I had a good visit to our mission field in Romania for the past 10 days.
While there, I was privileged to baptist 5 brothers and sisters in Bethlehem Chinese Baptist Church. All are from China ranging from 2 young people, one middle aged lady, an older gentlemen, and a construction worker. I also join the STM trip to the Northern city of Iasi near the border of Moldova. There, we visited and encouraged some Chinese contruction workers who accepted the Lord in our previous STM trips. We also had good fellowship and worship together with our mission partners from local Romanian Church.
COCM begun the ministry in Romania in the early 90s first through Short Term Mission trips. Many Christians worldwide helped the effort. Through the years, COCM has been steadfast in caring this pioneering mission field.
During the past year, our workers Kaifong Chan and Simon Tam has been stationed there on rotation and continuously, strengthening the church. Last year, through our partnership with the Romanian Baptist Union, we were able to officially register Bethlehem Chinese Baptist Church in Romania.
There are roughly about 20,000 Chinese in Romania. Many of them are small business people working in the markets. There is an increasing population of construction workers coming. So the mission there is to reach the local new Chinese immigrants and construction workers with the Gospel of Jesus Christ and build them up to mature in Christ.
The church in Bucharest is strategic because it can be good a launch base for more missions in the nearby Balkans and other part of Eastern Europe.
Recently, there has been problems between the Chinese small business and the owners of the Markets in Bucharest. Some violent incident broken out while I was there. It has affacted the relationship and caused stress to many Chinese Christians.
Please pray for:
1. Stability and a good environment for Church to develop.
2. The church to mature, be the light and salt of the world, and became mission minded.
3. More long term workers to join the team and pastor the church
4. A stronger co-workers team in the Church.
5. Strength and patience for our missionaries to nurture the church to grew.
6. Stronger partnerships with the local Romanian Christians to explore cross cultural mission
As I travel more in the field. It is obvious the field is ready to be harvested. We just need more workers. I pray the Lord of the harvest to send more workers to join COCM.
To that end, I am excited to introduce Julia Wang and Anthony Lau.
Julia Wang will be joining us as COCM Trainee from the USA. She will be coming early 2010 for 2 years initially. She will be based in COCM centre in Milton Keynes for orientation and be familiar with the Mission. We intend to locate her in the field working among the Chinese Students near University campus soon after. Julia is originally from China. She will be finishing her Master of Divinity degree from Calvin Zhao Chinese for Christ Theological Seminary at the end of the year. Our USA board will send her to join us. Please see attached testimony in both English and Chinese.
Anthony Lau has accepted my invitation to join us as COCM Associate. Anthony has a long history with COCM student ministry. He arrived in Cambridge in 1990 and worked as a software engineer. Since then, he has been heavily involved in the leadership of Cambridge CCC from its beginning. Anthony was ordained as an elder in the Cambridge CCC in1998. He has served in the Pastoral Team and all three language congregations in different times. Currently he is serving in the Cantonese congregation, mainly in student ministry.
Anthony first attended the SEEC in the mid 80s, and regularly thereafter until 1995, when he started a young family. He returned to SEEC in early 2000s, mostly serving as an interpreter and a workshop leader. He also served in the 1995 SEEC Committee (Cambridge) and chaired the 2005 SEEC committee (from Cambridge CCC).
Anthony will be working with me as a COCM consultant to SEEC and also other student ministries.
Please join me welcoming both of them to our team.
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Serving together in Christ,
Henry
Special donation - Mini bus
Dear friends:
For those of you who have been to COCM UK headquarters, you probably saw an old mini-bus. It was used for many mission related transportation including Short Term Missions throughout UK and Europe. But it is in a dilapidated condition now and should be replaced due to safety reasons. It will cost an estimated US$50,000 to replace this mini-bus with either a newer/safer mini-bus or two seven-seaters. We would like to ask you to make a special offering for this need particularly for the transportation for various short term mission trips in Europe. If you are burdened for this need, please make your chec k to COCMUSA earmarked “transportation needs” and send it to Lily Chuang, Treasurer,38 Stonegate Drive, Wethersfield, CT 06109.
On behalf of our team, thank you for your prayers and support.
