Fall 2025

We had a great surprise during our second installation of English club. Our first few classes had around 12 people, and we leveled out with 8 coming consistently. And we’ve had more of them attend special church events from our invitations like ladies’ meetings and children’s clubs. I also added in two different private lessons with some teenagers and a Romanian. The story of how the second one came to be is definitely orchestrated by God. I had been visiting a bakery (something I do too often), and one of the workers perked up when she realized I was from America. And she was even more thrilled when I told her I was a missionary and an English teacher. She wanted to start right away. So we have had several lessons over these past few months and she is also becoming a good friend.

In my last newsletter, I mentioned that this college semester would be interesting teaching English because we would have a few new students all from different countries, and I would need to approach it like an ESL class. The pace was definitely different than I thought it would be, but I think they did fairly well. Next semester will be English composition and I'll need some wisdom about how to adjust the work load and content. I really enjoyed getting to teach Speech this semester and already have ideas how I can make it better by splitting it into two semesters. We are about to start our annual Christmas choir tour going to similar churches that we did last year: four here in Romania and two in Budapest, Hungary.

One aspect as a senior in our college is internship work at the church. It has been a blessing this semester getting to work more one-on-one with a student and seeing her lead in different ministries. We have also had another round of our connection groups. I was able to find a Bible study geared toward college age students about finding your identity in Christ, and it has been an answered prayer each week of the Lord guiding me to have the right study questions and seeing how/what the girls will share with each other. We will have one more of these in December before the holidays start.

Another last event we’ll have before the break is children's club. Our theme of Pilgrim's Progress adapted for children has been going wonderfully. We're excited for this next one because it's where he faces the dragon. We've worked on implementing more memory verses into the program, and it's been neat hearing how the children are doing. In the spring, I believe we'll have 4 or 5 more clubs to finish out the book.