So here is a bit of an update on what the last few weeks have looked like:
– My team spent a few days in Budapest, Hungary with an English teacher from the states, a friend of one of my teammates. I ate goulash and it was heavenly. Other Hungarian hilarity ensued.
– We spent a few days in Bucharest, Romania as a squad getting some rest time before we boarded a night train to Chisinau, the capital of Moldova. On this train, we encountered a bunch of really nice, extremely young Mormon missionaries who spoke excellent Romanian and helped us communicate with the conductor, who was annoyed that there were so many of us. We descended on the train like locusts on the harvest, except chattier and with more luggage. At one point, after getting our passports checked at 3am, a Moldavian woman forced our cabin door open and asked us if our luggage was okay. We looked at her, confused, and offered a weak and hesitant "yes." She nodded, slammed the door, and we laughed until we cried because everything just seems funnier in the early morning at a border crossing on a train.
– We spent a day together in Chisinau before catching a train the next morning to Ocnita, the northernmost city in Moldova. It is literally three miles from the Ukraine. Our contact told me that we would be "shocked" when we saw it (because of how beautiful it was). I thought he said we would be "shot," and asked him to please not take us anywhere near it.
And here we are, serving in Ocnita. Our contact, Andrei, is a young man with a wife and two young sons. He teaches history in a school in town and is the interim pastor of a small Baptist church He also is running a rehabilitation center near town. Moldova is severely economically depressed, and the area he is in was hit hard by the fall of Communism. Since 1991, the town has shrunk, its major industries have crumbled, and unemployment has gone through the roof. Alcoholism and drug use run rampant because there simply is no better way to ease the pain of living a hopeless, purposeless life to some of these people.
This is why Andrei wants to badly to bring the love of Christ to this area. It is relatively unchurched, and the enemy works hard to keep it that way. But there are glimmers of hope that we have seen even since coming. The children that come to our after school program to learn English are picking up Bible stories, and it is so good to love on them and see them smiling in a place where there is so little reason to be happy sometimes. Also, just this past week, several people in town came to know Jesus. Larissa, Andrei’s wife, witnessed to the wife of a Moldavian martial arts champion and she accepted Jesus. Her husband and teenage children are interested. A colleague of Andrei’s at work has asked to know more about his faith. The husband of a woman with whom we are working came to church for the first time and got on his knees in prayer to Jesus.
Things are moving in Ocnita, Moldova, and far be it from me to think that we are the catalyst – we simply are blessed to be present when the waters start churning. Be in prayer for Ocnita, and for the people trying to light up that region with the love of Jesus Christ. Not just us, but Andrei and his family and the other members of the church who have chosen to live there instead of emigrating or moving to a better part of the country.God is at work in Moldova, and I am excited to see what happens next!
PS – I KNOW that I keep promising videos. They are piling up. I know I will put them up soon – some are ready to go, but the thing about internet in Moldova is that it, well, isn’t that great. Great videos await! Stay tuned, faithful viewers!
