A Repsonse to a Friend
A friend messaged me asking when it’s appropriate for us as believers to disobey the government. After writing way too much for just a Facebook message, I decided to put my thoughts here instead. Maybe it will be helpful for some of you as well. But before you read, let me give a disclaimer. Know that these are just my personal thoughts, mostly off the top of my head written down this morning without any real editing, but based on a lot of soul-searching, Bible study, and deep thinking recently. This is not the only way to think of things, but these are the conclusions I’ve come to, at least at this point in time, unless someone shows where I’m wrong in the Bible.
Without further ado…
While Romans 13 does clearly teach submission to governing authorities, even godless ones, it doesn’t teach obedience. The word used for submission is hupotasso, which means, literally, “to arrange yourself under.” From what I can tell, everywhere that this word is used in the New Testament, it means submission and never obedience. It’s essentially a heart attitude that says, “You’re the boss, not me.” This word is used to describe how all things were placed under Jesus’ feet (yet not all things obey Him just yet). It’s used to describe how when Jesus sent out the 70, they returned rejoicing that the demons were “subject” to them (yet one would have a hard time arguing that the demons unequivocally obeyed them, as they actually didn’t in Mark 9:29). Romans 8 and 10 use the word to describe a relationship between roles, one higher than the other. In 1 Corinthians 14:32, Paul says that the spirit of a prophet is “subject” to the prophet. Does this mean his spirit “obeys” him? No, it means his spirit is submitted to himself, so he can choose what to do with the prophetic things he hears – obey them or not. Verse 34 of the same chapter says that women should be “in submission” at church. Does this mean that when women come to church, they must obey whatever the leaders say? No, that would be an abuse of power. Over and over again, the word hupotasso is shown to mean an attitude of submission, an ordering of authority, but not necessarily obedience.
Contrasting that, the NT does have a word that is usually translated obey – hupokouo. This word literally means “to hear under” and carries a sense of really listening to the one speaking and then carrying out their orders. It’s used in the NT to talk about how children should obey their parents and slaves their masters, how the wind and waves obeyed Jesus in the storm at sea, how demons obeyed Jesus’ commands, etc. Jesus told the disciples that if they had faith like a mustard seed, they could tell the tree to be uprooted and it would obey, ie. that it would hear what they said and not just respectfully submit to their desires but actually do it, actually be cast into the sea. Acts 6, in talking about priests repenting and turning to Jesus in faith, it says they were “becoming obedient to the faith,” ie. they were hearing the Gospel and doing what it says. Romans 6:12 tells us not to let sin reign in us, that we would obey its passions. In the NT, this word always is used to imply hearing the command and completing it as desired.
The way I think of the two is that submission (hupotasso) is a heart attitude that says, “I respect you, I understand that you are in charge, I honor you and place you above me,” but obedience (hupokouo) goes further and says, “Not only do I recognize your place of priority over my life, but I will hear intently to what you say and do it.” The Bible never tells us to obey (hupokouo) governing authorities, but is very clear we must submit (hupotasso) to them. This means that there are times when we must respectfully, submissively disobey.
Church leaders taking Romans 13 and using it to mean we unquestionably obey the authorities is a cop-out and a misunderstanding of the teaching of the Bible. In addition to the way the Greek words are used, very clearly the NT church didn’t always obey the authorities. In Acts 4, the Council commands that Peter and John no longer preach. They say they will obey God rather than man. This happens again in Acts 5. They never stopped preaching. Then when their preaching caused problems with the Roman authorities, they didn’t stop there either. In history, we know that persecution got even more intense and churches were banned. But rather than surrendering, they obeyed God, met together in forests, caves, and catacombs. In later history, the church served as a voice of truth and opposition to the government, condemning abortion and infanticide even though it was a Roman law that deformed babies be killed, speaking against the gladiator fights, illegally working to free escaped slaves and end slavery (in the ancient world right up to modern times), working against the Nazis in Germany, speaking against authoritarian rule through the ages (in Medieval Europe, Communist Eastern Europe, European colonies, etc.), creating Constitutional restraints and limited government. So clearly there are times when the church, whether because of our obedience to God or our role to stand up for justice and righteousness, must submissively oppose the government.
Titus 3:1 says “Remind them to be submissive to rulers and authorities, to be obedient, to be ready for every good work.” This is another verse people bring up to support the idea that we should always obey government. There are a number of problems with this conclusion. First, it’s not clear from context that these “rulers and authorities” specifically refer to government. I think it’s likely they are referring to any authorities, in a general sense, which would of course include government but not be a specific statement about government itself. This is important, because the Bible elsewhere tells us to outright obey some authorities (slaves obey your masters, children obey your parents…) but to just submit to others (submit to governing authorities, wives submit to husbands…). Second, the word submissive is hupotasso, which (as stated earlier) doesn’t mean to obey but to respectfully submit. Then the word obedient is different. It’s the Greek word peitharcheo, which is used only 3 other times in the Bible. The word means “to be persuaded by what comes first, by a higher authority.” It’s the same word that the apostles use when they say they must obey God, not man in Acts 5. A few verses later, the word is used to say that God gives the Holy Spirit to those who obey Him (and by implication, not those who simply obey men). The last time it is used (besides here in Titus) is when Paul is on the prison ship to Rome. They encounter some funky weather, so Paul tells them they should wait it out at Crete. Instead, they continue on, and the weather gets worse, they run out of food, and Paul says, “You should have listened (peitharcheo) to me.” ie. “You should have been persuaded by me, one who had information from a Higher Authority.” Given how this same word is used to specifically show how Peter and John chose not to obey the authorities, it can’t mean complete and unequivocal obedience to authorities.
