Only 0.2% of Romania’s population is Christian and the few Christians that there are face a lot of challenges. Missionaries are prone to burning out because it is a dark place spiritually and most of the people’s hearts are hard and are closed off to hearing about the gospel. Some of the missionaries also don’t have other Christians pouring into them and giving them the support that they need and they feel very isolated. Part of what I did in Romania was to encourage the Christians there and remind them that they are not alone as well as a plethora of other odd jobs.
My time in Romania was filled with traveling and I lived in five different cities over the course of the month. That was a lot more than normal because usually we get to our host’s location and don’t move again until it is time for us to leave. Our hosts Raul and Ana were really sweet and did their best to take care of us and make sure we had everything that we needed. For ministry we cleaned, organized, and helped at church every Sunday, but mostly we walked all over the city and invited people to come to the events that the church was doing.
Now Romanians are not nearly as friendly as Kosovars and generally stick to themselves. I went around with my friend, Luca, to invite people and he said that if he approached the people they wouldn’t want anything to do with him. So I would go up to people and say my little greeting in Romanian and then explain in English what we were inviting them to. Most of the time the people wouldn’t understand me but they were so surprised that I was American that they wanted to know what I was saying, so then Luca would jump in and help translate. It worked pretty well for handing out our invitations, but we only had one or two people that wanted to talk about God. This one time we were passing out invitations in a park and there was a long bench with five or six elderly men sitting on it. I thought about talking to them, but I got a little intimidated so I started to walk past them. Then one of the men said “are you discriminating against us because we are old?!” I said “no! I would never do that! You just scared me that’s all.” We got to talk to them for a while and they were really sweet. We gave them the Jesus film video and I hope and pray that they watched it and that seeds were planted. Lesson for the day: talk to everyone that you feel even the slightest tug towards, sometimes the scary old guys aren’t so bad after all.
Photo credit: Cassie Dunning
My favorite thing that happened was that we met an awesome group of young women and they invited us to go to a board game place with them and hang out. They were so sweet and it was so fun! We had a great time with them and got to share our stories and why we came to Romania and then we were even able to meet up with them again the next week to go bowling. It was definitely a God thing that we got to meet them and I know that some seeds were planted in their hearts.
Another super cool thing that we got to be a part of is we got to see six ladies from a prison get baptized! One of our friends was kind enough to translate one of the testimonies for us and it was so encouraging to hear about how Jesus had transformed her life.
I got to spend a few weeks with a different host in Romania, Kristy and Cami, and they were so welcoming and accepted me in as part of the group. They had us over for a BBQ and game night and even took us on a beautiful hike! I loved hearing their stories and getting to know their family.
All in all Romania was a pretty random month, but I am encouraged by the seeds we got to plant. It was cool to see a lot of different cities and really get a feel for the people and the culture. Romania and the Christians there really need your prayers. I know that God is not done with them yet and He will continue to move in mighty ways.
Thanks for reading!
In Him,
Heidi
P.S. Check out this chocolate bar with my name on it!!! 🙂
