December 2024

We would like to take this moment to wish you a most significant and meaningful Christmas season and to thank you for your concern, prayers, and support over this last year.

Celebrating Thanksgiving Sunday and 30 Years of Service

The Bucharest International Church (BIC) chose to celebrate Thanksgiving Sunday, half-way between the dates for Canadian and American Thanksgiving. At the same time, we were honoured with thirty years of service. It has been our privilege to see God’s faithfulness and His provision throughout the past three decades. 

Thanksgiving Sunday at BIC – a buzz of activity.

Presentation of BIC’s logo for 30 years of service - a lighthouse, a beacon of light and hope.

Mardell reminisces:

We have experienced so much of God’s goodness, and we have so much to be thankful for:

  • I remember when Dan came home after hosting a team in Romania for three months in October of 1994. I could immediately see that he wanted to return. I remember telling him not to talk to me, not to look at me… I was not moving to Romania! I had been there for two weeks of those three months and had experienced great ministry opportunities… but moving there was not for me, it was for someone else. However, God was persistent and three months later I said ‘yes’ to God… with conditions… ‘I’ll go for two years.’ That was thirty years ago… and ministry, though challenging in so many ways, has also been so satisfying.
  • I remember during our first month in Romania when we quite randomly met the founding pastors of the Bucharest International Church. We were enjoying a day at a nearby lake and overheard an English conversation. We introduced ourselves, were invited to BIC, and from that time had a church home for our family, while we also worked in the outlying cities.
  • I remember working in orphanages, with abandoned babies, in prison wards, with AID’s children, with a child sponsorship program of more than 200 children that took us weekly into outlying towns.
  • I remember when Pastor Cristi took Dan and I to the train station and made us aware of the need of the street kids who lived under the manhole covers in the underground heating tubes. I remember many of those street kids joining our meetings at church on a Sunday morning – often just to keep warm.
  • I remember Romanians coming to the Sunday services and loving the time of worship, but not understanding the sermon… and so began the translation of the sermons and, soon after, the songs were also sung in both languages.
  • I remember the children from Christian group homes being brought in for Sunday School when we gathered at the former communist hall in city-center. Suddenly a class would swell to fifty children. I remember working with others to develop ministry teams for children, for hospitality, for worship.
  • I remember when the choice was made to return to a distinct English-speaking gathering and a Romanian language meeting. Now, the gatherings take place in four distinct language settings.
  • I remember being with our mission director, Steve Hertzog, when he stood outside our present Activity Center. We prayed and the Lord helped us to purchase the building several months later. The facility now serves as our home when in Bucharest and fulfills a variety of purposes throughout the week.

Ministry Together

We value the years we have partnered together with BIC and with Pastor Cristi; with Raegan Glugosh, representing the American Assemblies of God World Missions; with Ileana Cernat, long-term council member and spiritual elder; and now with the next generation, Tony and Roz Duncan from Scotland.

Eurasia Retreat November 2024: a significant time each year to connect with our fellow global workers.

Cornerstone Bible School in the SE Netherlands

Kim and Mark recently moved to the beautiful village of Beugen in the southeastern area of the Netherlands. We were able to visit for a few days. During the coffee and lunch times, the students told us their stories of how God was directing their lives and of their hopes for future mission once they graduate.

Monday evening, we were given the opportunity to share lessons and insights that we have gained throughout our mission experiences. Following the presentation, with hot chocolate in-hand, twenty-three students and staff asked perceptive questions for the best part of an hour.

Mission presentation with Cornerstone students.

Walking in Kim’s neighbourhood in Beugen.

Bucharest: more diverse than ever

A summary of the video clip as Pastor Cristi speaks of the change in the international component in Bucharest and its impact on the church community:

“I can see that we enter a new phase, a phase where the city is more international, more cosmopolitan than before - not just because we have one more group of people coming, but it’s different groups of people coming. The social milieu of the city is more diverse."