Romania Summer Camps

Casa Grace is a social work charity, based in Romania near to the Hungarian border. They help and support families living in very poor conditions who are in great need. At Elim, we have been supporting Casa Grace, helping to run summer camps for the children since 2005.

Born out of our church's love in working and supporting these families through Casa Grace & through our annual summer camp, came our Christmas shoebox appeal. Each year we send out shoe box gifts, and help give hope at Christmas to those families in great need.

Rachel Lee writes:

This year’s camp was held in a beautiful place just outside of Oradea, having decided only in March we'd plan to have camp this year. Facing the first challenge, all the campsites were already booked up, but God is in control and provided (as always) a venue which enabled us to invite 30 young children for the first half of the week and 19 teenagers the second half.

We were a team of 14, what an absolute blessing it was to work with the 8 Romanian team leaders and translators. It is a remarkable thing to see people from different backgrounds, different gifting and experiences unite together and see God move in amazing ways.

Amongst the fun and games, cooking and sports we held singing and puppet workshops, what a joyous experience to see the children performing to their peers after just one hour's instruction, in our talent show evening.

The children and teens both took great delight in having the freedom to be creative in our craft section, with our amazing team mate 'crafty Kath'. Kathy was so touched when a young girl flung her arms around her to thank her for laminating her piece of craft with a memory verse she had coloured-in to hand on her wall at home.

As well as all the fun games, sports and splatting the team leaders with wet sponges we were able to share the wonderful gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, and what a privilege to lead the young people in prayer and welcome them into God's family. With the teenagers many of us had the opportunity to share our story, followed by time of worship. What a beautiful experience to hear young people worshipping together in different languages.

I was sat at the dinner table one day and was brought to tears when a little 7 year old boy asked how long he could stay on camp, when asked how long he would like to stay for his response 'I want to stay forever'. For this youngster it was first time on camp, his home life is so problematic with minimal opportunity just to be a normal 7 year old, being the oldest of 6 children, no father and mother struggling to provide even the most basic food for her children.

We asked God to continue to prompt us to pray daily for these young people and we pray God will bless us with funds for next year's camp.

Annual Christmas Shoe Box Appeal for Romania

Every Christmas it is a real blessing to see the shoe boxes everyone has made. If you would like to make a shoe box this year for some disadvantaged families, here is a checklist with some ideas to put inside, get saving your shoe boxes now!!!