So… It seems to be the teaching of the Bible that we should always submit to our government authorities, but we must not always obey them. When do we choose not to obey them? When we are persuaded that there is a higher authority that conflicts with what they tell us to do, ie. when it goes against our conscience and our conviction based on the Word of God. We don’t get to disobey out of selfish reasons, or simply because the law is inconvenient or we don’t like it, but we do have an obligation to disobey government so that we can obey God or so we can stand against an injustice or protect the innocent. To be clear, this does not mean we should ever resort to violence, intimidation, or other such tactics, but that we can and should peacefully resist at times.
Right now, honestly, I see most churches just quietly obeying what the government says, but I think this is very dangerous. There is the injustice of what is happening – closing down businesses, ruining livelihoods, unilaterally expanding the powers of governors, disrespecting the right of private property, invading privacy, stirring up panic and fear, abusing personal freedoms. These are real issues of injustice that the church should not agree to without strong arguments that they are necessary as well as clear conditions and limits placed on these actions. People are being hurt by our government’s heavy-handed actions, and the church is largely supportive. This concerns me. What will happen when this virus is gone and another one comes? What will happen when there is a different crisis that emerges? What is to stop the government from continuing these injustices indefinitely? If they can abuse our God-given rights now, what will stop them from abusing them even further? What will stop a selfish, misguided government from using these powers in an even more abusive way in the future?
Besides the issues of injustice and abuse of power, there is the real question of whether we should obey the Word of God or what our government says. The Word of God is clear that we must not forsake the assembling of the saints (Heb 10:25). Streaming services can transfer information and provide a level of fellowship, but it is not the same as the saints coming together. If anyone had a reason to stop meeting together, it was the early church – government persecution, Jewish persecution, they were illegal, they were unpatriotic (because they didn’t worship Caesar), they were a nuisance despised by their neighbors, and there were a number of disastrous plagues in the first centuries AD that would be spread in their gatherings – but they didn’t stop meeting, only sending letters to each other. They found alternative ways to meet – in homes, the woods, caves, the catacombs, etc. If the early church still kept meeting, why wouldn’t we? The word used in Hebrews 10:25 about meeting together is used only one other place in the Bible, for when we will be gathered together with Jesus at the end of the age. We’re not gonna gather together with Jesus over Zoom. We will really be with Him physically. The saints just can’t gather together as the Bible expects unless they actually physically gather together.
In addition, the Bible calls us to lay hands on the sick, to lay hands on new leaders, to greet one another with a holy kiss, to take communion, to share meals, to baptize new believers in water, etc. I don’t expect that we have to follow all of these literally (I don’t want anyone kissing me at church!), but none of this can be done over Zoom or live-streaming our services. How can we weep with those who weep, rejoice with those who rejoice, and bear one another’s burdens if we aren’t in close enough contact with one another to do that? There is a personal, intimate side of Christianity that we can’t just get rid of because of an epidemic. I know most churches in America have transformed the whole idea of the church to be an event where we watch some people play music, watch a speaker share his thoughts, and then move on, but that isn’t what the Bible says. If the church was nothing more than just watching some music and teaching, then, yeah, fine, go ahead and do live-streaming and call it good. But the Bible’s vision of the church is very different, and I personally just can’t surrender on that point.
So at our church, we’ve been pursuing a route that allows us to respectfully submit to the spirit of the governor’s orders while remaining obedient to the Word of God. We still are physically meeting together, though in smaller groups. We’re washing our hands, we’re limiting our contacts and movements, we’re keeping an eye on our health, we’re requesting sick people stay home and call for the elders to pray for them as James said, and we’re being clear that anyone who feels concerned should be free to stay home… but we’re not going to keel over and stop meeting as the Bible expects just because that’s what the government wants. And I’m not going to stop speaking out against the growing injustice and tyranny I see around us. Nor will I be quiet about all the lies, manipulation of facts, fear-mongering, and panic that has gripped our society. And, yes, I plan to attend at least one of the upcoming protests.
You might find some of my recent sermons helpful:
“A Bigger Vision of the Church” series
“Faith Over Fear, Peace Over Panic – My Response to the Coronavirus”
Just Keep Going Forward
We’ve been having a difficult time lately in Romania. We finally got to go visit family and friends back home in America after 4 years away. It was wonderful, refreshing, and all you would expect from a 4-year reunion with those you love.
And then we got back to Romania and it felt like all hell broke loose on us. We all got stomach flu, the car died, we got bed bugs and our daughter broke out with blisters all over her body, our one church (Biserica Sion) was kicked out of its building, our other church (Biserica Piatra Vie) was losing its meeting place because the landlord was lying, stealing, and threatening us, eventually physically assaulting me… and then today.
What happened today? Well, we just started to see some victories in all the aforementioned areas. Our stomachs recovered, we found a mechanic to fix the car, we started a chemical war against the bed bugs, we found a new location for Biserica Sion, and we found a new, much better location for Biserica Piatra Vie.
It looked like we had started to overcome again, like we were gonna win the battle.
