Memorial Day Weekend

Sorry for the lack of recent "postage." We have been out of town every weekend in May and currently we are in Nashville. After spending all day Friday packing (with the help of Eva Cochran and Jessica Watson - thanks!!!), we loaded up a U-haul trailer with essentially everything we are not taking to Romania. By the way, thanks to Josh Sagraves, Marko Priestley, and Eric Gamble for helping us carry everything downstairs and loading the trailer! We greatly appreciated everyone's help that day.

Here's a run down of the weekend so far:

On Saturday afternoon, Paul's parents planned an open house for us. A lot of Paul's friends stopped by to see him and I enjoyed meeting a lot of people that I have never met before. It was great finally being able to put names with faces.

During Paul's parents' Sunday School class, he gave a short presentation about what we'll be doing in Romania. The Lord was gracious in allowing Paul to really communicate not just what we'll be doing, but that the desire to do this is not of ourselves. God has regenerated our hearts and allowed us to live for Him. Thankfully, it went well and we think the Lord blessed it.

We'll be back in Knoxville Monday night!

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Quick update

One thing that Cris and I have been getting a lot of questions about lately is, "Do you have a place to live set up in Romania?" This is a reasonable question, and I have an answer for it now. Our friend, and the leader of the campus ministry in Romania, Bobby, is getting married just a few days after we arrive in Romania. He is also going to need a place to live with his wife. So, at the end of this month, he is going to go apartment hunting for two places close together. We like Bobby and his fiance Raluca a lot, and we are excited about getting to know them better while we are there. In fact getting a place close to them was our idea, not theirs. (Cris jokingly suggested that we could share a refrigerator.)

Also, we have seen a lot more support come in recently, which is very encouraging, including a significant sum from my church in Nashville, Brentwood United Methodist Church. We still have a ways to go, but it is building our faith that the Lord will indeed provide for us while we are in Romania!

Please pray for us. Pray that the Lord would enable us to draw closer to him before we leave. We feel weak and totally inadequate for ministry, which is true. We are weak and totally inadequate for ministry. We need the Lord's help to be fruitful, just as we need the Lord's help to be fruitful in our lives now. Please pray that both Cris and I would be able to depend on the Lord, because we cannot do anything without Him,

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Boasting only in Christ's Power

Thankfully, the Lord is humbling us. Hopefully none of you are deceived and think that Paul and I are actually "good" evangelists. We aren't. By God's grace, He has changed our hearts to love the Lord and to put our trust in His Son's finished work on the Cross. And, a result of knowing the One True God, is that we would desire others to know Him too!

Yesterday, the Lord used a few situations to reveal our weaknesses in sharing the gospel and telling others about what God has done and how He has made a way for us to come to him! We were so aware that we are weak, but amazingly, God uses our weaknesses to show forth Christ's power. This is what we are hoping in as we go to Romania to advance the gospel.

Jesus Christ says, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." The Apostle Paul responds by saying, "Therefore I will boast all the more gladly in my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong" (2 Corinthians 12:9-10).

We do not want people to be impressed with us. We want people to see how weak Paul and Cris Steele are and to say, "They need the Lord! He is powerful and He will show forth his strength to them." We are desperate for God to move in and through us to accomplish His purposes. Please pray that we would only boast in Christ and his power!

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Students of The University of Craiova

We just wanted to post some more photos so you can put faces to "the students of Craiova."





Dana & Andreea













Stefan, Manu, Mitch, & Nicu














Denisa, Tara, Ema











Miriam, Christina, Vlad

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Sharing the gospel

Yesterday, Cris was able to share the gospel with one of our neighbors, and by the grace of God it went really well. Cris invited her to go to church with us on the 13th for the picnic, and our neighbor (who is not a Christian) said, "Can I come this Sunday?" She was kicked out of her residence and is currently living with the friend of a friend. She will be moving back to live with her mom in a month, so she wanted to make sure that she could get to church with us. The Lord was clearly at work. We hope she actually comes to church with us, and we pray that she will be able to respond to the gospel and turn from her sins!



A few hours later, I got a phone call from an old friend who was returning a call from me, and I got caught up on the last two years of her life, in which she went through a lot. I was able to encourage her to plug into her church in Lynchburg, TN, where she now lives. I hope that the Lord meets her there!



We would like to ask our readers and supporters to pray for our two friends. They both have a great need for the Lord Jesus and the life available in Him.

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Learning Romanian

During part of spring break, Paul and I ventured home to the North Pole, also known as Fort Wayne, IN (my hometown) for one last visit before we leave. The first night we were there, the plan was to hang out with some of my friends from my old church. We had already contacted most of the people that were going to be seeing that evening, but at the last minute, we called a married couple (Scott and Dawn) who I had not seen for a few years. Dawn was able to come and enjoy coffee with us (Scott had to work). While we were catching up, she was informed that Paul and I were going to be moving to Romania for a couple years to serve a campus ministry. Here is where the amazing sovereignty of God comes in, so be prepared. She got really excited and told us that a couple years ago she was going to go to Romania to do mission work, so she bought this Romanian workbook and audiotape set to attempt at learning some of the language. Immediately she offered it to us to use for as long as we needed it! Here are a couple things to highlight the sovereignty of God:

1. She wasn’t originally going to come, but did at the last minute.
2. She had a Romanian workbook and audiotape that she freely offered us – not everyone just has Romanian lesson material just sitting around. Some people might have Spanish or German or some common language, but Romanian?
3. Paul and I have been discussing purchasing this very type of material, but just had not made the time to actually do it yet – therefore, it is saving us money and getting it into our hands immediately, which may not have happened for quite sometime. It’s actually harder to find Romanian material than you might think.

I bet you can guess what we did on the ride home. You guessed it! We listened to Romanian vocabulary words and grammar lessons and attempted at learning some Romanian! We don’t know how much we’ll get down before we go, but we are going to try! We figured that any exposure to the language is a plus and we’re looking forward to putting what we are learning into practice!

P.S. Thanks Scott and Dawn for letting us borrow the Romania material! It’s really serving us!

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Support Praise

Just to let everyone know, Cris will be depositing the support money to pay for the plane tickets tomorrow. We had more money than we needed for the tickets, and we have almost enough money to go ahead and purchase a year's worth of health insurance.

Sorry it has been so long since we have posted. We have been very encouraged as we have contacted friends and family over the last couple of weeks and have heard so many enthusiastic responses from people who want to support us! Thanks!

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