This IS Romania: loving the randomness

And you wonder why people make wrong turns or get confused!

Even the Romanian Orthodox Nuns like to go fishing

Gotta love the pig!

I hope this guy didn't pay for the parking spot

Look carefully....the workers are heating their sausages for lunch with a torch light

Happy Easter!

Christ is Risen! He is Risen Indeed! Or at least, those that follow the Catholic Easter. Here in Romania, Easter is still several weeks away, as we follow the Eastern Orthodox Calendar. Eastern Orthodox churches generally use the Julian calendar, while Roman Catholics and Protestants use the Gregorian calendar. Methods of calculating the date of Easter differ. Thus Easter is celebrated on the same day in Christianity only about once every three or four years. In other years, the Orthodox Easter -- called Pascha -- is delayed by one, four, or five weeks from the Roman Catholic/Protestant date. But for those of you in the West....Happy Easter! May the knowledge of our Lord Jesus' resurrection bring you peace and joy this Easter season and a reminder of how very much the world needs Jesus!

Missions Mobilization in Suceava, RO

This week I joined my colleagues in traveling to the northern Romanian city of Suceava (close to the Ukrainian border) to meet with members of the Brethren Church there who are doing incredible work in missions mobilization in their region of Romania. We had the privilege of participating in a prayer night with youth from various churches and cities who meet together for encouragement, prayer, and collaboration. We were all crowded into a living room, with many people in the hallways and other rooms. This is a group passionate about missions and bringing the Gospel to unreached areas of the world, as well as unreached cities and villages in Romania. We sang, we prayed, and heard more of their vision for the Suceava area. It was also an opportunity for me to get involved with the Kairos Program (a missions training program) that some of my colleagues have been teaching in churches around Romania. Most of this group in Suceava has been through the course and is now motivating and preparing other churches to play a greater role in the Great Commission. It was great to be encouraging a group of young Romanians on fire for the Gospel. We are praying for their efforts and continued passion to reach the world for Christ.

Vali with his daughter. He is the mission and youth coordinator for the Brethren Church in Suceava. He has helped form missions prayer/encouragement teams and he and his wife are hoping to serve cross-culturally as missionaries themselves. He often takes his youth in missions trips to villages in the Suceava region and into the Romanian speaking cities in Ukraine. He and his wife have a great heart for missions and are truly one of the "success stories" and shining examples in Romania of a church and region mobilizing its forces for missions.

Me with my colleague Adi (left), Linda (the Kairos European International Coordinator who joined us from England), and Russell together for dinner at Vali's house. It was a delicious meal!

I especially enjoyed dessert!

The Suceava region is known for fortresses and monasteries

Conference in Budapest, HU

This past week I attended a conference in Budapest, Hungary about foreign missions and second language acquisition. It was a good conference, full of material and resources that we hope to integrate into our work here in Romania. I met missionaries from all over the world and got to strategize with others working specifically in Eastern Europe. I really enjoyed the fellowship! We stayed at a hotel/dormitory on the outskirts of the city which provided some interesting experiences using public transport. Apparently in Budapest, bus routes are not only organized by numbers, but also by color. One night coming back to the conference center, I took the bus 40 only to realize I wasn't in Budapest anymore. I asked a girl on the bus in English "isn't this bus 40?" She said yes, but I need the yellow 40, not the red 40. Anyway, she was nice enough to get off the bus with me and walk me to where I could catch the bus I needed back into the city to get to where I was staying. It was an interesting experience, since it was late at night and I couldn't afford to take a taxi.

And as a true 'Romaniac', I got a few scowls from people on the street when I asked for directions in Romanian. I know I have fully become a Romanian when it doesn't dawn on me to ask in English--it was just natural to ask in Romanian. Anyway, if you know anything about Romanian -Hungarian relations....all I can tell you is that we don't get along--at all! That said, I must say that Budapest is a beautiful city and many travel books label it one of the world's most beautiful cities, for good reason. But the Hungarian language? Uffda! It's a beast and not too beautiful to the ears either. Yet as pretty as Budapest is, I am thankful to be living in Romania. And anyone who has visited Romania knows, it is an absolutely gorgeous country.!

The Buda Castle and chain bridge at night. Budapest was actually two cities Buda and Pest that combined.

A close up of my favorite bridge (the Chain Bridge) in Budapest

Hungarian Parliament at night, overlooking the Danube

Our hotel/dormitory where we held the conference

Romanian Art

Constantin Brâncuşi is a world renowned Romanian sculptor whose sculptures blend simplicity and sophistication that led the way for modernist sculptors. His works are housed in the Museum of Modern Art (New York) and in the National Museum of Art of Romania (Bucharest), as well as in other major museums around the world. The Philadelphia Museum of Art currently has the largest collection of Brancusi sculptures in the United States.
A reconstruction of Brancusi's onetime studio in Paris is open to the public. It is close to the Pompidou Centre, in the rue Rambuteau. He bequeathed part of his collection to the French state on condition that his workshop be rebuilt as it was on the day he died.
Brâncuşi was elected post-mortem to the Romanian Academy in 1990.
In 2002, a sculpture by Brâncuşi named "Danaide" sold for $18.1 million, the highest that a sculpture piece had ever sold for at auction. In May 2005, a piece from the "Bird in Space" series broke that record, selling for $27.5 million in a Christie's auction.

The Endless Column in Târgu Jiu, România

The Gate of the Kiss

The Table of Silence

Situation of Church Growth in Romania

The above diagram is an example of some of the incredible research that my colleague Russell Mitchell has done regarding the evangelical church growth (or lack thereof) of each county Romania. Recently, we mailed out a newsletter with detailed maps, charts, etc., to every evangelical church in Romania, showing areas with and without churches. In this newsletter, we challenged church leaders in Romania to not be satisfied with the status quo. After the fall of communism, there was significant church growth in Romania, but that has since leveled off. To this day, there exists 9,638 villages in Romania without a single evangelical church and 21 cities (with populations over 50,000) without churches. And Romania has one of the highest percentages of evangelical Christians in Europe! That, my friends, is just sad! Thus, we are tying to challenge every church in Romania to be thinking of ways that they can reach out to areas without churches in Romania. There is still so much unfinished work to do. Obviously, we need to be thinking creatively about new ways to do outreach, especially to the emerging generation. Old styles of evangelism and outreach have not always been effective. This is especially true in the urban areas of Romania, like Bucureşti. We are hoping to hold a forum soon with church leaders in Bucureşti to look at ways we can grow the Church in such a spiritually dark city. To this day, Bucureşti is still (a metro area of 2.5 million) less than 1 percent evangelical Christian. Compare that to the Minneapolis/St. Paul metro area (where I grew up) that has a metro area of 3.5 million people and is roughly 50 percent evangelical Christian (according to Religion Information Resources). In Bucureşti, there are just 80 evangelical churches (the Twin Cities metro area has over 3000). What a need! As you look at the above chart, all the white areas (or suburbs of Bucureşti) have NO evangelical church---and this is the year 2008! Incredible.

Part of our duty at OC International is to challenge the Church. I see my ministry to youth and youth leaders having a direct correlation to church growth in Romania. One roadblock I see is the failure of the Church to reach out to the younger generation who sees the Church as old, obsolete, legalistic, and backwards. Thus, in connection with my colleagues, we look to be holding forums to address this issue as well. Perhaps by bringing attention to issues that hinder our growth, we can finally get over the hump and witness real, significant church growth throughout our beloved Romania. Please pray that the church leaders who look at the data will be challenged to actually do something and that this research would spur a revival. Pray also for our forums to be challenging and lead to brainstorming of real, practical solutions.