But then today happened. We had invested a lot of time, energy, money, and hard work into repairing Piatra Vie’s new location the past few days… and then today we found out that the building the rental unit is in… is condemned due to seismic risks! It’s illegal for us to use it, and it’s illegal for the landlord to rent it to us. If any police catch us, we’ll get in big trouble and either us or the landlord will have to pay a $13,000 fine. And the police station is right next door. Not to mention the fact that if there is an earthquake the building could collapse and we might all die.
So we’re back to square one, looking for a new meeting location. With our small budget, the immensity of the city, and the problems of operating in a culture and language that are still foreign to us, this is a lot harder than it sounds.
After losing our amazing meeting location, again, for the second time, all I felt like doing today was getting away with God. So I grabbed my Bible, my camera, and the car keys, and I decided to take a drive to sort some things through.
I had heard about a certain quiet place along the Danube River, just south of the small town of Prundu, that there were some beautiful and remote beaches there. I was interested in bringing my family there sometime, so I thought, “Hey, I want to go for a drive, so I’ll check out the route to one of those remote beaches and see if it’s worth bringing the whole family sometime.”
And off I went.
As I drove, I prayed and thought and prayed some more. What are we doing? This is ridiculous. How could we not have known the building was condemned? Why didn’t we look before committing to rent it? How could we be so foolish? Why didn’t the landlord tell us? Why did God seem to confirm we should rent it when He knew it was unsafe and we’d leave in a couple days? Why did he let us work so hard, waste so much money, only to walk away from it?
And then I was in the town of Prundu.
And then the road diverged, so I took the one less traveled by.
This road left the small town behind and went off into the woods and fields far into the distance. It was constructed of a lot of dirt, a little bit of gravel, but mostly holes as far as I could tell. Looks good, I thought, and ventured forth in my faithful Opel Zafira.
The road was really rough, the roughest road I’ve ever driven on. There were deep muddy tire ruts gutted by tractors, giant rocks that threatened to crack important metal things on my car that I’m sure have names but I’ll be darned if I know what they are. The wheels spun a few times in the dirt and mud, but I kept chugging forward.
Then I saw clouds coming.
It’s going to rain, I thought, and when it rains, this road will be a real mess.
Turn around or keep going? I kept going. I needed to see where this road went. Worst case scenario, I calculated in my mind, I get stuck somewhere in the mud, can’t find help, and have to spend a night or two sleeping in the van and waiting for the mud to dry. I can survive that.
Eventually, it started to rain. Just little drops, but by the look of the sky, I could tell they were heralds of something much more menacing.
The smart thing to do at this point would have been to turn around. Admit defeat. Play it safe. Walk away. Come back and try again some other time.
But I could see the end of the road up ahead… so close. And I had come so far already. How could I give up now?
So I kept going, despite the steadily increasing rain.
Once I reached the end of the road, I had a great time reading my Bible and just talking to Jesus.
Unfortunately, the clouds also had a great time sending down more and more rain, and so eventually I realized it was time to go. And thus I began the long, sloppy trek back. The car slid, bounced, crashed, and rammed its way through the ever-muddier path. Finally I understood the appeal of ATVs and dune buggies.
But I was not in an ATV or dune buggie. I was in a minivan. And pretty soon, about halfway through the minefield of mud and rocks, that minivan got stuck. Real stuck. Hopelessly, unmistakably stuck.
So after I had exhausted all my methods to unstick stuck cars, I got out in the pouring rain, walked through the mud and muck, searching for any signs of life. Up ahead I saw a farm, and as I neared, I approached some men on break. When I asked for some help, they directed me to talk to Calin, the boss.
With my dirty jeans and shoes weighing heavy from the caked-on mud, I must have looked helpless enough so that Calin drafted one of his men to hop in the tractor and pull me out. And that he did. He fearlessly pulled me for about 15 minutes through the quicksand-like mud. A couple miles from the end of the road, two farm workers approached and after he explained what he was doing, they asked if I could drop them off at their homes.
“Sure,” I said. “I’m going that way anyway.”
“Do you want me to drive?” asked the older one, whose name was Dumitru. “I grew up on these muddy roads. I know how to drive this stuff as well as asphalt roads.”
So I surrendered the keys and we drove together, the three of us, to their homes in the neighboring villages. When we arrived at Dumitru’s home, he told me to follow him as he grabbed a bucket of water, soap, and a brush. As I washed my hands, he knelt down and scrubbed my shoes clean, telling me it wouldn’t be good to drive all the way to Bucharest looking like I went swimming in a swamp.
As we went back to the car, he said he noticed there was something wrong with the radiator and wanted to take a look at it. So he popped the hood, looked around, banged a few things, cleaned off some mud, and got everything working to his satisfaction again.
“Here’s my phone number. If the engine doesn’t get any cooler as you drive to Bucharest, give me a call and I’ll come see what’s wrong.”
I shook his hand, thanked him profusely, asked if I could get his photo, and then drove off, one more adventure under my belt.
As I drove away, God began speaking to me. “Just keep going forward. If the road is dirty and full of holes, I’ll get you through it. If it starts to rain, don’t turn back – I’ll take care of you. If the road turns to mud, just keep going. If you get stuck in mud a couple times, I’ll pull you out. Just keep going forward.”
I like what the famous missionary William Carey said regarding to what he owed his success in India – “I can plod. I can persevere in any definite pursuit. To this I owe everything.”
I think most of success revolves around the simple idea of just not giving up. Just keep going forward. Sure, you can play it safe and stay where you’re at, but if you wanna win, you gotta keep going, through all the mud, rocks, and puddles life throws at you.
