Spiritual Life in Bucovina

Everywhere you look in Bucovina you will find a church. Bucovina is in northern Romania, near the Ukranian border. It is a region known for its monastaries, churches, and rich, authentic, Romanian lifestyle of days passed. Daniil Sihastrul Cell - this is the cell of a monk. it was carved in stone through 11 years by this man. And it looks like this. One man's hard work, turning a rock into his house.
Dragos Voda Monastery - the oldest in Romania, this church was made in wood in the 14'th century. It's really something to see 700 years old oak.

Network of Youth Leaders

Tonight was a breakthrough in many regards in my work with the youth leadership network in Bucureşti. After much prayer, many meetings, and a lot of brainstorming, my co-leaders and I decided that it was time to expand our network to include "youth ministry teams." We recently started a course about "Work, communication, conflict, and problem solving in a leadership team." Each leader was asked to bring his team with him, which for some was a challenge (some youth leaders have no help or team). We looked at the biblical basis for forming a team and the difference between "working in a team" and "leading with a team." The idea behind the course is to promote and encourage healthier youth ministries within a church. Tonight each church's leadership team gathered around separate tables and went through a study of spiritual gifts and personality traits in order to better understand similarities and differences within the team. Each church has homework for our next meeting: to create charts with each member's gifts and to discuss these gifts within the team. In addition, each member of the team was asked to write good qualities and strengths of others in the group, as well as areas where people need to improve. We had an awesome turnout tonight. The biggest yet! Over 60 people came! Praise the Lord, we are seeing seeds and a lot of time and effort finally bearing some fruit. Please pray that this course on team leadership will lead to healthier youth ministries in our city.

Hristos a Înviat!

Happy Easter everybody! Yes, that's right. Romania, being a predominanently Eastern Orthodox country, follows the Eastern Orthodox Calendar. As such, Easter falls on a different week than in the West. Sunday was our Easter Sunday. Some of the traditions in Romania are to decorate eggs (like those above) and everyone greets eachother (and I do mean everyone, even at stores and restaurants) with Christ is risen, to which you respond by saying, He is risen indeed! Just think, in today's America, you would probably lose your job for greeting someone in such a way, but not here in Romania :) Other traditions are to eat cozonac, a jelly, sweet roll pictured below and in the evening before the resurrection, people stand with candles at night outside the church to symbolize that even though there was darkness, darkness could not extinguish the light. At Easter we also eat lots of lamb! So Happy Easter. Rejoice, He is Risen!

Parking in Bucureşti: survival of the fittest

I love this one!

This is right at the Metro stop by my apartment

First prize (above) and runner-up below

Protests in the Republic of Moldova

Perhaps some of you have heard, but the often forgotten country of the Republic of Moldova has been in disarray lately admidst rioting over the results of the parliamentary elections. Moldova shares a border with Romania and up until WWII was part of Romania in the region known as Bassarabia. The Moldovan flag is similar to the Romanian flag, only difference being that the Moldovan flag also features their coat of arms. In addition, the main language is Moldovan (basically a dialect of the Romanian language). Thus, there has always been a desire by many Romanians to see Moldova one day reunite with Romania. Following WWII, Moldova became one of the most isolated republics of the former USSR, and thus, Russian was introduced to the populace. To this day, Moldova remains Europe's only remaining "communist" country (though you could make the argument that many of the former Eastern bloc countries are still to a degree communist). It is a land-locked country of 5 million people and Europe's poorest. To many Romanians, it will always be a part of Romania--for some Moldovans, they have no interest in ever reunifying with Romania.
When the results came back that the communists had won over a 50 percent majority, riots erupted and cries of corruption were shouted. The truth? I agree with those who say that the results are true. I think the communists did win. Why? Because there is still a hefty majority of Moldovans who have lived their whole lives under communism, have never traveled out of Moldova and they actually like the security that communism offers (a job, a home, everyone the same, etc.). It is the younger generations, who have been exposed to the freedoms of the West and anti-communist sentiments who simply cannot understand how the older generations would ever want a communist state. It is sad, but you have to understand the sentiments--communism is all they have ever known. And to a degree, they have seen their Romanian brothers and sisters on their pensions, lose a whole life's savings overnight in the switch to capitalism---their thinking is that "at least communism will protect me--I am used to it and it doesn't bother me....I don't know what capitalism would bring." That is the mentality. For the youth, they want the opportunity to travel, to earn a decent living, and to integrate with the EU. Here lies a classic example of the clash between the two generations---one that has known nothing but communism and one that wants nothing to do with it. Thus, the youth have resorted to protesting, and unfortunately it has gotten quite violent.

The blame? Already the Rep. of Moldova and the Russians blame patriotic sentiments in Romania for the protests. Already the Romanian Ambassador has been asked to leave and the Rep. of Moldova is once again requiring all Romanians to have a visa to cross the Prut River. Sad! This affects my team because we are starting to do a lot more work in Moldova. Please pray for an end to the violence and for the relations between the two countries to improve.

For more details, please read the following article: http://images.google.ro/imgres?imgurl=http://www.timesonline.co.uk/multimedia/archive/00518/moldova_smoke_518352a.jpg&imgrefurl=http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article6052601.ece&usg=__Nlh8ZbkskjR7LQC1zh_Las7ug-M=&h=350&w=585&sz=64&hl=ro&start=4&tbnid=FfnFnulpJT4dIM:&tbnh=81&tbnw=135&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dprotesting%2Bin%2Bmoldova%26gbv%3D2%26hl%3Dro

Missions Movement

I frequently interact with a group of over 30 Romanian youth from various evangelical churches who are interested in either serving as missionaries, or at least mobilizing churches and support for missions. I serve as a mentor to several of the youth in this group. Tonight I brought my pastor to the weekly meeting to share about some of his experiences working with the Romanian Church after the fall of communism, as well as his connections with the persecuted Church in India. He reminded the group of how important Christian community is, especially for someone working in an environment where it may take years to see some of the seeds bear any fruit. My pastor talked about the necessity to guard our hearts by making sure part of our mission is also to direct our own hearts towards God. In addition, he reminded us of how important it is to plant the Word of God in people's ears and hearts! Please continue to pray for this group. About six of them will be heading on a short-term trip to India this May and another girl is headed for a longer stint, starting in July.

LA MULTI ANI CIPRI

Today we celebrated my good friend Cipri's birthday with some of the youth from church. We made a lot of food (see the tort above), sang worship songs, prayed together, laughed together, and played games together. We all assembled at his place before he got back from work. I think he was genuinely surprised! Cipri is a blessing to all of us at church--and he loves volleyball too :)

And of course, it wouldn't be a party in Romania without chirades :) They don't say Romanians have Latin passion for nothing--chirades is a hoot in Romanian :)

Aren't they cute? Brother and sister