Just wanted to share with you a need that one of my fellow workers has that you may feel like you want to be apart of. See below for more information:

Dear praying friend,

EuroTeam is doing the third European Pastors Conference, March 15-29. Our European Pastors Conferences has become one of my greatest passions as a missionary. I served as a pastor/church planter for many years, first in the states then for 16 years in France. I understand the joy and privileges of being a shepherd of the flock. I sympathize with the challenges and difficulties that they face in their ministry. I feel that one of the best ways to invest myself in present ministry is to encourage and train European pastors. Our European Pastors Conferences focus upon village pastors in Europe, primarily Eastern Europe, who stretch themselves very thin, often overseeing several churches at a time. They sacrifice much for the work on the Lord, in very difficult circumstances with humble means. They need blessed and lifted up. It is not easy to be a pastor in the village, in such underdeveloped country. Our pastors conference teams come to refresh the European pastor and his wife. We want to encourage them by giving them several relaxing days away from the grind, by bringing them Biblical teaching, sharpening their ministry skills. Just as important as our teaching sessions, our team also enjoys fellowshipping and worshipping together with the European pastoral couples. At the end of each pastors conference, we celebrate the Lord’s Supper with them, then one pastoral couple at a time, our team prays a blessing upon each one of them. Our hearts are melted together. There are tears as we part. The pastoral couples go away strengthened, reinvigorated, with fresh ideas and the assurance that hundreds North American Believers are praying for them.

In order for our European Pastors Conference to happen, we provide a sponsorship for each of the pastors so they can afford to attend. We have done two of these and each time God has provided faithfully. This year the sponsorships are a little higher because of the lower dollar. This year we are also hosting twice as many pastors because we are doing a conference in Romania the first week then another conference in Moldova the second week, 40 pastoral couples all together. For the four day/three night conference we need $225 per pastor, $450 per pastoral couple. This sponsorship will feed and lodge the pastoral couple in a moderate hotel during the conference.

These Eastern European pastors need encouragement. Pastor Silviu, a young pastor who oversees 3 congregations, told me that he had never had a day-off and thanked me profoundly for organizing the encouraging conference.

Lidia, wife of Pastor Mihai, thanked me, saying that she rarely gets to spend quality time with her husband. Mihai and Lidia are Moldovan and they are helping me organize my March conference in Chesinau, Moldova.

Pastor Ion, who helped me organize the last conference, said that our conference themes had really struck a chord with his pastors. He thanked me with tears in his eye, telling me that words could not properly express his gratitude.

Would you pray that God supply all the funds so that all the Romanian and Moldovan pastors and wives who have been invited can be sponsored? In order to sponsor the 40 pastoral couples who will be coming to our European Pastors Conference, we will need 40 X $450 which is $18,000. God has so graciously already provided for 8 of these pastoral couples, $3,600. We need 32 more. Would you pray about sponsoring a pastoral couple individually or as a family? We can provide you with photos and personal information about the pastoral couple whom you sponsored. If you wish, you can even exchange emails or regular letters with the pastor that you sponsor.

Would you share this information with churches, Sunday School classes, home fellowship groups, all your Christian friends? Even if people can’t sponsor a pastor, the more people who pray for this, the better. In a week, I will be sending out more information about the pastors whom we will be blessing and more details about where our two conferences will be held.

If you, your church or a friend would like to sponsor a Romanian or Moldovan pastoral couple, you may do so in one of two ways. You can do it very simply by going to our secure online giving website. GEM Online Giving

· Click on “Donate Now”
· Click on “Give Now.”
· Fill out the billing information.
· Under the category “Missionaries and Projects”, select “Projects”
· Then select, “EuroTeam” there are two EuroTeam choices, either is fine.
· Type in the amount that you want to give.
· In the “Comments” window, type European Pastors Conference.
· Then fill out your card information.
· Then click “Next” and your card information will be verified.

If you prefer, you may send your sponsorship in by regular mail. The check should be made out to Greater Europe Mission, and the check should be clearly earmarked for “EuroTeam – European Pastors Conference.” Send your contributions to:

Greater Europe Mission
P.O. Box 1669
Monument, CO 80132

Thanks for bathing the ministry project in prayer.

Sincerely,

Freddie

Repeatedly over the last few days I have been asked by different Europeans, “Who do you think is going to be the next US president?” Its a touchy subject and as we saw with recent stock market events when Americans even think about making a change, it affects much of the world.

So, have you figured out who you are voting for? If you haven’t check out this website –> Glassbooth.org. After setting some values and taking a short quiz, it will match you up with the candidates that rank in those areas closest to you. It will even give you the reasons that it matched you with that candidate. Now I don’t know how accurate it is for everyone but for me, it says my likely candidates are John McCain and Barack Obama (one of which really is who I am seriously considering voting for - but I prefer to keep my opinion to myself on that matter).

So go check out this site and you Americans, make sure you go out and vote. Not everybody in the world gets to so make sure you do.

It’s been one year since we arrived in Germany. Can you believe it? It’s gone by so fast yet we feel like we’ve been living here a lot longer than 1 year. One of the cool things was this morning I got to get up (actually it was too early) and go to the Zurich airport (I got to see the sunrise up over the Swiss Alps). There I picked up some of our GEM missionaries who were coming back after a few months in the States. They flew in on the exact flight we had taken one year earlier. So in a way I felt like the people that had come and pick us up last year.

Another cool thing is next week, the latest member of the eDOT team arrives and we get to help her and her husband get settled in. On our team we have a policy that the last one in helps the next person as you (supposedly) remember more about what its like to be the newbie. Its been fun looking at apartments (and now understanding more of the German) and trying to remember all the things we did when we first showed up (impossible to remember it as you are going through jet-lag, culture shock and just overwhelmed by everything that you have to do in a language and culture that you don’t understand).

So with that being said, would you pray for our new missionaries. They still have some more support to raise in this last week (if you interested in maybe supporting them, check out their website here) and are going through their good-byes. Then they will have their transitions to do. Thanks.

I don’t know if I shared this one before or not. But a while back one of the guys around here had too much time on his hands and redid our photo that we keep here on the blog:

Just for the record: I have found pros and cons to all the operating systems I work with and yes, I own a Mac but I run more than just the Mac OS on it.