Here’s some pictures from the day:
3 Years and Counting…
April 30th is a significant day in our family. Most importantly, it is the day our Isaac was born, the first son after three daughters. When his arrival into the world came, we already knew we would be heading to Romania in the near future for an indefinite length of time. One year exactly after Isaac’s birth, we boarded a plane in Chicago with our sights set on Bucharest, Romania.
I really cannot believe it has been three years since we said goodbye to family, friends, and familiarity. Goodbye to good burgers, cheddar cheese, and road trips without potholes! In some ways, these have been the most difficult years of our lives, but in so many ways these years have stretched my faith, taught me what “dying to yourself” means, and forced me to be more adaptable. On the difficult side, I’ve cried more, gotten angry more, felt more burnt out and lonely, and been ready so many times to say “heck with ministry life, let’s go live on a farm far away from cities.” But, on the good side, I rejoice at being in God’s will, seeing our family be used by God to bring light into a very dark city, being a part of God’s transforming work in others’ lives, learning what self-sacrificing love really is (being a mother and wife has taught me much in that area, too), knowing more what deep-rooted, unwavering, unshakable faith, hope, and joy truly is, and being a part of discipleship like Paul talks about in 2 Timothy 2:2.
During our short time here–to those who are missing us it may seem not so short, but it has sped by for us–we have gone through so many ups and downs, excitements and disappointments. We started a small meeting with a gypsy community that lived near us, and it grew to where many families joined in. A few surrendered their lives to Jesus, and one man in particular was ready to be baptized and learn to live for God. But, a couple of families had some domestic problems relating to alcohol and domestic abuse. We helped the best we could, but some just wanted sin more than God. After this, the other families we focused on trying to leave the city and find work, and a year after we began, that little church meeting ended.
We had meetings in our home for a while and tried to start up a church that way. Many pledged to help us to the end. This lasted a few months, grew for a while, then shrunk to just our family and one friend.
Finally, we decided to get more official, rent a room for weekly church meetings, and kickoff our official church: Biserica Piatra Vie, Living Stone Church. It started bigger than we’d hoped, but after a month, our meetings shrunk to just our family and a friend or two. We lost friends, gained friends, and we toiled on. One year after our official start, we had a decent church start: three people joined as official members, besides us American missionaries, and other families and visitors came around regularly. Now we have monthly healing and deliverance meetings that bring in extra visitors, opportunities to pray for the sick and oppressed, and see God move! We’ve seen people surrender their lives to Jesus, baptized one of them, prayed for many to be filled with the Holy Spirit, and seen God heal many of physical ailments.
But, there are still ups and downs. We don’t know how long God will have us here, but we’re ready for whatever He says. We feel honored to be used by God, whether we’re just part of sowing something that others will reap or whether we get to reap what others or we have sown. Sometimes we wonder why God chose us, when there are others with more time and fewer responsibilities (We have five children now, are homeschooling, and have one very active 15 month old–yes, we even had a baby while here!), but God knows what this city needs more than we do.
Planting a church is tough (bravo to Cornerstone Pastors Michael and Annie Fisher and Derek and Deb Miller for doing it before!)! Planting a church with a big family is tougher. Planting a church with a big homeschooled family in a foreign country where you don’t speak the language so well in a culture that is quite different than what you’re used to and not getting to see your family and friends in three years is toughest. But God is our strength and our portion! He is our Rock! He is the One who builds His church against which the gates of hell cannot prevail! He is good, loving, comforting, joyful, merciful, just, giving! He provides for us, heals us, empowers us, and guides us! All our hope, life, love, joy, peace, and faith is in Him alone! We are happy to serve and follow Him!
Daniel and Maria’s Home
Wow, it has been a really long time since we’ve made any posts here, but it’s about time we get back to it. Today’s post is mostly a collection of videos. Our church, Biserica Piatra Vie (Living Stone Church), supports a missionary to the city of Bucharest, who shares the gospel, passes out gospel tracts, and simply spreads the good news about Jesus and the gospel around town. His name is Daniel, and just a few months ago, he married Maria. They’ve been living in a tiny room in his mother’s home, but there is not hot water or a kitchen, and the bathroom is outside (it gets cold here in winter in Romania).
God put it on our hearts to help them, but we weren’t sure how. Not being able to find an affordable place for them to live, Jake got the idea to use one of the popular online fundraising websites to raise money for Daniel and Maria to build themselves a home. Daniel used to work in construction in Finland, so he had plans all ready and only needed money to buy materials and hire his brother to help him.
Well, after only a few weeks of the fundraiser going live, the money was raised, and immediately Daniel and his brother Marian got to work. Jake has helped a bit, and he’s gotten some great clips of the work being done so far. Check them out below. While you’re at it, pray for Daniel. Pray that God would continue to bless his evangelism in Bucharest. He’s gotten to talk to so many people about Jesus and been able to follow up with several who want to know more, and we want to see God multiply this fruit and see a big harvest reaped for His glory right here in Bucharest!
Here’s the link to the Crowdrise page about Daniel and Maria’s home: A Home for Daniel and Maria
Random Things I’ve Learned on the (Urban) Mission Field
I think a lot of Christians have a “glamorized” view of missionary life, because missionaries share the grand trials, great victories, and emotional stories of their work on the mission field. But, in reality, a lot of missionary work is very mundane, sometimes to the point of being inane. At least, it feels that way in the midst of whatever is occurring at the time. However, when you look back after 6 months, a year, two years, you can see God’s hand in so much of what has happened, even if you were left wondering where that hand was in the midst of the seemingly monotonous activity.
