When asked about my favorite month on The World Race, I
always have an inner battle with my memories. The answer is typically
Philippines. But I still have a very soft spot in my heart for our month in
MOLDOVA!
Having spent four weeks in Calcutta, India sick, tired,
exhausted, it was a breath of fresh (and cold) air to be in northern Moldova,
in a little town called Naslavcea (pronounced Na-slav-tcha). We worked with a
wonderful man, Andrei Luca, and his beautiful wife, Larisa, who were working on
starting a drug and alcohol rehabilitation center in this small town for
addicts in the larger cities (Chisinau, the capital of Moldova). They had
recently bought a little house in the middle of nowhere to convert into a place
for men to stay in while they recovered from their addictions. We helped to
prepare the place- digging a garden, cleaning the house, etc.- but mostly we
were there to fellowship with Andrei and Larisa…
You see, Moldova was a part of the former Soviet Union, and
during that time there was lots of industry going on, many sugar factories,
machine manufacturing plants, where plenty of jobs were available for the
people of small towns throughout the country. And as religion goes, Eastern
Orthodox was the main church structure, with lots of rules, regulations,
traditions, and rituals. But when the Soviet Union fell, so did nearly all of
the industry. Since there were no job opportunities, the younger generations
either partied hard and got into drug and alcohol abuse (“celebrating� the fall
of the Soviet Union), or left the country altogether in order to find work. So
there was left in Moldova a sense of hopelessness, destruction, chaos, and the
older generations felt they had to return order and structure, thus developing
orthodoxy to a greater degree.
There are Orthodox churches around just about every corner,
and almost everyone around is either Eastern Orthodox, or nothing at all. So to
have a young couple (Andrei 29 and Larisa 31) who are actively seeking out the
living God we have been told about through Christ and the gospel writers,
without all the traditional chains holding them back, is a huge blessing to
find in a place like northern Moldova. However, there are very few people like
them, and to find a community of brothers and sisters also seeking out the same
things is very difficult.
I spoke with Andrei early on about our expectations of our
time in Moldova, and I told him we were willing to work as much as we could,
while we also needed our down time to rest and be refilled. He stopped me in
the middle of it and said, “Don’t worry about it. God told me you and your team
need rest this month. So you will do some work, and also rest and be refilled!�
What?
God told Andrei that we needed rest. But I had not mentioned
to Andrei about our difficult times in India, how we were all sick and still
trying to get healthy, how we had a rough time as a team and with ministry. He
just knew it.
So as we did some work in preparing the rehab center, we
also just fellowshipped with this young couple, poured into them, were poured
into by them, discussed the work of the church in Eastern Europe, discussed the
activity of the Holy Spirit, and just had fun. Every time Andrei showed up at
the center we would throw on our shoes in preparation to go on some sort of
adventure. We hiked to the top of a mountain, went cave-crawling, checked out
an old ammunition bunker, and walked to an old train station. We had a lot of
fun, a lot of time to get to know each other as a team, and best of all, we
gained family in Moldova.
Now the rehabilitation center is up and running with several
patients, and they have bought more houses in the area to use for rehabilitants
and visitors (like us!). I keep in tough with Andrei every so often to make
sure everything is going well, and we update each other on how we are doing. I
recently wrote Andrei to ask him for an update I can post on here, and this is
what he had to say (edited for clarity, he is not fluent in writing English):
Salut,
Thanks we are good, walking with God in our life. Larisa is in the last ‘100
meters’ of pregnancy. I think we have one or two weeks to wait, doctor says will
be a boy, but we thank the Lord for this child and pray only for his health. In
the rehab-centre all is good, we had some problems in March, but now all is
good, thank the Lord. We had 3 guys end rehabilitation and decide to stay in
Naslavcea and help us in this ministry. Please pray for them – their names –
Arteom, Artur and Sergey. Please pray for other team at Church, we want to
start ministry with youth people in town and in Naslavcea. We pray now to buy a
house for Church in Naslavcea.
Thank you for you don’t forget us, and please pray for us!!!
Keep my brother Andrei and his family in your prayers as they push
through lots of obstacles in order to see God glorified in Moldova. Pray for
health for their almost born son.
Thanks for reading.
