Michelle’s Journal - July 11, 1999
Dear Family and Friends,
I thought I would take a moment to explain in detail my relationship with the local church I am working with in Oradea and my church, Seacoast Christian Community, in Charleston, SC.
As many of you know, I am a full-time missionary sponsored by my church, Seacoast. They provide enough funds each month to cover all of my personal living expenses. I praise God that they have such a heart for missions! The pastor I report to, Ron Hamilton, is the Director of Missions at my church. Although all of the pastoral staff is informed of what I do here, I communicate directly with Ron and his wife, Libby, for ministry advice as well as personal counsel. After I returned to the US last November, I spent much time debriefing my senior pastor, Greg Surratt, about what I did and how I felt the Lord leading me. He has a tremendous vision for reaching the unchurched people….and that vision certainly enables me to work more effectively here.
On the missions field, I attend Betania (Bethany) Pentecostal Church in Oradea, Romania. They conduct an international service on Sunday afternoons at 3:00 p.m. and that is the service that I attend on Sunday. This service is now being lead by Rev. John Fenlason and his wife, Suzie. There are Americans sent by their home church in West Palm Beach, Florida. They were here while I was here last year and have recently returned for a one year commitment. John and Suzie became my surrogate family to me last year and I am thrilled that they returned last week to be the shepherds to the international congregation.
The senior pastor at Betania Pentecostal, Teo Bulzan, is an awesome man of God with an overwhelming desire to reach his people. To my knowledge, he is the only pastor in the city that allows gypsy people to enter the church and worship whenever they desire. He also manages programs for street girls to give them vocational training. I am working closely with him to establish the foundation that I wrote about before. He has many contacts and is a well-respected member of the Christian and business community here. He was instrumental in introducing me to the people that will be donating the property for my “foundation” (here that means non-profit organization).
It is my prayer that we can begin to get this foundation established this week. The foundation will be a collaboration of my church in Charleston and my church here. Because it is a Romanian foundation, Romanians must be the majority of board members. There will be five people on the board, myself (I am the president), Ron Hamilton, Teo Bulzan, Pavel Jarda, and Esteria Vasci. The last three are from Betania. Pavel and Esteria are personal friends of mine that I trust immensely. It is my plan to hire Esteria on September 1 to be the full-time Romanian administer of the ministry here. She has accepted my offer to come and work for me and, as she put it, “I am excited about learning to live on faith like you do, Michelle.”
The mission of the foundation will be to minister to abandoned children and children that are considered to be “unsalvageable” due to behavioral problems. After much prayer and thought about naming the foundation, I have joyfully come up with “Har Pentru Copii” which translates into “Grace for Children.” Grace has personal relevance in my life and I consider the name perfect for the population we will be serving. The first program, “House of Grace” will be a residential treatment facility for children that are committed to the local minor center. These children are picked up from the streets by police and placed in this center until the police either locate the families they ran away from or send them to a horrible facility (a juvenile jail) where many die from physical abuse and malnutrition. Depending on the needs, we will house two groups in our facility that will consist of 8 boys and 8 girls. Each group will include Christian house parents that will be trained to deal with such children. Pastor Bulzan and I will be identifying these families from the church soon.
The house for boys will be called “Nonnie’s Hope” is memory of my maternal great-grandmother, Nonnie Grace Rogers who zealously supported foreign missionaries. I am privileged to have spent 25 years with her and I think of her often as I serve here. She always wanted to see a family member go into full-time ministry and I know that seeing this program would make her rejoice. She is the only person I know who I would consider a great saint and above all else, her life reflected the love of Jesus to all that knew her. It is my prayer that I can grow up to be like this precious soul that I still miss dearly.
The house for girls will be called “Laura’s Grace” in honor of my maternal grandmother, Laura Grace Rogers Comer, who has supported me in all of my missions endeavors and who is very much like a second mother to me. She is the quintessential grandmother and I feel blessed to have her as part of my life and ministry. She has demonstrated to me what it is to be a godly, loyal wife and mother. I miss her terribly when I am away and crave her homemade pound cakes on a regular basis. 
For any ministry work I do here, I must raise the funds for the projects. Since the House of Grace is such a costly project, I will be writing several grants so that I can hire staff and get the project running. Many of you contribute to the work I do here and all of that is put directly into the projects. I am trying hard to be very diligent with keeping track of my expenses. Please let me know if you would like to see the spreadsheet that I am keeping of my expenses here.
As an extension of the international service here, five weeks ago, I felt lead to begin facilitating a Tuesday night bible study in English. That has been progressing EXTREMELY well and we generally have about 9 people attending. We are hoping that others will join our study and we can break up into smaller groups. In September, I will start a small group bible study for women. If any of you have other suggestions of bible studies, please let me know or send me books.
To celebrate my birthday and to accomplish Allison’s missions debriefing, (she will return to the US on August 9th) we will be going to Vienna, Austria on July 31st through August 8th. While there, we will be meeting another Seacoaster, Michael Hobson, who is working in Macedonia as a contract mechanic with the military. He is longing for Christian fellowship!! We are staying at a Christian Conference/Guesthouse in Vienna. All of us are thrilled at the opportunity to experience Vienna and to attend some awesome churches that we have heard about since we started telling people of our travel plans.
I have attached three pictures in a zip file. Picture 103 is a Pastor Bulzan (left) with the Mayor of the city that is donating the property for House of Grace. Picture 163 is me and Allie organizing the contents of the container after it was unloaded. Pastor Bulzan has graciously agreed to let us house it in the church basement. Picture 166 is Betania Pentecostal church. Over 1,500 people attend the church….even in 100 plus degree weather with NO air conditioning!!! How’s that for commitment?!?!
May God bless each of you and keep you in His arms! Have a fantastic week!
Basking in the Son,
Michelle
Posted on July 11th, 1999 by Michelle
Filed under: Michelle's Journal