All that aside, here are some things I’ve learned in our 27 months on the mission field of Bucharest, Romania. More precisely, what I’ve learned despite the “inanity” and feelings of “monotony.”
1. You must never let down your guard against cockroaches. Yeah, you may clean out your entire kitchen and spray it top to bottom with poisonous insecticides, and you may go a couple of months without seeing a single one afterwards. But be forewarned, they will return. And when you kill that one you see, you will open a cabinet door and find 5-10 more scurrying for the darkness. Always maintain vigilance.
2. Your marriage and your children must still remain a high priority. You don’t want to gain a million converts at the cost of your marriage or your children. They are gifts from God, no matter where you live
3. Even more important is your relationship to Jesus. It must always be first place. Jesus said, “For you have the poor with you always” in the context of disciples complaining that Mary of Bethany “wasted” an expensive perfume on Jesus when it could have been sold and the money used for the poor. But He didn’t agree–He honored Mary because she honored and worshiped Him extravagantly, above all else. There are people everywhere with a multitude of needs, poor, sick, disfigured, trapped in sin, lost in darkness, spiritually immature, etc. And we could work ourselves to burnout and death if we forsake our relationship with God to constantly work for Him.
4. Learning a language is one of the most humbling tasks I’ve ever done. When you’re in public with a decent, but very limited knowledge of the language of the place you’re in, you will look stupid, appear aloof or ignorant, and be annoying to natives who are in a hurry; you will not necessarily know how to ask for what you need; you will struggle through conversations with your neighbors with your horrid grammar and painfully slow speech; you will need help from friends to master the post office, doctor’s office, hair salon, pharmacy, anything related to the police or government, apartment hunting, etc. You might have old ladies yell at you (several within a 24 hour period) about how your kid will get sick if his ears aren’t completely covered or that one gets wet feet from splashing about in rain puddles, and you won’t know how to answer them. You might just have to stand there and take it…at least until you learn how to say, “Leave us in peace! He/she is fine. I have five kids and know what I’m doing.” 😉
5. No matter how much “just like America” a country may seem on the surface during a short visit, every culture is different, but you won’t see that until you’re completely immersed in it. Even over two years in, I find myself every so often thinking, “What the heck is that all about?!” And usually, I never find out.
6. I am so American. Yes, of course I should be since I was born and lived there nearly 33 years, but there are some things ingrained in me because of my Americanness that are just really hard to change. For example, in America, it’s considered rude to tell everybody what you think all the time and give frequent, unsolicited advice. While I like constructive criticism and advice to help me, I still have not succumbed to the constant flow of advice that comes my way, especially related to child-rearing. I don’t get offended too easily, and can usually just ignore it (unless it’s good advice), but sometimes I long for an ever-so-small touch of American politeness and un-nosiness. I’m still very American in that respect.
7. If I can be a missionary, anybody can! I like a schedule and I like plans to be made and stuck to; if things go too random or sporadic, I start to get a little freaked out. On the mission field, even in a big European city one, nothing is set. Pretty much ever. I’ve learned to adapt and trust God and keep a good attitude even when I feel like Milton from Office Space, haha! God’s in control and I just grab on for the wild ride! Right before we moved here, one of our pastors prophesied over me that I might feel like I don’t quite cut it, but that God said His grace is sufficient. I think I grab onto those words every single day, as those are the prophetic words that spoke loudest to me…and still do.
8. A home is more than just a place to eat and sleep. My whole family loves having people here, whether for Bible studies, movie nights, parties, game nights, discipleship, fellowship, etc. I pray almost every day that our home be used for God’s glory and that His peace and life and presence would fill it so much that others coming here would sense it. And many have told us they do.
9. Communism is just a bad idea. Even 25 years after it ended here, there’s still repercussions of it on daily life and the mentality of the nation. I pray that it will fall in countries like North Korea, Vietnam, and Cuba. I pray for the nations of the world heading further and further into socialism. The government is no substitute for God and God-given families.
10. Lastly (this is not an exhaustive list by any means…I’m continually learning), if or when God calls us back to the U.S. or to another country, we will leave so many dear, dear friends behind. But I look forward to visiting with many hugs and much joy as we have made some lifelong friendships here. I am so thankful to God for these people.
Getting Sick and Getting Well in Bucharest
It’s been nearly a year since I’ve posted anything on here, so I’m a little out of practice, but here ya go…
Easter is the biggest holiday season here in Orthodox Romania. Seriously, it’s a bigger deal than Christmas, with offices and businesses shutting down from Good Friday through at least the Monday after Easter. Offices including doctors’ offices. Which means, it’s not a good time to get sick and need to see a doctor.
The Wednesday before Easter, I came down with a bad bacterial infection, not something terribly uncommon, but a worse case than I’ve ever had before. I fought through it with sleep, water, and Tylenol that whole day, started feeling better the next day enough to take Paul in for his doctor visit. When there I asked about getting antibiotics, but she said I’d have to see a different doctor. However, all the offices were going to be closed after that day for four days and only one appointment was left. When I tried to make the appointment, the computerized scheduling system wasn’t working, so I went back home (a one hour trek via public transport) with only a slight fever and no meds. I thought, “Hey, our prayers are working; I’m getting better, so I won’t try to snatch that last appointment and just sleep it off.”
