International Day of Prayer

Today we celebrated the Global Day of Prayer in Bucureşti together with Christians around the world. At every hour, Christians gathered in places like Korea, Thailand, Africa, France, Brazil, America, etc. to praise and worship our Lord Jesus Christ and to pray for our world, the lost, and the many needs of our world. Several groups from around Romania led us in music and various pastors from different denominations led us in strategic prayer. We enjoyed beautiful weather. Unfortunately, the turnout was not as strong as churches would have liked, which I think is probably more an indication of the struggle we face in Bucureşti to collaborate as Christians across denominational lines. As we say in Romanian, "Everyone in his own camp." Please pray with us for unity among Christian leaders in our city, that we would be united and able to collaborate in order to help the lost of our city come to know Christ. We certainly need and appreciate your prayers. And may we as Christians be united each and every day in prayer.

One Big Pot Hole

In Romania, anything is possible :)

What is that?

This is a short film that I thought really captured how much we should all appreciate our parents and the patience, sacrifices the have made for all of us. I hope you like the clip.

Partners in Mission Conference

OC Romania collaborated with the Evangelical Alliance in Romania and United World Mission to host a conference called "Partners in Mission." The purpose of the conference was to promote dialogue and unity between missions organizations in Romania and the Evangelical Churches in order to see 1) The Great Commission fulfilled within Romania and 2) Romanians leaving to serve on the mission field in foreign lands. It was a very fruitful conference. I led a two-hour seminar on how we can motivate youth for missions that was well received. We also had opportunities to ask questions to representatives of the major denominations about missions in a forum setting. It was a great conference that left me encouraged that Romania is committed to fulfilling her role in the fulfillment of the Great Commission. We continue to pray for greater unity, collaboration, and action among churches and organizations to see all people reached for Christ!

Adventure Park: Team Building

On Saturday before meeting at church, our youth group went to an adventure park just outside of Bucharest full of obstacles and challenges for both individuals and teams. The idea was to 1) overcome fears 2) Rise to a challenge and 3) work together as a team. Naturally, fun was had by all! I especially liked swinging from tree to tree.

Pottery Making

One of my favorite hand-made Romanian aritifacts is the beautiful pottery made in the rural villages. Here are some pics I took in a pottery workshop outside of Târgu Mureş.

A Healthy Marriage, a Healthy Family

We had a blessed time together as a church at our annual conference this past weekend. The first of May is Labor Day in Romania. This year around 400 people attended the conference regarding marriage and family issues. We stayed in a communist era hotel in the village of Olaneşti, Romania which is known for its thermal-spring waters. Our guest speaker walked us through sessions on how we honor God in our daily lives, how everyone marries a selfish person (we are all sinful, selfish people), and on how men and women are different. One of the things our speaker said was that he often asks couples waiting to get married to define "love". Few, if any, ever give him a response. He challenged us that love is really about giving and that most people would say that the opposite of love is hate. He disagrees. He said the opposite of love is selfishness, because it is all about receiving and never giving. Moreover, we learned that for a man, the most important thing is often to be respected by their spouse and for a woman it is about feeling loved. Interestingly, our speaker mentioned that most women argue that their husband has to first EARN her respect. Yet, our speaker reminded us that this is a pretty western, non-Biblical value that has crept its way into western thinking. His argument was that just like love, respect for a spouse should be non-conditional. Husbands should not have to work to be respected, nor should wives have to work to be respected by their husbands. This, my friends, is what makes Christians unique and Christian values so hard to live by. His argument was also that the idea to "earn" respect is, again, a selfish idea. Christianity is about loving and respecting others despite getting nothing in return. It is the world that asks the question: "what do I get out of it?" But thankfully, Christ died for selfish people. It was a great conference and an opportunity to deepen relationships and make new friendships. We enjoyed wonderful weather, a great place to play volleyball, and blessed fellowship.

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

Reaching College Students

There are currently over 300,000 college students in Bucureşti. The percentage of evangelical Christians? Probably only around 1 percent. This past Saturday I participated in a seminar with some youth from my church in learning ways in which we can reach out to the college students in our city. As a church, we will be working specifically with the law school. On Saturday, I already had some good conversations with several young men at the dorms. We swapped telephone numbers. Hopefully some of them will be interested in joining our youth at volleyball, a film, or better yet, at church. First and foremost, we want to be establishing relationships with these students and a level of trust. Many have heard the Gospel, but have yet to understand they they too can have a relationship with Christ. Please pray for us as we work more closely with the law students in our city.

Profides - De jos Te strig

This is Cat's band profides playing one of my favorite songs. The title of the song is "from below I cry out to you"

Refrain: from below I cry out to you, knowing that I am nothing. But through faith, I want to touch the heavens.

Psalm 139 is also recited in Romanian. Enjoy!

And the Angels sang!

They say that the angels sing in heaven when one soul returns to the Lord. Today there was great rejoicing and singing in the heavens, as two girls form our church small group, Teodora (2nd photo) and Simona (bottom photo) professed their faith in Christ publicly through the waters of baptism. In total we had 10 people get baptized today at our church. It was a great encouragement for all of us to hear their testimonies and to witness the ways in which God has worked in their lives. There was even a woman in her 90s who finally dedicated her life to the Lord. Yes, indeed, there was great rejoicing!

Cu tine

This is one of my favorite Romanian Christian groups, "CristoCentric" that performed at my church in Bucharest recently. The title of this song is "With You"

Translation:
Who could ever seperate me from you Father
There is no one
Not heights, nor depths, nor death, nor mastery can wrestle me from your hand
Through blue, velvety clouds you smile at me
Every step I make, you uphold me

Ref:
With you, I only look ahead
Though any wave may come, I know that you are here
When my whole being is weak and I can no longer hope
With your hand of a Father, you comfort my heart

Lord you remain eternally, my love

Casa Agar

Several of us in our youth group have been volunteering at a home for mothers in Bucureşti wih newborns. These are young girls who, for various reasons, may have been abandoned by their family, are unable to hold a job because they have to take care of their babies, etc. The center, called "Casa Agar" provides shelter for these young women and their babies, as well as counseling, spirtual formation, and vocational training. They are also actively involved in hospital outreach to abandoned and unwanted children. Each week, various youth from our church go and visit the hospitals, spend time with the children, lead Bible studies with the mothers, cook meals for the center, and help with special projects around the center. I usually cook dinner for the mothers and participate in Bible discussions with them.