Dear brethren,

 

During the holiday’s season, God showed Himself again full of grace and merciful towards us and the ministry He called us to serve. As you know, we were praying for God’s provision for Christmas gifts for the children and old people, after we were announced that we won’t be able this year to receive the packages from Samaritan’s Purse.

 Two weeks before Christmas God provided the money to purchase candies, cookies, chocolates and oranges for all the children and old people from both villages. We were very grateful to God. We also want to thank everyone who prayed and helped us bring the joy and the love of the Lord through these packages. But the Lord continued to pour His blessings, and one week before Christmas we received a phone call from some friends and brothers in the Lord who are serving in Cluj with another organization that they were praying for us and they talked about us with the director from Prison Fellowship (a Christian foundation who works also with street children and people), and she offered to donate us 250 shoe boxes that they received from Germany, because God blessed them more that they needed.

Since the month of November the gypsy children asked us if they would receive again gifts for Christmas. We could only tell them to pray because we don’t see any way we would be able to provide them. They started to pray seriously and kept asking us every week about them. Their faith in Jesus was built up when they sow the answers to their prayers. They didn’t doubt in all. Also their joy was much grater when they received two gifts instead of one. We delivered the gifts the days previous the Christmas, so they could use all the candies and chocolates to decorate their Christmas trees. We were also blessed to have Dawn, our sister in the Lord here with us to help us make all the bags, and also to have our gypsy brothers, Fery and Danut who helped us load the car and distribute the gifts.

This Christmas was the first one when gypsy men and women attended the Christmas Eve service. Last years they were too busy or too drunk to come. We spent a wonderful night in Sacuieu (together with our brothers from Calatele) singing carols, praying and listening the Word. After we ate together and serve cookies and pops. We ended up visiting many homes, where they where waiting for us with food on the table. We spent precious moments with them until after midnight. On Christmas day we went to Calatele, where we visited their homes and had fellowship together. On New Year Eve we had the same schedule, and again we had a blessed time.

We are very grateful to God for all the changing in the life of believers and in their homes.

We posted some pictures on our ministry blog, vladeasagypsyministry.blogspot.com

May God bless you all!

Hagiu Family