Arrival in Spain

Pastor Kevin and Pastor Rich safely arrived in Barcelona on Monday. They were met by Priscilia and Teo Taban and went on their way to find their hotel...which I will let them tell you about!

Pastor Ben from our sister church in Sibiu, Romania was also in Barcelona and was able to join them for dinner. I wonder what they ate and if it kept them up all night!

They had a good drive south down the coast of Spain to Castellon where they checked into their hotel (of a much better quality than the Barcelona hotel I hear). They have been able to call and report but online access is spotty, so posts may be infrequent. Priscilia is a wonderful hostess and the guys seemed very happy in her care. Priscilia and Teo's two children find their two asian guest very facinating to look at and run around saying, "ola!" all the time.

Well, I will give the guys a little more time to report in on the blog...hopefully with a picture or two!

Greetings from Romania

Here's a picture of our gracious host Radu and his lovely new bride, Emma. Next to Pastor Kevin you can see the back of our translator, Adi. It was a real joy to meet Adi and share what God is doing in his life. Pray for him as he is on his way to Thailand for a 10 day conference on missions.

Pastor Kevin shared about the Senior Home in Slimnic in the previous blog. It was both encouraging and heartbreaking to hear many of the stories from these seniors. Two had served in prison camps in Siberia just because they were of German descent when the Red Army rolled through Romania at the end of World War II. It didn't matter that they were girls or young women. Because they had German blood, they were shipped off to Russia. It has been encouraging to see how they are all blessed by Jesus to be in the home. Their faith is strong and they seek ways to love Jesus more each day.

Thank you FCC

The Good News Senior Home in Slimnic has 28 residents.  More than ten of whom have little or no means of support.  All of them are widowed or have lost their children.  However, thanks to the efforts of our VBS children, FCC donated enough money to heat the facility for one month! 

Nistor and Rodica, the Directors of the home, wanted us to pass along to you their heartfelt and sincere "Thank you FCC!"

By the way, yes, that is a greenhouse in front of the facility.  They are doing everything they can to cut costs while providing a high nutrition diet for the residents.  Moreover, in an effort to become self-sustaining, they would like to expand and upgrade the facility.  Doing so would attract seniors who could pay a market rate for their stay.  The additional income would help to balance out the costs for those of meager resources.

Nistor told us of one senior who he found living in a stable.  Yes, just like Jesus.  Only, this senior was abandoned, surrounded by rats, and his without care to the point that his toenails had grown so long they curled around to the bottoms of his toes.  Yet, this man came to the home and, during his stay, committed his life to Jesus.

It is through project such as these that FCC is reaching out and helping people in desperate circumstances.

Blessings,

Pastor Kevin.

Romanian Pastors

It's been a real joy to meet these young Romanian pastors. They've been sharing their stories and it's been incredible to see the Kingdom impact that these young men and their families are making throughout the country. They're from every region and corner of this nation. It's been really good to see how they are accepting Pastor Kevin's challenges to think outside the box and look at changing ministries to engage the reality of a post-modern world. I'm supposed to nurture them and encourage them and they are doing the same things for me! It's going to be sad to see our conference end tomorrow.

This Gogosi is for you, Glenn

We had to do it.  Glenn Rose would have been proud!  These gogosi (pronounced: go-GOHSH) are full of chocolate and warm and mmmmm and -- hey, I think we've got a couple of minutes to go grab another!

Today I had a wonderful conversation with Helen Poplocean (Pastor Ben's wife).  We talked all about Glenn and how we have been touched by him (and Becky).  It brought Helen to the point of tears -- sadness, yet fully confident and thankful to the Lord.

We're in Day Two of our three-day Pastors Conference.  Pastor Rich and I are speaking to approximately 15 young Romanian pastors.  It is a privilege for us to invest in this way  in the future of Romania.  And all of this is possible because of the generous and faithful community at FCC.  So many of the people that we meet know of "the Fremont Church" because of our twelve-year sister church relationship with Bethany Baptist church in Sibiu.  We thank the Lord for how He is using the gifts provided through you, our family at FCC.

Blessings!

Pastor Kevin.

Arrival in Sibiu

It looks like they were able to get new connecting flights from Munich so they are able to get to Sibiu by 9 pm on Tuesday night...and hopefully get some sleep in a actual bed before participating as speakers at the retreat/conference on Wednesday.

Thank you for your prayers!

Plane Delay!

Our two fearless pastors had to endure 3 hours on the plane...at the gate!

The flight was delayed, so please pray that they will be swiftly rebooked onto new connecting flights so that they will be able to arrive in Sibiu the night before the conference starts! A tough feat since there are very limited flights to Sibiu.

And so it begins...

Just to let you all know we've been sitting on the Tarmac at SFO for the past two hours. We're going to miss all of our original connections on Germany but God's working on other plans.

Made it to SFO

The guys made it to the airport in plenty of time...can't wait to hear about their flight in another 14 hours or so!

We're on our way to the airport.