Dear Praying,
Helping Friends:
Greetings in Christ, our Lord and Savior.
This will be my seventh prayer letter to you this year, one more than
usual. It’s the result of sending
you an extra letter in June and needing now to return to our normal cycle.
It’s also due to the fact that we have an unusually high number of
needs at this time – which I will mention at the end of this letter.
Finally, it’s due to the fact we have so much for which to be thankful
at this time. This has been an
incredibly stressful year for me, yet a year of triumph in Christ and of great
progress in the work, both here at home and on the field.
Here at home, the work has been much blessed with a new mission board.
Our five members take their responsibilities very seriously and have a
very caring attitude toward Clara and me as their missionaries.
It begins with our President, John Arendt, who just finished the grueling
task of putting together all the information necessary to apply for tax-exempt
status with the IRS (your receipts this year are good, of course.)
The Treasurer,
George
Mall
, and I have spent a lot of time on countless projects, not to speak of
George’s visit with me to
Hungary
and
Romania
this past fall. Our secretary,
Dana Ormerod
, has been a great help and encouragement with my new computer and new software.
We thank the Lord, too, for our Vice-President, Dave Boyer, and other
board member,
Don Springer
. Also for
Anita
Mall
, our bookkeeper, and her tremendous dedication.
Praise God for a wonderful board. They
perform an unheralded service, but without it, this work would not, could not,
exist on a solid foundation.
One of the results of this new cooperation has been our new web site: www.WBWMission.org
George
Mall
has done most of the work on this. We
urge you to visit it with your computer or someone else’s and enjoy the
pictures of the board, our men on the field, their families, then read their
testimonies, a history of the work, then read the articles and view the charts.
One of the things I especially like about the site is that it is so
nicely arranged. Another option for
you is a new 22-minute DVD on the work. Several
weeks ago I sent copies to our supporting churches.
Unfortunately, since the DVD was done in Europe (
Romania
), it was done in PAL format. PAL
can be handled by our computers here and, with a digital projector, put on a
screen for large groups to view. But
some home DVD players here in the
USA
do not accept PAL format. In the
Lord’s providence, however, a friend in
Wisconsin
(John Burie) has offered to replace them with DVDs in NTSC format.
So we will soon have plenty of those, and we’d like to share it with
you. Just let me know.
Then you can enjoy it on your home DVD player and, perhaps, show it to
your friends at home.
Another matter for which we are profoundly thankful has been the solid
growth of our church (Reformed Presbyterian Church of Central & Eastern
Europe) and its 22 congregations and four preaching points in Hungary, Romania,
Ukraine, and Slovakia. To appreciate
this, one must understand that our congregations, with one exception, all began
with only one or two interested persons. So
most of our people have been converted to Christ in the last nine years.
This growth was evident in our camps this past summer.
We also saw it this fall at our Reformation weekend conferences in
Hungary
,
Ukraine
, and
Romania
where we had our best attendances ever. I
don’t like to cite numbers, but when we see people, in growing numbers, coming
to Christ, and when we see them throwing their idols into the fire, so to speak,
and turning from sin, this is cause for great rejoicing.
Most of our congregations also have people who are not yet members, but
are beginning to follow Christ seriously and need only a few more months to
complete their formal training for membership and then be examined.
One of the reasons I think the work is growing is that we are trying to do
all things according to God’s Word.
First, the pastors are preaching and applying the Word.
They are doing this with love and compassion.
But there is one area where they must be especially strong, the area of
church discipline. This means, first
of all, nurturing the flock as true shepherds.
Then they must warn members if they see them falling into sin.
Then chasten them if necessary. Finally,
they must, if necessary, institute the negative steps of suspension from the
sacraments and excommunication. This
must be done only after all else has failed.
But it must be done in some cases. Otherwise,
the Lord will be offended and entire body will be ill affected.
This is especially difficult for our young men who are just beginning,
most of them, to father children of their own.
Also, if it is hard to discipline children and church members in
America
, it is even harder to do this in
Europe
where permissiveness has been rampant for generations.
We recently had one case in one country
where a young man did not get his way and started slandering the entire Session
(our five ordained ministers) of our church.
When he failed to repent of his sins and refused to meet with the
Session, there was no recourse but to cut him from the fellowship of our church.
We had another case in another country where a lady was suspended from the sacraments.
But in yet another country
, we have a man who was excommunicated last January for a host of sins, but now,
surprisingly, has contacted us and told us he wants to return to our church.
He realizes now that he was properly cut off and must turn to the grace
of God to overcome some heinous sins in his life.
We are praying fervently for him and giving him appropriate counsel.
So it is cause for thanksgiving that our pastors are applying God’s
Word in the right way, that our young church is growing in the fear of the Lord,
and that some are experiencing some very positive things from these negative
measures.
Other good news is that our efforts to have home schooling legalized in
Romania
have taken a good turn. Gabor
Curcubet has worked with Chris Klicka of the Home School Legal Defense
Association to send emails to every politician in the Romanian parliament.
In just a few days, senators of the upper chamber and deputies of the
lower chamber received more than 2500 emails, 2125 from the
USA
and 400 from people in
Romania
. One senator called a press
conference where he told the media of these emails and said he is now committed
to legalizing home schooling in
Romania
. He is the first such politician to
do this. Pray that this sign of
support will grow until home schooling becomes Romanian law!
I am also very
thankful to the Lord for the fact that I can work with our 15 men in this effort
to raise up a testimony in the form of a biblically Reformed church in the
Hungarian lands. They have not only
been prepared to know and teach the Word and minister to people.
They also understand how to work with me, and I with them.
We need to give them the financial support they need for their work.
But it is very difficult to do this when the funds come mostly from here
and are spent 5,000 miles away. For
my part, I insist on total accountability, though when it comes to the spending,
I depend heavily on key men for recommendations on what they think they need for
the work. We need a lot of trust in
one another and patience with one another in what could otherwise be a minefield
of misunderstandings. Praise God
that this “holy experiment” is working to the glory of God and the building
of Christ’s church.
Here are critical
needs at this time. We still lack
half the $1,800 ($900) we need for Christmas bonuses for the men.
We need $3,500 immediately to buy a small structure near our
conference center in
Ukraine
to house more people there next year. We
need $32,000 to finish construction in
Vulkan
,
Romania
(praise God the frame and roof are done; we can now continue on the inside over
the winter) – half of this ($16,000) in the next two months.
We have three more publications to send to the printer, one by Chris
Klicka on home schooling, five letters by Calvin on the church, and Tedd
Tripp’s “Shepherding a Child’s Heart.”
Some of this cost has been met, but we still lack $6,600, mostly
for printing. Other items needed are
new computers for three of our men, several used computers for home school use,
and a projector for our conference center in
Miskolc
. These items come to $3,300, half
of this ($1,650) needed in the next two months.
Finally, we need funds for a second vehicle in
Hungary
to expand our growing work in
South Hungary
($12,000) – half of this ($6,000) in the next two months if are to buy
it next spring. The total for
everything needed in the next two months comes to $34,650.
Please pray with us for funds for these critical items and consider how
you can help!
Yours in the
riches of His grace,
Bob & Clara Rapp
