So this past month we were in Moldova.
For those of you who so not know (like myself before the Race)
Moldova is a small European country East of Romania. In the past 10
years almost half of the 6 million people that live in Moldova have
left the country in search for work all over the world. Another 1
million live and work outside the borders without the government
knowing. The effects of the Communist reign are still felt here.
You have the older generation missing the security (health care, job
security) that it provided and the younger generation taking
advantage of their new freedoms. Most of the country is still rural
farm land. It is a very hard life lived by very strong people. The
orthodox church is the vast major of religious influence here. There
is plenty of head knowledge of Jesus but very few people with a
surrender heart.
One day while we were at the store a
funeral procession passed us by. There was a truck leading the way
with an open casket with the new widow sitting next to it. Following
the truck were 30-40 people holding large crosses and flower. They
were traveling down the main road with traffic piling up behind them.
I began to think was this man a Christ follower or just a church
goer?
Our main ministry was to go door to
door in our village telling people about having Jesus in your heart.
Which is a fun challenge since we were the first ones ever to do this
in the village where everyone already knows about Jesus and thinks
that is enough. Most of the time people would listen to what we
would tell them. That Jesus wants a relationship with you and
doesn’t care about traditions and works. They would smile an nod and
said that they knew all of that. I really hope that they do but from
what our contact told us that is just the way of the orthodox church.
Every once in a while we were invited inside for tea and sweets.
Those were great times because we really got to know the person and
hear their story.
It was a real struggle for our team
since even in the baptist church (our home church) we still had to
hold back our emotions and movements since some of the older member
would not understand what we were doing and view us as sinners. It
is sad that most of these people sing and the love and forgiveness of
Jesus without knowing what that truly feels like. We could see in
the conversations with the youth and young adults that they wanted so
much more then the church was offering. There is so much potential
here. So much opportunity for God to breath life on these people.
It was also a wake up call to the
freedom that we have in churches in America but are to caught up in
what others might think of us instead of worshiping God as He wants
us to.
