Sin Testi is an area on the outskirts of Bucharest, Romania. Fitting to it’s name (like sin-tested, and rated Eastern Europe’s “Most Dangerous Area.”), I found myself located here my last week of Romania. Sin Testi is used as a hub for Europe’s largest and strongest mafia; a sea of castles in one of the poorest areas of Europe.
We met with Max Dahm, (not to be confused with his son Nathan Dahm, the youngest senator ever of Oklahoma), and quickly realized the strong role he plays in Sin Testi. He is a missionary that evangelizes to the community, owns a seminary, and provides a children’s camp in the summer.
Pastor Max is another great example of leaving a basic, more than comfortable American life to follow God’s plan. He was an inspiration to us and told us a lot of great stories of his life. Weird stories, of course; our favorite.
My favorite story was told when we were sitting at Pastor Max’s kitchen table, (He fed us American spaghetti and garlic bread, God bless his soul), and it started when we asked him if he was scared having the most dangerous neighbors in Europe.
“Not anymore,” was his response.
He stated the mafia used to burn trash in his alfalfa fields, and his wife- who hated living in Romania at first, had a real issue with it. He was commanded by his wife that if he wanted to stay in Romania, he had to do something about it.
So Pastor Max walked to the mafia men burning trash, and told them to “cut it out.” The mafia, not used to having any neighbors at all, clearly had an issue with this. After yelling at each other for quite awhile and a few guns drawn, Pastor Max casually walked back to his house after ignoring a few life-threatening words.
Rumors spread through the city saying the Mafia were going to burn Pastor Max’s house down and murder his whole family. Pastor Max, fully believing in God’s protection, thought of this as “no big deal,” and continued on with his day, neglecting to tell his wife what was happening.
Soon the governor of Bucharest and many other friends started coming to Pastor Max’s door telling him and his family to flee. Continuously, Pastor Max ignored them and relied on God to protect them.
Around 5pm the next day, Pastor Max saw 3 mafia men walking towards his house with guns. They stopped prematurely to steal metal off his power lines (a typical way for people in Romania to make quick, illegal cash on the side), and within a matter of seconds, all three men were fried. Yeah. Electrocuted to death.
Now the mafia are terrified of God, Pastor Max and his family. They even brought him presents after the incident hoping he wouldn’t pray our God would fry them too.
Long story short, God protects us.
You betta’ believe it.
