2013 Spring

a word fromGerd-walter Buskiescef european Director

echoN e w s f r o m t h e E u r o p e a n H e a d q u a r t e r s o f C h i l d E v a n g e l i s m Fe l l o w s h i p ® S p r i n g 2 0 1 3

Kilchzimmer

CEF Centre, Kilchzimmer • 4438 Langenbruck, Switzerland • Tel: +41 62 387 30 10 • www.kilchzimmer.com

“I’ve learnt a lot through this course. It’s great that everything in the course was so clear”. These were the comments of a participant of the a new Bible course on Love & Friendship, which Child Evangelism Fellowship® in Germany has produced in co-operation with the other German-speaking countries, Austria and Switzerland. The attractively designed course is aimed at young teens from the age of 12 years upwards and expands on the CEF® Youth Challenge material. Initial reactions show that this nine-part Bible course has hit a nerve with many teens:

“Now I understand how guys are. Now I know what God really wants with marriage. How that being in love is not the same as true love”.

“It’s great that things are explained that we didn’t know before. The good

thing is that everything in the topics is clearly explained using the Bible. Thank you, the course has really helped me”.

“It’s really super that you made this course. It helps me to better understand why my parents don’t want me to have a boyfriend. At present I don’t want one either … I believe that the course can help many teenagers and young people to make their choice of partner according to God’s will and to act and

wait according to His wishes”.In all three countries

there has been a CEF Mailbox Club for around 10 years. In Germany alone more than 300,000 lessons of the Bible

course have been edited and sent out. The three German-speaking countries ministered to 4,300 children altogether in the past year. In the whole of Europe it was almost 180,000 children. It is great to see how God is blessing the use of Bible courses! Or using the words of one child: “It is as if we are receiving letters that God has sent us”.

“For I have known him, in order that he may command his children and his household after him, that they keep the way of the Lord, to do righteousness and justice, that the Lord may bring to Abraham what He has spoken to him” (Genesis 18:19).

Did Abraham have a Good News Club® in his home?

The Lord had revealed to him His purpose to make a great nation of him and to bless him. God had also showed Abraham the way this would happen – by teaching the next generation, his own children and those of his servants, to keep the way of the Lord. The nation’s future would depend on the obedience of today’s children!

Abraham understood. I see him teaching the children and their parents about the one powerful God, His great promise and that they would receive this blessing, too, if they would just trust the Lord and follow Him.

Has God not chosen you and me, too, to help the next generation to hear about Him and His Son Jesus Christ (1 Pet 2:9)? Maybe you can pray. Maybe you can give. Maybe you can teach them just as Abraham did! The future of the church is in your hands today! How will you get involved?

Yours in Him

a new clear-speaking Bible course

Will the miracle continue?

latvia For 50 years, during the time when Latvia was occupied by the Soviet Union, school children would have learned only that “There is no God…” However in 1991, with the advent of freedom, something very strange and very wonderful began to happen in Latvia. God established a parliament that did believe in religion and, furthermore, decreed that not only should children learn religion in the public schools, but also mandated that each child should learn a certain number of Bible verses during the school year!

Since the 2003/2004 school year, CEF in Latvia has been providing the training, instructional materials and verse packets for teachers throughout Latvia to use in their religion classes called “Christian Teaching”. Nearly

one-third of all Latvian public schools incorporate

or highly recommend these CEF materials for the classes, with the Wonder

Devotional Book (WDB) being the “text” of choice for children in the 3rd grade. Additionally kids in 4th and 5th grades are encouraged to continue their study of God’s Word using the devotional books and it is not uncommon to see kids reading WDBs in corridors, at bus stops and even in other classes. Finally, children in grades 1-3 are required to learn ten to twelve Bible verses per year. CEF Latvia’s verse packets are the official Bible verse education tools, sanctioned by the Latvian Ministry of Education.

Join the CEF Latvia team in praising God for this unusual opportunity to reach their nation’s children through the daily school education programme.

However at present there are some intentions to give these children the choice between “Christian Teaching” and other attractive programmes like English or computers for first graders. Pray that not only would God keep

this door open for many years to come, but also that parents and children will make the right choice. Pray that God continues to bless His Word in the lives of many children in the schools of Latvia.

Pioneer work needs your help

The country of Bosnia and herzegovina is a target country, which means we are currently working on establishing a CEF ministry among the 4.5 million people there.

