Nate and Noah to Romania

Greetings, and happy December!

As the holiday season begins to roll in, Noah and I are astounded to think that we are now a quarter of the way through this year-long journey in Romania. At three months in, we find ourselves dumbfounded by the grace and goodness of God. It has been about as promising a beginning as we could ask for, and we feel so blessed and honored to be involved with Salem Church, Oxygen Youth, and Romania as a whole.

As we enter December, Noah and I found ourselves increasingly occupied with preparations for service projects, holiday events for the youth, and other such things you would expect to come in the Christmas season. That being said, we had the idea to create a video update detailing our activities over the last month, what we’re looking ahead to in this Advent and Christmas season, and how we’re processing at the three month mark. We hope you enjoy hearing from as we attempted to cover everything from this past month (in one take, no less)! I have also included a brief summary of what we covered in the video as well as our current prayer requests below the video.

In the month of November, we have been blessed to see God’s hand at work in Oxygen Youth. We are consistently seeing a group of about students come every Thursday to meet together and learn from the Word of God. Great connections and friendships are being made, and we are so enjoying the chance to get to know each of these students. Beyond Thursday nights, we have seen God begin to open doors to see His Holy Spirit at work. We witnessed the healing of an injured ankle following a Thursday night gathering, and our students recently took part in a community outreach in which we handed out hand-made gospel notes at the local mall. We will have two significant opportunities to serve our community this month, as we plan to hand out Christmas presents in a local village as well as prepare and distribute warm meals to homeless families in Oradea. Our students are hungry to serve and to learn more about the Word of God, and it is wonderful to see!

Additionally, Noah and I have recently submitted our documentation for our long-stay visas. We are waiting to hear back from the immigration office to know if we have to change any of our documents, but we have an appointment to receive our visas toward the end of this month. We are praying that there will be no need to pick up the phone and that all of our documentation will be accepted!

Finally, as we enter the holiday season, Noah and I are beginning to experience an increased amount of homesickness as we are away from our families during this celebratory time of year. While we miss our family and friends, we continue to feel confident in God’s plan for us over the next nine months and we are incredibly grateful for the incredible support system that God has established for us here.

We ask that you would pray with us into each of these areas!

1. Pray that the Lord would continue to grow our students and display His power and love to them through the Holy Spirit! Pray that as we prepare to reach out to our community that God would bless these efforts and make them fruitful.
2. Pray with us that our documentation would be accepted and that we would receive our visas with no further obstacle or delay. We’re so close and have gotten this far! Pray for favor with immigration as these documents are processed.
3. Pray for Noah and I as we enjoy this holiday season apart from our family and friends in the United States. Pray that we would bless and be blessed by those we get to celebrate with here and that homesickness would not hinder our ability to be effective in our service and joyful in our celebration of this Advent and Christmas season.

As always, we are so thankful for all of you. We could not do this without the amazing people in our corner from both the United States and Romania, and we thank God for all of you repeatedly. We hope this December is an incredible one as we prepare to celebrate the coming of our Lord. He is so faithful and good!

Love always,

Nathan and Noah