(February 5, 2023) David McGuire, ‘the missionary with a camera’ to Romania again uses his camera to ‘write’ reports on his latest trip to Ukraine…
Once again I and other concerned Christians ventured going up into Ukraine to share the love of Jesus with heartbroken and needy Ukrainians.
Many Ukrainians have practical needs! Sharing the gospel message of love doesn’t mean preaching only – it begins with fulfilling Jesus’ command to ‘love thy neighbour’ (Mark 12:31)!
As I reported last year – Sharing the Gospel With Words and Deeds with other photos – on a number of times caring Romanian Christians have made several dangerous trips up there to bring groceries, practical supplies and other goods to dear, distressed people who have seen their homes and towns destroyed by Russia. And to pray about needs!
Just recently, some Ukrainians were blessed by yet another such venture up there by a Romanian team… despite dangers. Firstly Groceries were purchased that could be distributed freely to needy Ukrainians. Here’s Chris and me loading up bread and other grocery items.
Then practical provisions were obtained, such as desperately needed woodburning stoves and generators asthere is no electric or gas where we were daring to travel. And not only no heat but no water!
(November 20, 2022) David McGuire, missionary to Romania, again uses his camera to ‘write’ reports and share some updates…
We’re called to share the good news about the Lord Jesus, the Saviour of the world. The world is in terrible trouble these days and we believe that James’ teaching of James 2:17 must be active if we’re to reach lost souls with the gospel!
And what did the apostle say? The Message Bible pulls no punches – ‘Isn’t it obvious that God-talk without God-acts is outrageous nonsense?’
Consequently, we endeavour to act as Christians should, meeting practical needs as well as sharing our faith. Hence we join with others here in Romania to reach out however we can expressing the love of God, whether it’s…
Kids ministry – sharing Jesus with children
Buying and transporting needed food to troubled Ukraine
Supporting refugee Ukrainians
Reaching local people
Building homes for the homeless
Praying for needs, not just preaching, or
Training sessions on divine healing, spiritual warfare, and overcoming Satan
1. Children’s ministry Many kids here have never heard of Jesus or His gospel message of love and forgiveness of sin, and we continue to reach such with the good news, using biblical cartoon movies. Praise God that they’re attentive and that several have accepted Jesus.
As well as regular gatherings, we treat them with special meals and outings… below Left: Tigmandru summer kids on a trip to the zoo Centre: happy kids. Right: Summer outreach camp (our daughter Sabrina, in black, top right).
2. Helping Ukrainians (i) Needs We don’t work alone but continue to associate with other Christians and teams reaching out to this troubled nation… getting badly needed items and transporting these up to Ukraine.
Left: Food and clothing Centre1: Needed stoves Centre 2: YWAM Cluj’s Nieck (He comes from Holland) buying food Right: Packing potatoes
Have Trailer: Will Travel! Queuing up at Ukraine border…
(ii) Sheltering refugees Encouraging those who have made it to Romania to settle peacefully, even supplying Ukrainian food!
3. Local outreaches lead to salvations and baptisms Tigmandru outreach with seven churches attending. Blessing some new converts ready for baptism.
4. Building homes for the needy This aspect of our ministry continues. As many know, I delight to use my building skills and with others we bless homeless people, especially for gypsies… and take the opportunity to share Jesus as we build.
Right: 77-year-old Phil France from Sheffield, England came here to help build this house in Danes.
5. Prayer opportunities Team members take every opportunity not only to tell of Jesus but to pray for the sick showing His love of all.
Most times we stand and pray.
Sometimes we really have to get down to business as it were! 30 minutes of sincere prayer, then healing came to this person’s foot, praise God.
6. Teaching and training Below: Equipping leaders conference, Tigmandru. Michael Cantrell teaching on biblical use of finance. Marcel and team teaching on worship. Norman Patterson teaching on Today’s Church. Me, David, teaching on divine healing. YWAM group that was taught spiritual warfare by me.
7. Yoked partnership As James went on to teach in verse 22 – ‘Isn’t it obvious that faith and works are yoked partners, that faith expresses itself in works? That the works are “works of faith”?’