In every town you find many houses that still carry the wounds from the war 20 years ago. But the wounds in the souls of the children are worse. As my car approached a little settlement, some children coming from school pretended to have Kalashnikovs in their hands and fired some salvos at my car – little girls aged 7 to 8!

The main religions are Muslim (45 percent), Serb Orthodox (36 percent) and Catholicism (15 percent). The entire body of Christ is still very young and quite small in number (less than 1 percent). Last year the Lord made it possible for us to organize two Teaching Children Effectively™ (TCE™) level 1 training courses in the capital city, Sarajevo, and in the second largest city, Banja Luka. Our workers from Serbia and Montenegro had helped to make

contact with the Christians and they also came to provide the training.

It has been great to see how the Lord has opened the eyes of these dear friends. They have never thought about the spiritual need of the children and how to lead them to Christ. They thought that children are in God’s Kingdom from birth. As a result of the training, they became excited to start to evangelize children. Please pray that they are now courageous enough to invite children and share with them how they can be saved.

Some young people expressed a desire to go to a Christian camp in Serbia this summer and work hand in hand with the Serbian CEF team to get experience in the ministry.

During our next visits we want to meet more key Christians and ask for their support in passing on the vision. Please pray especially for somebody whom we can invite to the three month CMLC this summer in Romania. Pray also for reaching out to the different

nationalities (Bosnians, Serbs, Croats and others) and that children and their parents become receptive to the Gospel. There are over 500,000 children and teens in this country.

In praying for our visits you will help us pioneer the work in Bosnia Herzegovina and you will help heal the broken hearts of children through the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Sebastian Edelmann

Students demonstrating the Wordless Book during a

TCE course in Bosnia.

e d u c a T i o n r e p o r t

How can they know how without training?How can children believe in Jesus

when nobody tells them? How can anybody tell them, when they don’t know how? How can they know how when they are not trained? In line with Romans 10:14ff this could be the motto for this year’s Children’s Ministry Leadership Courses (CMLC) in Europe.

w e s T e r n e u r o p eThis summer Kilchzimmer will have

a ‘southern European’ flavour, as we offer the CMLC not only in the English language but also in the Spanish and Italian languages. Over in Lithuania, the students from the Baltic countries will be returning to complete the final five weeks of the CMLC. Places for these courses in Western Europe are still available. The dates for 2013 are as follows: • english 29 June - 20 Sept. • spanish 29 June - 9 Aug. • italian (Part 2) 17 Aug. - 20 Sept.

(Part 1 must have already been completed)

• lithuania (Part 2) 13 July - 16 Aug. • German 28 Sept. – 20 Dec.

c e n T r a l e u r o p e The CEF training centre in Sibiu,

Romania will be hosting Central Europe’s first ever multi-lingual CMLC from 16 June – 7 September 2013. Teaching will be given in the English language with the possibility of translation into a number of Central European languages.

e a s T e r n e u r o p eA Russian speaking CMLC takes

place from 15 September – 7 December 2013 in Irpen, Ukraine. A good number of them will come from the Central Asian Republics!

Thank you for praying for our training ministries. Pray that God will… • provide 120 students to train in

CMLCs across Europe this year.• call new full-time workers to reach

many more children throughout the 48 countries in Europe.

• equip the training centre teams (Kilchzimmer, Romania, Ukraine and Lithuania)

• meet the financial need of each student so that they can attend.

How SPAN works in the life of a new workerI first met Cristina at our National

Conference in March 2012. She believed that God was calling her to attend the Children’s Ministry Leadership Course in Romania that summer. What a joy to see that not only had God called her but He had been preparing her from the time that He had saved her. Cristina would tell you herself that it was through CEF that she grew in her faith.

Cristina would like to join CEF full time this coming summer. She has a vision to start children’s ministry in a new area. Praise God! He is answering our prayers and sending workers into the harvest field.

Cristina will need to be supported in order to be an effective worker. We trust that she will have support from her local church, her friends, family and faithful prayer partners who have

a vision to join with Cristina in taking the Gospel to the lost.

For Cristina and others like her the task of raising support can seem insurmountable. Due to the financial situation in the country or maybe because there is not a vision to evangelise children, it can be very difficult to be fully supported.

It was because of these challenges that the SPAN™ program was started. SPAN (Sponsor-A-National™) is for those like Cristina who are called of God, trained by CEF and ready to evangelise but due to lack of support cannot commit full time.

