The first gift given towards our summer camp in Romania was a quantity of honey. It came with a message: “Tell the children to be hardworking like the bees and sweet like honey!”

We pray for workers, and God sends them

Year after year we pray for people who will get involved alongside us in the ministry. This year the Lord answered again. Twenty-five volunteers were trained at a youth mission course at the beginning of the summer, and three of them came from the area we serve.

They were not only trained. They joined us in every activity we carried out all summer. Two of them took part in the programmes alongside their three children — the oldest not yet four years old. They never once gave any indication that it was difficult for them.

Children responding to the Gospel

The evangelistic programmes ran in a city and in villages across the region. They gave us the chance to share the Gospel, to see God at work, and to hear the children’s enthusiastic responses. During one programme, a child said out loud, “Right now, I really want to be forgiven for my sins!”

A camp the children still talk about

Other gifts followed the honey. Because of them, we were able to spend a week together that the children now talk about with great joy.

A mother whose child attended camp for the first time wrote to us afterwards: “Thank you from the bottom of my heart! I am so happy that she had such a wonderful time that I don’t have words to thank you enough. She sang the songs to me, told me about the surprises, and there isn’t a day when she doesn’t say something about the camp. I have never seen her so excited and happy.”

When only three children came

An outreach project later in the summer showed us again how God makes things possible, even when it does not seem that way at first.

At the first location, everything had been prepared beautifully. People from the local church had mowed and cleared the space and handed out invitations. Then three children came — all of them from that same church.

We held the programme for those three. Afterwards we changed the time for the following day and gave out invitations again to everyone we met. A group of teenagers promised they would come. They did. They came the next day, and they kept coming for the rest of the week.

One of them caught our attention, and we spent more time talking with him, encouraging him to draw closer to God. After the project ended, the team we had worked with sent us a message: “He came to church.” How wonderfully God works!

A change we could see

At the day camp, the children were very happy with the programme we had prepared for them. One boy exclaimed, “Life at camp is so wonderful!” However, some of the children behaved aggressively, and that brought real challenges. Even so, after a week of camp we saw a change in them.

What looks impossible

“What is impossible with man is possible with God.” (Luke 18:27)

Three children in a freshly cleared field looks like wasted effort. A jar of honey looks like a very small beginning. God takes what seems too little and does what none of us could have arranged.

Would you pray for the children and teenagers who heard the Gospel this summer — that what they heard would take root and grow?

-Testimony from a worker in CEF of Romania (Tatiana and Cosmin )

(Image:Adobe Express)