We appreciate your prayers. This really supports us in our ministry here for the Lord. May God use you too whether you are to reach out to needy people, especially to witness Jesus.
With my wife Rodica (my gifted fellow-minister) and Sabrina (See Sabrina’s challenging October article – What is the True Christian Lifestyle). We can be contacted/supported via link below.
_______________________________________________ David and Rodica McGuire are missionaries in Sighișoara and have built many homes for the poor in that area, especially among the gypsy communities, as well as outreaching to children who have never heard of Jesus, using cartoon DVDs. Link: OnlinerConnect@gmail.com. Recommended: David’s own story A Work in Progress (Amazon) ________________________________________________
The discouraging thing about Romania was not the breadlines. It was the utter lack of hope!
Even after communism fell, the leftover lifestyle was colourless – work, work, work. Ovidiu Rusu (right), because he had read widely, dreamed of greater things and despaired of a life assigned by socialism of being just a part of the machine to support the state.
‘When I was a child, I was not aware of how bad communism was. But as I became a teenager and then a young man, it was a struggle not seeing a future. There were no opportunities. All the doors were closed,’ Ovidiu says on a Virginia Beach Potter’s House podcast. ‘I told my friends, “If the end of the year catches me here, I’m going to kill myself. I don’t want to live this life.”’
Walking on eggshells lifestyle Life in Brasov under communism, according to Ovidiu, was characterised by:
Fear of authority. ‘Anybody with any measure of authority wants you to feel that they are the boss. Authority is there to harm and humiliate you. You live walking on eggshells.’
Poverty and boring food. ‘You have just five options to eat and you cycle through them. I remember being tired of beans and rice. You have one pair of shoes, one pair of pants, one coat. You sew it to fix it.’
You as an individual don’t count.
Thinking is squelched. ‘Because people who think for themselves are dangerous.’
Even the fall of Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu in December 1989 did not immediately usher in a change of life. Though freedoms were introduced, life continued to appear pretty dull and opportunity-less.
The legacy of communism was atheism. His parents had never attended the Eastern Orthodox church much, but a lot of other Romanians did as a passive resistance to communism. Ovidiu didn’t believe in God because that’s what they had taught in school.
Thinking that if life were to change, he would need to do something himself, Ovidiu decided to flee the country with some of his young adult friends. Their plan was to make their way to France and join the French Foreign Legion. They had heard that the pay was good, and you could apply for citizenship in France.
Crying out to God But they got caught and gaoled.
‘I was very, very distraught,’ he says. He kept trying to escape Romania, but nothing worked. That’s when he decided on suicide to escape Romania. During the last two weeks of 1992 he stayed in his room, pacing and smoking. He avoided his friends and his girlfriend. He was stewing.
Though he didn’t believe in God, he cried out to Him. ‘If you exist you have to do something,’ he said.
On December 31, his mom sent him to the bread lines at 4am. You had to get up early to get the special bread that is customary for New Year’s Eve. ‘It wasn’t a line, it was a mob, and I’m right in the middle of it,’ he remembers. ‘I was standing there frustrated, angry, desperate, no hope.’
He noticed a young guy working his way through the crowd. ‘Excuse me, excuse me,’ he pushed gently through, coming straight over to Ovidiu, whom he addressed. ‘I know you from the neighbourhood,’ the young man said. He began witnessing to him about Jesus.
‘I had cried out to God three days earlier, and the first time I step out of my house, God sent this guy to talk to me,’ Ovidiu marvels.
What hit him was the young man assured him that God would take care of his future. ‘That was my struggle,’ Ovidiu says. ‘That was what I was fighting with inside. I could not get his words outside of my head. God was working in me.’
(Above: The church in Brasov)
Ovidiu went to church that very night. The Christians were praying, thanking God, in a circle. Ovidiu accepted Jesus into his heart.
Growing in the faith ‘The factor in my salvation was the feeling of desperation, the lack of hope for a future. I was feeling trapped. Living in a communist country, you know this is the place I was born, this is the place I will die. I wanted to do more. I wanted to be part of something’ he added.
At the time, there was a revival among young people sparked by missionaries from Germany and elsewhere. ‘I was 23, and I was one of the older people getting saved,’ Ovidiu says. He attended a church led by Richard Brooks, who preached hope and faith, an enticing novelty for Romanians.
