Opportunities

This page is often updated. Please check back.  Click here to see a map of ministry sites. There is more detail on each country at the bottom of this page.

As Stoneworks grows, we see opportunities and needs arising in several parts of Eastern and Central Europe and the Balkans.  Please contact us if you’re feeling called to help in any of these areas.

It’s important to emphasize that our primary purpose is to honor Christ and abide in Him.  The work we do is secondary to our relationship with Christ and our love for one another.  Therefore we look for people whom the Lord is calling into relationship with us, serving Him as members of His body.  We hope to help others do what God is calling them to do.  Spiritual unity is necessary.  Our long-term missionaries raise their own support, and we ask for a minimum two-year commitment.

In Brief  — Opportunities and Needs

Estonia:

• We are praying for a pioneering long-term missionary, or group of missionaries, to establish a ministry base in Eastern Estonia.
  • We are asking the Lord to call people to be the ‘home base’ for growing ministry: hands-on ministry in orphanages and shelters, hosting short-term mission teams, building a summer camp program for orphans, purposefully expanding the scope of the work.

Serbia:

• Long term missionaries have been requested to serve churches in Northern Serbia, with an eye toward youth ministry, missions and church planting.
• We also pray for funds to publish the Serbian translation of Passion and Purity by Elisabeth Elliot ($1500). This book would be a blessing to many people in Serbia and Montenegro.

Montenegro:

• $140 per child to sponsor teens to attend our summer camp. 10 children.
• Funds to purchase a summer camp
• Serbian speaking church planters and funds to support them for their first year of ministry (and to perhaps purchase cars for them).
• Need for long-term discipleship, especially older men who would learn the language and make a serious commitment.
• Need for long-term counseling, committed relationships; short-term, mature missionaries who will commit to making regular visits.

Belarus:

• $350 to buy a cow for a foster family Done. Thank you!
• $215 per child, to send orphans and disadvantaged children to a Christian camp. We’d like to send 20 children.
• $5 per chicken, to buy chickens for foster families
• a short-term team to meet Belorussian children at a Christian camp in Estonia.
• a short-term team to lead VBS at a local church with orphans
• a short-term team to come and help orphans attend camp with them

Russia:

• Our partner in Russia, MIR, needs help creating videos, slide shows and other media to help communicate the ministry and help with web site management
• $500 per month (per worker) to serve children in Hospital #15, where children are brought by the police when they come in off the street or are removed from their homes because of abuse or neglect.  The state does not provide workers to care for the children. Very often only one medical worker is on duty overseeing 30 children, and she does not interact with them at all other than in medical situations. We want to hire Christian workers who will love and serve these children.
• Camp Elama — this is a Christian summer camp; we need funds to run a summer camp for disabled children and children-at-risk ($1000), to install heating stoves ($500) and do repairs on buildings ($500).

More detail

Estonia

Estonia is a European country bordering Russia, very near St. Petersburg. After the fall of the Soviet Union, Estonia gained independence, and many Russian families who had settled in Estonia after WWII were ’stranded’ there.

Some areas of Estonia are 95% Russian.  These ethnic Russians, in many cases, do not have the rights of full citizenship because they do not speak Estonian.

There are orphanages full of Russian children; the issues they face, the facilities where they live, and their needs are very much the same as orphans in Russia. They speak Russian and have very little hope for a fruitful life.

However, the doors are wide open for ministry in Estonia.  Orphanage directors have asked us to come and minister the gospel there.  Americans and Europeans don’t need visas to be there.

The culture is very welcoming to Evangelical believers (unlike the attitude in Russia).  This is a special opportunity to minister the gospel to Russians in a culture that is open and welcoming. To our knowledge, very little mission work is being done in the orphanages of Eastern Estonia.

Serbia

Over 150 years ago, Evangelical believers from Slovakia and Hungary settled in North Serbia to farm the land.  These churches (Baptist, Brethren, Lutheran, etc) survived the communist period. This region of Voivodina remains a sort of Bible belt in Central Europe.

A church in Baska Petrovac has asked us to help establish a youth ministry, with an eye toward missions.  Our hope is that Serbian young people will be prepared for the mission field so they can plant churches in Serbian-speaking areas of the Balkans where there are now very few churches (Southern Serbia, Kosovo, the mountains of Montenegro, etc). Other opportunities are available in this community.

Baska Petrovac is a farming town located not far from Novi Sad; it is very welcoming and family-oriented. Our contact there is Jan Dudas, who was the best man in the wedding of Vladimir Cizmanski, pastor of the Brethren assembly in Montenegro. We are set like living stones.

Montenegro

Montenegro has a population of 650,000 people.  There are about 200 Evangelical believers there; there are only three churches in the country, the largest being about 35 people.  Several cities have no church and less than 10 known Christians.  In the mountains, there are no Evangelical churches, and many villages with no Christians.

Stoneworks wants to help plant churches in the mountains. The role for non-Serbian-speaking people is intercession, prayer walking, and partnering in gospel presentations on short-term trips. The model of Circuit Riders may fit the situation in Northern Montenegro; as we identify church planters, we would purchase cars allowing them to build a circuit of villages for church planting.

Stoneworks has helped establish a summer youth camp and has hosted the first church retreats for the Brethren Assembly.  Camping facilities have always been rented.  We are now asking the Lord to give a camp to the church in Montenegro; many Christians in America have experienced the blessings of being able to visit a Christian camp for many years in a row. The Church in Montenegro does not have this tradition, and we want to help establish that.