Ion and Elena Gireada live in the city of Chernovtsy. Brother Ion is HeartCry’s Ukranian point man, providing accountability and oversight to our other missionaries in Ukraine.  This past month Ion ecountered a bitter/ sweet response to his ministries as the pastor of the Church in Tereblecia: 

The Lord has given us great joy this month. Vera, a woman from our village, who had asked for a Bible several months ago and started reading it, decided to repent at the beginning of this month. Then Danic (22), my nephew, who has attended the church with his parents since he was a child, also repented at the beginning of this month when I visited him at home. Praise the Lord for working in the hearts of these people and for helping them repent in order to be saved. After they repented, I started doing Bible lessons with them every Sunday after the church services. As they said they wanted to get baptized. We planned to have the baptism service on August 12th in the church courtyard and we want to invite many people from the village to attend. Please pray that the people we invite to church would be eager to come and listen to the Gospel message and that the Lord would search them and that they would repent.

We had a VBS in Bahranesti for children between 7-13 years of age. We had 30 children coming on the first day and only two of them were from Christian families. The Orthodox priest found out about our VBS and he went through the village to talk to the parents of those children, telling them not to allow the children to attend the VBS. Only five families obeyed the priest and we had up to 25 children attending the VBS every day. Praise the Lord! But the miracle was that the following week after the VBS, several non-Christian parents came to me and asked me to have another VBS because their children had changed so much and they had really enjoyed the VBS. So, we decided to have another VBS next month and to have the closing in the auditorium so as to invite the parents to attend as well. Please pray for the children’s ministry. If the adults don’t want to hear the Gospel, we will preach it to the children, just as Lord Jesus said.

Don is serving as the HeartCry Coordinator for Eastern Europe. As an itinerant evangelist, his pulpit ministry is directed toward preaching on the inner life of the believer and the spiritual need of the lost. With HeartCry, his ministry includes organizing Bible conferences and corresponding with the HeartCry missionaries in Europe. He and his lovely wife Cindy live in Tuscumbia, AL.

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