An hour later, I arrived home and within fifteen minutes my fever jumped to its highest yet, I started shivering uncontrollably, and felt disoriented from the sickness. Now too late to make that last appointment, I weighed my options: try to see if I could get the antibiotics without a prescription, find an emergency room and fumble through with my poor Romanian and fever delirium, or wait it out. Feeling worse by the minute, I nixed the last option and started messaging friends.
I sent a Facebook message to a good friend of mine who I knew frequently checked her messages asking for advice. And I prayed. Within five minutes she called me back saying she would go with me to an emergency room, translate for me, and do whatever she could for me. She wanted to ask her mother the best place to go, and she happened to be right in front of her apartment when she got my message. She called me back saying she could get me an evening appointment for an hour from then at her hospital, that she would come with me and translate, and everything. Praise God! I fed Paul quickly, grabbed a taxi, and started the long trek through Bucharest rush hour traffic, sweating profusely in the back seat and eyes burning with fever. I prayed we’d make it in time.
As we got near to where I thought the hospital was, the driver turned the opposite direction I thought we should be going, so I called him on it. He argued with me, and I argued back, and he made motions with his hands telling me I was disoriented and sick and didn’t know what I was talking about. Sure enough, he was right and dropped me off exactly at 5:00 for my appointment in front of the correct place. Thankfully, he didn’t listed to the sick, American girl.
After having our baby Paul here in Bucharest, I had an idea of what the private hospitals and doctors were like. But the doctor I saw was so nice, very helpful, and genuinely concerned that I get better. She gave me very clear instructions through my friend and translator, gave me all the prescriptions I needed with very good instructions, and instructed me to return in six days for a free follow up appointment. Then, my very dear friend, purchased all the drugs for me, walked me to the metro stop (I wasn’t risking a delirious taxi ride in rush hour again), and agreed to meet me the following week at the hospital.
Fast forward to today, the doctor checked me again, offered some extra services even though it was a free visit, and had her colleague perform some ultrasound therapy on me. I was amazed at how pleasant and nice everyone was and how I wasn’t even charged for the visit. And she wants to see me again, also for free, to make sure that I am completely better!
Maybe it’s not such a cool story for everyone, but for me it was a blessing! I love how generous and helpful my friend was to take her evening on such short notice to help me find a doctor on a busy holiday break when I wasn’t sure what to do. I love the concern the doctor showed when often doctors (not just here but also in America) generally just try to get you in and out, especially if you aren’t paying. I love that God answers prayers. And I learned, never argue with a taxi driver in a foreign language when you’re deliriously feverish and don’t know where you’re going. Driver knows best.
The International Women of Romania
Every March 8 is International Women’s Day, and in Romania that means… grannies get helped off the trams.
One of my favorite things about Romania is when you get to see some young guy stop and give an old lady his seat, help her down from the tram, carry her groceries, cross the street, etc.
Almost every day, I’ll see young guys flexing their chivalry muscles for the older women in the city. It’s one of those really cool, old-fashioned kind of things that I wish would happen more often in America and more “prosperous” nations.
So it’s not unusual to see young guys go out of their way to give deference to older women, but International Women’s Day was a real treat. In the space of 45 minutes, I got to see 3 women helped off the trams, one carried in the arms of two young knights in shining armor, one woman helped across a puddle, five women who had doors held open for them obscenely long amounts of time, and countless others who were given free flowers from McDonald’s as well as some other business courting new customers.
Sometimes, Bucharest is a mystery to me. In the same city where random drunk men will grab at women’s bodies and whistle cat calls, where you can watch the guys undress the girls with their eyes, where women are encouraged to pursue “jobs” in massage parlors, prostitution, and web cam modeling, where sex trafficking is a very real issue… you’ll find guys holding doors for women, helping them across puddles, and giving up their seats on the bus.
People are complicated.
That Agape Kind of Love
Last week, I had a meeting with a good friend of mine, Camil. He’s one of my favorite people in Romania, because he looks at life differently and has a unique way of thinking about God. I guess we all have our own unique way of thinking about God, but I like Camil regardless.
While we were thinking and talking and discussing, Camil brought up three words for “love” in Greek thinking – eros, philios, and agape. “Eros is the base, sexual, physical kind of love… Philios is the comforting, friendship kind of love… But agape is the epitome of love, the most advanced form of love, the love that Christianity brought to the world, God’s kind of love.”
“Agape, this is the love you’re trying to bring,” he said, looking at me. “This is the love you’re talking about, the self-sacrificing love like Jesus showed.”
That is the goal, yes, and sometimes I achieve it.
On my way home after our meeting, I got a call from my friend Daniel: “Jake, we will build your shelves tomorrow.”
Weeks ago, I had told Daniel I wanted to buy some shelves for our kids’ clothes, to replace the suitcases we’ve been using. “No, don’t buy shelves,” he had told me. “I know how to build furniture. Let me build them for you.”
“OK,” I had told him, “when we have some extra money, I’ll let you know and you can help me build the shelves.”
Flash forward a couple weeks. I had some extra money, so Daniel came over early in the morning, drew up the plans for the shelves, and then we both walked to the hardware store to buy everything. Well, the hardware storeS. We visited five different places to get everything we needed. By the time we were done, we had walked through freezing rain and wind carrying piles of wood, tape, screws, and tools. And we were beat. I joked with Daniel that he owed me money for letting him help, considering all the free exercise coaching I was providing him.
He left and I told him, “Let’s leave the wood here for now, and maybe in a few days we can build the shelves. When you have the time.”