‘I was just amazed at the preaching,’ Ovidiu says. ‘I was open. Pastor Brooks was the right man at the right time. He was a man of faith. He was an exciting man, he was happy. He had an attitude that everything is possible. That’s exactly what we needed because we grew up in communism in which nothing is possible and all the doors were closed.’
Ovidiu grew in his faith and knowledge of the Bible. Today, he is a pastor in Brasov.
(Left) Street outreaching with Pastor Ovidiu
If you want to know more about a personal relationship with God, go here
GodReports.com, founded by Mark Ellis in 2009, is devoted to promoting Christian missions by sharing stories and testimonies from missionaries and mission organisations.Reporter, Pastor Michael Ashcraft is also a financial professional in California. _________________________________________________________
(September 19, 2022) Sabrina McGuire, 14-year-olddaughter of missionaries to Romania, shares her first mission camp experiences…
The title above is a question I’ve asked myself many times before… and recently found some answers.
I had a great opportunity to go to a YWAM Christian camp where there were teachings on spiritual warfare, prophecy and many other subjects. Great teachings… but yet my heart hungered for more. I never truly knew how to really practise Christianity in the real world… and I wanted to!
Blessing people Fortunately we campers were told that our second week of camp was a mission trip to different locations in Romania. During that week we did volunteer work for churches, kids and food bases… and it proved to be a great way of blessing people as well as being blessed ourselves.
May 27, 2022) David McGuire missionary to Romania, shares…
Yet again I find myself thanking Jesus for life itself – and for the honour of serving Him. And for the strength of His grace enabling Rodica and I and friends, real teamwork, help the hurting and needy, not only here in Romania but also in Ukraine when we venture up there to reach distressed Ukrainians.
And I thank you all, both personal contacts and charities contacts within the body of Christ, who pray and back us in our evangelistic ministry.
We continue to witness many great things that only God can do through the Holy Spirit as He uses us here and our ventures to Ukraine.
The reality is that He works through all of us. Do keep praying for us, please… but remember the principle is that God wants every Christian to be available to serve Him. May we all be working together for our king Jesus!
Following are some recent photos in respect of the team we work with to spread the gospel message, not only spiritually but practicallywith Christian love…
(January 05, 2022) David McGuire brings a colourful, picturesque report from Romania…
Those engaged in overseas missions ‘send in’ reports to headquarters back home, to supporting churches, friends or contacts. This is often pages of typed information.
Rather than a lot of text, I thought I’d like Connecting with You readers to know visually what’s been happening here by way of photos. After all, there’s an old saying: A picture is worth a thousand words.
In short, despite ongoing troubles around the world last year we have continued to reach out to children, build houses for gypsies, and meet other needy people… where they’re at here. These following pictures speak for themselves!
Mesmerised children
Christmas presents joy Over 2000 presents, received from four sources of the body of Christ, were distributed giving great joy for so many kids as well as adults.
Some presents left over from home distribution were perfect for kids who beg in supermarket carparks, as below…
(September 18, 2021) David McGuire missionary to Romania, shares…
The world is in a mess but with Jesus there is life and life in abundance!
He makes a way where the world says stop!
Our thanks to who have praying for us… your continued care and support has made so much come to pass.
A very busy summer indeed with no stopping! I have so many pictures from this summer! Such the one below showing one of two houses that were built in Tigmandru, one for a family of six and the other for a single elderly lady.
Both situations were cases of homelessness and completed with provision coming from American Christian friends and a northern Irish charity (Project Romania), praise the Lord.
And here’s a photo showing Tigmandru church trip out to the zoo for the kids who come to the weekly Bible group we do. Provision also came in to bless the teenagers who attend the same church go to a three-day Christian camp.
Mark Ellis brings an inspirational story of how God answered prayer in unexpected way:
Izabella grew up in communist Romania at a time when no one was allowed to go to church, have Bibles in their possession, or openly talk about God.
‘When I was seven and my brother was 10, we found a Bible hidden in the floor of our house. We didn’t know what it was,’ she said in a report by Samaritan’s Purse. (more…)