Bridge of Prayer May-June 2013 – Summer Camps

Dear MWB Prayer Partner, Thank you for praying. We really need your prayers! – Mission Without Borders NZ

Background info and prayer needs Key points: May-July is the summer camp season. Our summer camps are the most effective way of reaching children with the Gospel – as well as giving them the time of their lives. Camps also provide ways to help them see life differently – and to give them HOPE for a better life. It is also a time of warmer weather (Spring to early Summer) when our coordinators travel more easily to rural and distant families and communities; rural families begin to see their crops growing (from Seeds of Hope parcels and their own trees and fields); outreaches and events are held in partnership with local churches; and in Albania on June 23, Parliamentary elections will be held.

May Please pray - For summer camps planning: Please pray for our leaders and senior staff as plans are made, lists of possible children attendees are drawn up, and much time, creative thought and prayer is directed to planning. Please pray that sufficient funds will come in to allow at least 3,500 children to attend camps. Please pray for the first camps starting in Ukraine at the end of May.

Heart-felt Christian commitments are

made at a Ukraine summer camp (2012)

Family sponsors sought!

Children in Romania with MWB Bible

Course Certificates

For children and families needing sponsors: We are deeply thankful for a steady growth in the number of sponsors of children and families. This is an important and growing facet of our work as it enables us to link needy families and children in State orphanages or in “at risk” situations in the community with caring NZ sponsors. We still need many more NZ sponsors in 2013 for the families and children already on our books and enrolled into our F2F and CRI sponsorship programmes.

June Please pray – For summer camps taking place: Camps will take place in all six of our field countries, with the biggest numbers of children attending in Moldova, Ukraine and Romania (about 1000+ in each). Please pray for

• the safety of those travelling to and from the camps;

• the leaders and volunteers who are helping;

• the children, that they may receive not only wonderful care but also come to know the God who cares for them more than anyone; and

• successful follow up contacts and events for the children after camp, including the Bible Correspondence Courses that are so well-supported by F2F and State Homes children.

Albania:

Monika, our Manager, has asked us to continue to join in prayer with her office and local churches: Please lift up the 860 Albanian families (including some of our sponsored F2F families) in Durres and Illiria living in State apartments who are being evicted as part of a government programme to return seized land to its pre-WWII owners or compensate them with coastal land (as in Durres). This has resulted in much anguish among the poor families affected, who face having nowhere to live other than on the street.

State-owned houses being demolished, Durres, Albania

Moldova:

Please pray for good fruit from the Christian Input team’s Easter outreaches to children in State Homes and F2F families and children in our community centres around the whole of Moldova (held in the last 10 days of April during the Easter break). Please also pray for more openings for our anti-human trafficking (HT) sessions to be run in State Homes and in front of other teenage children, to alert them to the dangers of “HT”, and pray for the protection of these vulnerable children. (For more information, see Overcomers 2013 magazine or www.mwb.org.nz)

Bosnia and Herzegovina:

Please pray for the families in the F2F sponsorship and Families in Crisis programmes, who have received Seeds of Hope parcels this Spring. They have been working to plant crops for the summer – something they can do to help themselves. Please pray that there will be a good harvest of crops – and souls – from this large group. (Pictured: Bosnian families receiving their Seeds of Hope boxes)

Bulgaria: Please pray for MWB Bulgaria Coordinator (pastor) Emil Metodiev and the families of Krupnik village, where there is little employment. The Mission has helped them build a new community facility (pictured at right)for housing and breeding pigs, hens and goats, to help the villagers move towards self-sufficiency. Please pray that this and other new initiatives will open the way for material and spiritual blessings upon these disadvantaged and overlooked folk, to restore a sense of dignity and worth.

Romania: Please pray for an effective Christian witness to arise both within Romania and in the migrant Romanian and Roma communities across Europe and in other western countries. Please pray for unity among both the evangelical Christian leaders and also the numerous expatriate mission groups working in Romania, that they may speak with wisdom and authority to local and central government about the issues confronting the poor and disadvantaged that they deal with daily. (Pictured: StreetMercy meals being given out)

Ukraine: Our MWB Ukraine staff report difficulties in getting much needed goods and deliveries of goods and aid across the border into Ukraine. Please join with us in praying that God will intervene and give us favour with the officials who are making our work more difficult and by causing delays, hurting their own needy people. (Picture: a border inspection, Ukraine)

International and general needs

International frontline staff: Please pray for all of our field coordinators (who visit families, children and the elderly), who have recently met altogether in Sibiu, Romania, for mutual encouragement and training: that they may be inspired in their work and dealings with the disadvantaged people they meet and not lose hope, remaining full of faith that God will undertake beyond their capabilities to meet the needs that they see daily. (Pictured: F2F Coordinator Emil Metodiev, Bulgaria)