So he called me a couple days later, because his Saturday was suddenly free, informing me, “Tomorrow we will build your shelves.”
We planned to meet at 3pm. Daniel got there at 2:40pm. I got there at 3:30pm. By the time I got home, he was already well on his way toward finishing, and together we built four brand-new shelves.
Now that’s agape love.
Our Ten Favorite Things About Life in Romania
In case you didn’t see it already, Jessie and I were both asked by the blog Will Travel With Kids to list our five favorite things about living in Romania.
Check out Jessie’s top five here, and then mine here.
And in case you missed it the first time around, read our interview responses from last year about moving and transitioning to life in this part of the world over here.
That’s about all I’m gonna say about that I guess. You’ll just hafta check the links out.
And stay tuned for more posts coming from us. So much has been happening in our lives and the ministry that we let the blog take a back seat for a while (I say that as if it were an intentional adjustment to hopefully fool everyone into thinking as much). But we’re still alive and kicking (not always kicking, sometimes just walking or sitting or talking to people).
So, yeah, we hope to get some posts up here again soon for ya’ll.
The Most Racist Institution on the Planet
Living for almost two years away from the US, I can tell my perspective on things is changing. Broadening, I think; maturing, I hope. Regardless, my view of the US and the world is different than it used to be. So let me rant a little.
Yesterday, I had the most recent of many conversations that went something like this:
Non-American: “I like to watch American movies.”
Me: “Yeah, you and most of the world.”
Non-American: “I like it because it shows me what American life is like.”
Me: “Well, not everything in the movies is very close to reality.” For instance, Will Smith didn’t actually ever save us from an alien invasion (Independence Day). Everyone knows it was actually giant sea monsters.
Non-American, refusing to believe that movies aren’t reality: “Is it true about black people in America?”
Me: “What?”
Non-American: “They’re so dangerous.” That’s always the word – “dangerous.”
Me: “What?! No… Maybe that’s how it looks in the movies, but they’re just people like everyone else. Some are dangerous and some aren’t.”
Non-American: “But they all do drugs and carry guns and hurt people. Why do they kill so many people? Why are they all so bad?”
I’ve had conversations like this dozens of times in Romania. Because of the influence of American TV, movies, and music, people seem to have this idea that every black person in America is a gangster carrying guns, selling drugs, and waiting to beat you up if you come to their neighborhood.
Somewhat of a side note… I’ve also been told by a handful of people, “I feel God calling me to go to the Indians (Native Americans) as a missionary.” I say, “That’s great!” and then they ask something about if I think it would be difficult to live in a teepee and ride on horseback to get everywhere. “Oh, yes,” I reply, “but at least you’ll learn many useful things about hunting buffalo and scalping white men.”
I’ve done (and do) the same with other cultures. Like my aforementioned friends, I feel God calling me as a missionary to the samurai of Japan or possibly the ancient Egyptians.
But back to the topic at hand. Now, if it were only Romanians asking me about blacks in America being so dangerous, it could admittedly be a problem with Romanians, but it’s not just Romanians – Gypsies, Africans, Middle-easterners, Asians, and Western Europeans have all asked me why “all” black people in America are so dangerous. “I’ve seen it in the movies,” they always say.
To all my black friends in Milwaukee, Madison, and Green Bay, I’m so glad I made it out of your houses alive. I didn’t realize you were so dangerous. I thought you were just normal people. I didn’t realize all the drugs, violence, and crime you were involved in. You covered it up so well with your jobs at Time Warner Cable, your happy families, your college degrees, insurance businesses, and hair salons. You had me so fooled. I didn’t realize you were all dangerous gangsters.
Yeah, truth is, some of my black friends came from rough lives of drugs, violence, and crime, but Jesus rescued them out of all that and now they’re different. Same for some of my white friends.
So, who’s to blame? Where are these ideas of American blacks coming from? Who’s giving all these Romanians, Turks, Iraqis, Swedes, Saudis, Somalis, and Cameroonians this idea that “all” American blacks are “dangerous.”
Hollywood. The media. Movies and TV. Music. This is anecdotal evidence of course, but across the board, everyone who’s asked me about the “dangerous blacks” in America has referenced American media as the source of their information.
So I ask you, “What’s the most racist institution on the planet?”
Obviously, none of my friends are stupid enough to believe everything just because it’s in a movie. They’re my friends, after all, so that’s gotta say something about their intelligence, right? Or not. 😐 The truth is that some black Americans are criminals and some aren’t. Some Jews are rich bankers and some aren’t. Some Muslims are terrorists and some aren’t.
Someone once said, “If you repeat a lie long enough, it becomes truth.” If Hollywood keeps portraying black Americans as dangerous, does it really matter that not every black person is, in fact, dangerous? Eventually, you just start to believe it.
I used to dismiss the people claiming American media was filled with racist stereotypes, but now I’m seeing the very real (and disturbing) effects of it in shaping world perception of black Americans. And, though I’m as white and middle class as possible, I feel cheated.
If I were a black American, I’d be ticked. I’d stop buying the degrading rap albums, I’d stop watching the movies that monetize black stereotypes, I’d stop dressing and talking and acting like Hollywood wants and expects.
I’m a middle-class white American living in Romania, so who am I to talk… but for the sake of my black friends in America, Hollywood, find a new story. We’re tired of listening to this one.
And to all my Romanian friends who are nervous about blacks in America, I know at least 12 who are nice people. There might be even more.