SPAN means that Cristina (and many others like her) are supported and as a result children are reached with the Gospel.

Gifts given for SPAN are distributed monthly to full time workers across Europe based on the greatest need.

For more information about SPAN, please contact Iulian Mangalagiu ([email protected]), the leader of Ministry Advancement.

If you would like to help a student to attend one of the courses or if you would give for SPAN, you can send a gift to the address on the back. Please mark it for “European Training” or “SPAN”. Every gift over €1,250 Euro (£1,000; $1,600) will be matched by 50 percent.

CD for SPANLinda Corry,

CEF missionary from Northern Ireland has recently released a CD entitled Break my plans. CDs are given with any donation of 10 euros or more. All the proceeds will be given to SPAN. CDs can be purchased from Kilchzimmer. Contact us for details.

The Kilchzimmer Echo is distributed three times a year free-of-charge by the European Headquarters of Child Evangelism Fellowship®.

Please designate your gifts “European Headquarters”, quoting any specific project for which you wish your gifts to be used. Your gifts may be sent to any of the addresses mentioned. Thank you!

Bank transfer information: UBS AG, 8098 Zurich, Switzerland Account: KEB ZentrumIBAN: CH97 0024 5245 9257 2141 CBIC Nr. UBSWCHZH80Aor Post Office Account: 46-4843-2

Excess funds given for projects will be applied to those still lacking, unless the donor wishes otherwise.

Our Address: CEF European Centre, Kilchzimmer, 4438 Langenbruck, Switzerland Tel.: + 41 62 387 30 10 Fax: + 41 62 387 30 40Email: [email protected]: www.cefeurope.com

USA: CEF, PO Box 348, Warrenton, Missouri 63383

Canada: CEF, PO Box 165, Winnipeg, Manitoba R3C 2G9

Ireland: CEF, 199 Templemore Avenue, Belfast BT5 4FR

Britain: CEF, 73 West Coats Road, Cambuslang, Glasgow G72 8AW

The Kilchzimmer Echo is available by e-mail as a PDF. To receive it electronically, send an e-mail to [email protected], along with your full name and address in the message text. Your information will remain confidential.

Editorial/layout: Gerd-Walter Buskies, Felix and Diane Dürrenberger, Brent Hautle

k i l c h z i m m e r N e w s

VoluNteer ser Vice as life experienceMy name is

Rebekka Walz, however most people know me as “Becky”. I am 22 years old and since the beginning of February,

I’ve been a volunteer worker here in the kitchen at Kilchzimmer.

This service will last for 6 months and comes under the name “International Youth Voluntary Service”. I come from south Germany and was

already here in 2012 during the autumn training course for 3 months, to look after the children of the students. Doing this work I was able to use my hobbies, such as handicrafts, drawing/painting and everything to do with being creative. I enjoyed it so much in Kilchzimmer, that I wanted to come back. Now I’m working in the kitchen and am able to learn lots of new skills. After my time of voluntary service here, I would like to study home economics or social work.

t h a N k y o u f o r o u r n e w B u sA new bus has been a project at

Kilchzimmer for several years. A few gifts came in, however the goal seemed almost unreachable. Then when our old bus was no longer roadworthy, through God’s leading a faithful friend of CEF promised to double any gifts that came in. We were overwhelmed about the reaction which followed this call. Every day gifts arrived. Almost at the same time we heard from a friendly car dealer,

that there was a good offer on a four-wheel drive bus near us. Thanks to the gifts, the offer of doubling them and a few reserves we were soon able to buy the bus. We are thankful to the Lord and to all the donors that everything happened at exactly the right time and that Kilchzimmer once again has a roadworthy bus. It has already started to give us good service.

special offer: 3 for 2In the first half of the year Kilchzimmer

is available as a guest house for groups and churches for their own training sessions or for camps. The weekends in 2013 are mostly booked up, however there is still adequate place during the week. Use our special offer! Enjoy three days relaxation in the beautiful Swiss Jura mountains for the price of two! 

The price for three days full board comes to CHF 110 per person sharing a double room (instead of CHF 165) or CHF  128 per person in a single room (instead of CHF 192).

Information about free dates in Kilchzimmer can be obtained from the house leaders Felix and Diane Dürrenberger at +41 (0)62 387 30 10 or by e-mail: [email protected]