisa Moldovan as some of you know is part of our household, she calls herself our spiritual daughter, works part time at the foundation and attends high school afternoons and evening.
Larisa helps a lot with the children and the young mothers from Pata Rat so when 2 of the ladies went to hospital to give birth Larisa went to visit them both. Both ladies received adequate care ,but were verbally abused by the maternity unit staff who made their predjudce against Romi very clear, this treatment left the younger woman C in tears especially as none of her own family came to visit her so she really appreciated Larisa coming to see her.
. The other lady, T, also had a hard time as whilst she was in labour all her money was stolen. The money she had 200,000lei was to pay for photos of her newborn baby. Every other mother in the ward had enough to pay for baby pictures so she was feeling very bad about her inability to pay. Larisa thought she should do something about this so she asked all the FAF staff who work directly at Pat to collect money to pay for the baby photos. When the other women from Pata heard about this they very quickly joined in and we collected 400,000 lei, enough for 2 large and 4 small photos of her baby that T can take home when she leaves hospital.
We are often pleasantly surprised by the genereous and compassionate hearts of these women, we ask that you pray with us that their lives can become easier and that their children grow up in a better world .
<>With grateful thanks for all your prayers
<> Martin & Trish
<>Strada Anina Nr.3 Bloc AA1, Scara V Apt. 47, Cluj-Napoca 400626, Romania