Buna! Welcome to Romania! We have been here for a few days now! I can hardly believe that it has already been a month since we launched from Atlanta! We left a place where most people have at one point or another heard and or read the Gospel. They have had the opportunity and the freedom to make a decision for themselves to give their lives Christ. A place where there are churches on every other corner and “church shopping” is a thing. You don’t realize how incredible it all is to be able to walk down the street in your home town and know that a lot of your neighbors share your faith. In America you are more likely to ask someone what church they go to rather than if they know Jesus.
When you first think of Eastern Europe you would not think of it as a place where so few people really know Jesus. Over the last month both in Serbia and now in Romania we have seen the scriptures in both Matthew 9:37 and Luke 10:2 that say that, “The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few” played out in real life. The number of non believes who are ready to hear the Gospel absolutely dwarf the number of Christians here. While we were in Serbia it was more than once referred to as “the forgotten country” in terms of missions. Even in the few days we have been here our host Raul has said more than once that south Romania is known as “the graveyard of missionaries.” The biggest religions in both of these countries is Orthodox. This again is a term that does automatically make people jump up and say “Lord send me!” If it has, bless you for answering the call to be a missionary in such a difficult situation.
Let me explain a little more what I have learned about today’s Orthodox church. They are 100% discouraged from ever reading the Bible for themselves. They are told that it is not for them to interpret scripture and that they should trust what the priest tells them. Most services are held in old languages that very few could even have the chance of understanding. The churches are ornate and filled with pictures. They believe that good works are what will get you to heaven. They put a heavy influence on death to a point that could really be considered a cult practices. This is just the tip of the iceberg. For me listening to these descriptions and the stories that I have been told by several of the missionaries we have met it occurred to me that while the original Orthodox church was just another denomination of the Christian faith today’s Orthodox church has made full circle right back to the time of the Protestant Reformation.
One of my favorite people in Christian history is Ulric Zwingli. Just after my senior year in high school I got the opportunity to go to Western Europe for a Christian student leadership trip called EuroTrain. When we visited Zurich, Switzerland we got the opportunity to go and visit his church. The building had originally been an old catholic parish complete with beautiful stained class windows and dozens of painted pictures depicting the stories from the Bible on the walls of the church. Zwingli very strongly felt that it was important for the congregation to read the Bible for themselves. He was so passionate about it that he had all but one of the paintings stripped off the walls of the church. To this day you can see where there used to be paint on the walls, but that it had purposefully stripped away.
Over the last month I have felt a little a pioneer from the time of the Reformation. We are presenting the Gospel to people who think that they know Jesus, but in reality have never been told the Good News and never had the opportunity to learn about what it means to have a real relationship with Him. There are so many obstacles for missionaries to overcome when sharing the Gospel with these people. In Serbia we were told that their religion is extremely ingrained in their view of their pride in their nationality. It would be like an American saying that I am American therefore I must be… The people here face much persecution by choosing Christ. It is not at all uncommon for them to be completely disowned and kicked out of their families. In Romania it is a way of life that is so ingrained their way of life that it is difficult to create that change. There is a large portion of the southern region of Romania that can be considered completely unreached by the Gospel.
Now why did I choose to write about this now? The last two days we have gotten to participate in two ministries that worked with these people here in Romania. The first is the New Testament Project. We had the incredible opportunity to go to three of these unreached villages and hand out New Testament books along with the information about Hope Church (Our ministry hosts for this month) and one of several different testimonies (some of which were from people on our squad!) of how people came to Christ. We were able to have conversations with some people and left a New Testament at each of the houses in the village.
Today we got the opportunity to hand out flyers for an event that Hope Church will be holding later this month. They will holding an eyeglasses ministry where people will be able to come to the church pray with people, receive some counseling, and then be gifted with a free pair of reading glasses. While we were handing out flyers we were also actively evangelizing. Our group went out with Ana our Host Raul’s wife. While we were walking we came across a spring. There was a woman there washing clothes. We were blessed to be able to talk to her about Jesus and about having a relationship with Him. Her name was Maria and she told us about her two sons and we told her the story of the Woman at the Well. She had never had a relationship with God. All she knew was the idea that good deed were what would get her into heaven. Our conversation ended with an invitation to know more, come to church and us praying with her to accept Jesus into her heart. As we were praying the wind picked up sweeping across the spring.
As we kept walking we came to an elderly man who lived alone. He told us that he had no family left. When we asked him about Jesus he went back into his house and brought out his copy of the Bible and a copy of the New Testament. Ana encouraged us to ask deeper questions. She told us that even though he believed and thought that he had a relationship with Christ that there was probably much that he did not understand. As it turned out he still believed that he would get to heaven through good works. We were able to tell him that it is only through Jesus that no amount of good works would get him into heaven. After a little more conversation he asked to come and see a picture he had up on his house. He said it was a picture of Mary and that he prayed to it every day. Ana encouraged us to tell him that God does not tolerate worship to anyone other than him. He immediately took the picture down. We again were incredibly blessed to pray that most important prayer with him.
We were blessed with the opportunity to speak with many more people about Jesus. Every time we prayed with someone we spoke with the wind picked up and blew around where we were standing. I have never felt the Holy Spirit in such a tangible way. We were reminded of the verse in the Bible Acts 2:2 “Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting.”
I’ll close by saying that while there is truly so many challenges here, but the harvest is plentiful and just waiting to hear the Good News!
This is Maria the woman we met at the spring
This is a gentleman that we gave a Bible and shared our invitation with.
