Florin Stan pastors Fieni Baptist Church in Fieni, Romania. Although he diligently labors to feed and shepherd the people of God in the faith family of the local church, he is very devoted to doing the work of an evangelist. In his recent report he shares some of his outreach experiences:
By God’s grace and in spite of the restrictions, I carried on my evangelistic project of passing out Christian literature in Sinaia si Moroieni. I distributed about 800 gospel tracts. I managed to have several good discussions, but I also faced bad words. In Moroieni, I was passing out gospel tracts at the same time as a man was who was putting bills in the mailboxes. People mistook me for this man and they were kind to me, but many of them, after seeing that I was giving them gospel tracts, became very hostile. A woman was very mean and said, “It’s good you gave me this tract. It will help me light up the fire.” I am thankful to the Lord for giving me strength to ignore these mean attitudes and carry on my ministry faithfully.
I also had several good discussions this month when I preached the gospel to various people. The Spirit of the Lord had been urging me for a long time to do this. One of the people is Mr. Bratu. He is a retired army officer. He was my officer when I was in the army and was kind to me. We met in a store several months ago and exchanged phone numbers. We promised we would meet again to talk. I called him this month and we had a short conversation. Then I invited him to meet with me. He accepted my invitation right away. So we met at the church office the next day. After talking about different things, I asked him if he knew the gospel and his answer was “no!” So, I shared it with him. He listened to me for about 30 minutes and in the end he confessed that he had never heard anything like that and now he had something to think about. I hope that this man will really know the Lord and experience salvation. Please pray for Mr. Bratu.
I had also wanted to have a discussion with a man in his fifties. He attended one of our evangelistic outreaches this spring. I talked to him a little bit and I had the impression that he was open to the gospel. I took his phone number and wanted to meet with him. I finally managed to meet with him this month. When I preached the gospel to this man, he listened to me carefully. The Lord revealed to me that I had to show him the errors of the Orthodox Church. I talked to him about their traditions that replaced God’s word. These truths made him think. I want to keep meeting with this man and I’m curious to see how the things that he heard will grow in his heart. Please pray for him that he would meet the Lord.
Then I had a meeting with the mayor. I wanted to talk to him about several administrative things, but I also wanted to share the gospel with him. Finally, after several attempts of meeting with him, he invited me to his place. He was very hospitable. We talked about the administrative things and then, slowly, I moved the discussion towards spiritual things. I had a deep discussion with him, and he was impressed by the perspective of the Bible on our times. I wish we could have talked more about the salvation message, but I believe that the Lord led the discussion this way. The mayor’s grandfather was a believer and probably that’s why he doesn’t have prejudices against our church. This meeting was very encouraging for me as I am hoping that this man will repent of his sins.
I meet with different men every week and we play table tennis. The main purpose of this project is to help us socialize and create new relationships. Wonderful things happen during this time as I want to share with you. First of all, Florin is getting closer to the church and to the spiritual things through this opportunity. He already tells others about us and invites some of his friends to church. Florin invited Adrian (50) to play with us. He was quite uncomfortable at our first meeting, but then became acquainted with us and we managed to have good discussions about friendship and spirituality. Marian also came to play with us several times. He is quite silent and you never know what he is thinking. But his wife, Corina, told me what Marian had done. Corina is our church member. After a church service, Marian and Corina had guests. As they were talking, Marian told his cousin that he used to play table tennis at our church every week. His cousin also likes to play table tennis, so Marian invited him to play with us. I hope that Marian’s cousin will come. There are about 10 men that play with us on a regular basis and the number keeps growing . Please pray that we would serve the church and God’s Kingdom through this activity.
The teenagers’ ministry keeps growing and new teenagers have started attending our meetings and this fills my heart with joy. I had to lead the last meeting because Andrei was not at home. I hadn’t prepared a message, so I thought I should just answer their questions. I asked them if they had questions for me. Catalin had the first question. He’s 19 years old and has been attending our meetings for several months. I met him this summer when I was playing basketball with the teenagers. Catalin showed up and we invited him to play with us, so we made friends and now he attends our meetings almost on a regular basis. So Catalin asked a question, “What made these teenagers come to church?” The question was not actually for me, but for the teenagers. And they began to share their personal testimonies for about an hour. I really enjoyed their words as I was touched to tears. I could really see miracles taking place in the teen ministry. Andrea said that my daughter, Damaris, invited her to church in a time when her parents had just gone through a divorce and she was deeply affected. Coming to church, she found a new family, understanding, love and help. She also mentioned that my sermons helped her understand the truth more and more. Dennis, a high school student, talked about the moment when I met him on the street and shared the gospel with him. I had invited him to attend the teen meeting. He said, “I don’t know what Florin saw in me and what made him invite me to these meetings, because there’s nothing special in me.” At that point, I looked away and wiped my tears – tears of joy. In those moments, I was fully rewarded for all my hard work in the teen ministry. How wonderful! Dennis attended the meetings and then he also started attending the church. Then he went back home and told his parents how it was a church and shortly after, Dana, his mother started to come to our services. Then the Lord worked in Florin’s heart and they all attend the church now. We hope that they will soon be our brothers in the Lord Jesus.
