OM Relief Workers Conference

Twice a year OM host a conference for all the OM Day Centre programme leaders and helpers where they gather together the relief workers from the churches who run the Day Centres feeding children after school and/or the elderly.  They get two days of inspirational and practical teaching with group work and some special treats, such as going to the sauna, bowling or shopping. They get fed really well and take their funding back with them for the next month.  They all run on a monthly contractual basis.  The team is headed up by a Moldovan young lady on the OM team called Snejana.  After breakfast we joined the opening sessions. I had been asked to bring the message for the opening session and I did a session on 'not growing weary in well doing'. It was particularly appreciated by a number of them who had come who were a bit discouraged and weary.  After a break there was a session on Team Work and Sandy and I took part in that speaking from our experience.  There was quite a lot of interaction and some of our more negative experiences seemed to particularly help them. That evening we went back with one of the OMers, Lilian, to his flat after work at 18.00 for dinner with his wife Michaela.  Had a really excellent evening, didn't get back until 22.45! Chatted about all sorts of things including Mark Driscoll and Bill Johnson.  Lilian is Moldovan and Michaela is Austrian, but they seem pretty much in touch with the global young Christian scene. Woke on Saturday morning at 6.00 and prepared a message for the Relief conference on foundations from Heb 6.  Their speaker has dropped out at the last minute, so I gallantly stepped into the breach. Matthew and Helen and family were away for the weekend with the International Church at one of the Moldovan camp sites and would not be back until Sunday afternoon. We had been invited but declined and decided to have quiet day so I was free to take the session. After breakfast I deliver the message, which went down quite well. I had to tread carefully when it came to laying on of hands as the baptism of the Spirit is one of the major contentions between the Pentecostal Union and the Baptist Union in Moldova, but I think I managed to urge people to ask for the Spirit using Jesus words in Luke 11:13 wthout causing any controversy. Again had some good feedback After that I wrote some more of my blog and then joined the delegates for lunch.  It was a really warm day, and after all the conference delegates had gone home and everything had been cleared up, Phil took us by bus into town.  We went to the botanical gardens which was more like big park with some specimen plants and some lakes, but nothing on Savill Gardens, while Phil went with some of the team to the nearby gym.  In the gardens we met Eugene and Dana who are on Matthew's core team. In June Matthew had asked us to pray for Dana as she had been diagnosed with leukaemia. She has been having treatment in Romania and has been declared clear and 'in remission'. They had just come back from Romania and so it was the first time we had me her, although we had met Eugene that morning at the OM Centre. Sandy and I walked back from the gardens up Bulevardul Dacia, as far as the stadium, we were looking for somewhere to have a drink and found La Placinta where we waited until Phil & Andy a lad from Romford Essex, turned up, where the four of us had dinner together for about £22.  We were going to get the bus back, but as we were waiting while Phil went to a pharmacy to get me some more antibiotics, there was taxi waiting where we were standing, so they negotiated a price (£2.50) and we got the taxi back to the OM Centre.  A much more pleasant journey than going on the trolley bus and minibus, and only twice the price.