The Ministry for Europe Trust

A Brief History

The Ministry for Europe Trust is a registered charity working in some of the poorest and most troubled areas of Europe: Macedonia, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia, as well as in the Republic of Ireland, Northern Ireland and the former East Germany.

The work involves be-friending exprisoners, gypsies, orphans, drugaddicts, peasants and ordinary people, in order to encourage them to a better standard of peace in their life, through a personal faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.

We achieve this by establishing genuine friendship, support and encouragement with those heroes of the faith who are working ‘on the ground’ in the various localities.

THE COMMENCEMENT

The work commenced in East Germany in November, 1989, when the Berlin Wall collapsed. Before this, we were unable to enter East Germany.

To our amazement, we found a thriving work for God being done. People were starving for religion and although the sects were also coming in, we found that there was a real hunger for the truth. However, due to the lack of finance the work was hampered. We brought this great need to the notice of a number of believers in Northern Ireland, and before long we were able to purchase a computer. This enabled the literally thousands of letters, from searching individuals, to be answered.

Today, through Dieter Weidensdorfer and his wife, we seek to encourage the work of sending out 12,000 Bibles, 30 tons of gospel literature and up to 230,000 gospel calenders, annually.

HUNGARY

Encouraged by this opening, we approached a number of the Christians in Hungary. There, we found that a great work for the Lord was being done in the prisons.

However, the prisoners had no Bibles of their own and the hymns were sung from small pieces of paper.

In order to encourage the believers we supplied hymbooks specially designed for the prison ministry. However, we were not allowed to bring Bibles into the prisons. So, we asked believers to give us old picture calendars, which we cut into A4 and A5 sizes. On these beautiful pictures we placed Gospel Scriptures and after placing the name and address of contacts, we laminated these. This has been a great success with the prisoners, whose cells were dull grey.

Eventually, we were permitted to bring in the first 1,000 Bibles and we are presently printing 10,000 illustrated booklets on the life and conversion of an American drugdealer and gangster.

SERBIA

From Hungary we were invited to go into Serbia where Bibles were having to be smuggled in! These Bibles were being sold to the people and this was the only means of support which one younger brother had for his family.

Due to security reasons, we are unable to report the development of this wonderful work, suffice to say that in July, 2000, we had the joy of baptising seven believers in the local river and open the first new Gospel Hall in the whole land in forty years.

CROATIA

It seemed an opportune time to visit the believers in Croatia, the neighbouring country to Serbia.There we met a young believer and his wife who had ordered the transport to bring them into an area of one million people where there was only a handful of believers. This young couple felt the Lord’s call to give their lives to His work. They had not paid for the lorry because they did not have the £60. Thus we came just in time to help this work become established and today there are three little gatherings of saints studying their Bibles.

MACEDONIA

While in Croatia , we met a young German Brother, who was on his way to Macedonia to start work for God there. During the time of the Kosovo crisis, when 243,000 refugees headed for Macedonia a brother in Northern Ireland gave us a container-load of clothes for these poor souls. Thus we felt that we were being guided there.

Unknown to us at the time, the Lord had heard the prayers of three dear old sisters, who had remained faithful to the things of God for ten years, after the last brother, in the only assembly in the whole land, was called home.In direct answer to those prayers, the Lord brought five young brethren and sisters to the very town these sisters lived in, and through our help these two small groups were brought together as an assembly. A brother from the Netherlands had the first canonic Bible translated into Macedonian and we were there just at the right time to pay for transport. To add to the blessings, a believer was elected to the high office of president.

No wonder Satan is seeking to attack Macedonia.

BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA

Within this last year we have been invited by saints in Croatia to assist in the printing of the very first Bibles into Bosnian Language. It is our aim to reach 4% of the total population of Bosniaks, thus, 100,000 souls will hold the Bible in their hands for the first time. And so the work of encouraging the believers has developed. Today, we are working with the travellers in the Republic of Ireland and we are presently planning a gospel folder outreach to each of the 648,000 households in Northern Ireland.

As we look across Europe, we understand what the Lord meant in John 4, ‘Lift up your eyes, and look on the fields, for they are white already to harvest.’