The Undeniable Influence of a Man
Last time I wrote on the blog, I talked about needing our eyes opened to the reality of who Jesus is. We take him for granted, we look at him like an interesting teacher, a good, moral person, a wise scholar… but we owe everything to him.
And not just us Christians. Whatever faith you are (or aren’t), I think the reality is that more of your worldview, more of your life, has been shaped by Jesus and his followers than you realize. No one, in all of history, has been as influential as Jesus.
I’m not a fan of plagiarism, so before going further, I want you to know that most of what I’m about to share comes from the books Who Is This Man? by John Ortberg and The Rise of Christianity by Rodney Stark. I highly recommend those two books if you’re interested in learning about the influence Jesus has had through the ages.
Say what you will about Jesus, the life of this one Jew from a small town in Israel has impacted yours. Probably way more than you realize. Streets, cities, and even nations (El Salvador) are named after Jesus and his followers. One-third of the world’s population claims to worship him as their God. Children are named Paul, Peter, Mary, Elizabeth, even Jesus… because of the impact of this one man. Dates are set according to his birth. In most of the world, whether we choose to follow Jesus or not, we acknowledge his birth every time we write a check, add an event to our Google Calendar, date a government form, or refer to a historical event. Today is 22 November in the year 2013, 2013 years after Jesus’ supposed date of birth.
The life of this one man, who lived in a small town on the edge of the Roman Empire and died almost 2000 years ago, has impacted our lives more than seems appropriate.
The legacy of Pharoah Tutankhamun has vanished. Alexander the Great is barely a shadow. The great caesars of Rome, emperors of China, and tsars of Russia live on only in history books and Hollywood films. Yet the life of this one man, who never conquered a nation, never built an empire, never led an army, persists to this day.
Our whole idea of human dignity can be traced to Jesus. Before him, dignity came from position, strength, power. Greeks competed in the Olympics to highlight the strong and worthy, Pharoah and other kings were said to be the image of God. And then Jesus came along and said that we all bear the image of God, rich or poor, young or old, strong or weak. He said we must become like little children (weak, dependent) if we’re to see the Kingdom of God. If you see all people as being worthy, if you’ve seen value where there is no strength or power, you’ve been influenced by the thinking of Jesus.
Our idea of compassion on the weak comes from Jesus. Again, Jesus came into a world where it was recommended parents kill their own children if they were born malformed or disfigured or sickly. In philosophy and social thinking, only the strong and powerful were valued. The first orphanages and hospitals were started by Christians, followers of Jesus who saw in their Master a devotion to help the helpless, care for the weak, and heal the sick. If you’ve ever been to a hospital, you can thank Jesus for that one. Prisons have been reformed from hell-holes without hope to places where even the bad can become good. Why? Because one man, Jesus, told his followers to show compassion on prisoners. Slavery, once a completely normal institution in the time of Jesus, is almost universally condemned (though not wiped out), because one man’s followers took it seriously that it’s written, “There is neither slave nor free, but Christ is all and in all” (Colossians 3:11).
The concept of equality between the sexes isn’t something invented by progressive 1960s feminists but by Jesus himself. The world Jesus entered was grotesquely anti-female. Roman citizens would usually care for their male babies, but if a girl was conceived, more often than not, the baby was either aborted before birth or killed shortly after. Infant girls were “exposed,” a nice word that means the babies were left outside to die of starvation or be eaten by wild animals. Archaeologists investigating sewers in ancient Roman cities have found pipes clogged with the bodies of baby girls. If a girl made it into life, she was usually denied education, and her legal status was much closer to that of property than a human. In this world, Jesus came along and allowed women to follow him in ministry, to sit at his feet and learn among his disciples. He entrusted to women the details of his resurrection before he appeared to the men. And so the early church, in Jesus’ footsteps, valued and cherished women instead of treating them as inferior like the surrounding society. Equality between men and women? That was Jesus’ introduction to your thinking.
The value of education was something Jesus and his followers introduced to the world. Maybe you hate school, so you’d be happier without Jesus’ influence here, but for the rest of us, we have Jesus to thank for our educations. Jesus told his followers to “Love the Lord your God with all your mind,” and to that end, his disciples have gone all over the world establishing schools, developing written languages, creating alphabets (Cyrillic was invented by a monk), teaching people to read, and encouraging educational advancement. The first universities were all started by Christians, followers of Jesus. The early scientists were mostly Christians who were studying the world to know more of their orderly God – Johannes Kepler, William of Ockham, Francis Bacon, Galileo, Copernicus, Blaise Pascal, Joseph Priestley, Louis Pasteur, Isaac Newton…
Our idea of humility comes from Jesus. If you’ve ever cringed at someone boasting in their own greatness, that’s Jesus’ influence in your worldview. Before Jesus, philosophers and social thinkers viewed humility as weakness. Men like Aristotle and Plutarch taught their disciples how to do great things and effectively boast in them. Roman literature is filled with the self-exalting writings of men who thought they deserved praise but could find no other voice to praise themselves but their own. Then Jesus came on the scene and said things like, “Blessed are the meek” and “If you want to be great, become like a servant.” His early followers went on to say similar things, Paul telling his churches, “Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position.” Why did Paul have to write that? Because it was so contrary to the normal thinking of his day. And ours, really.
The whole idea of forgiveness comes from Jesus. In the ancient world, forgiveness was weakness. To forgive an enemy would be a sign that he defeated you. Yet Jesus came along and said, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” Scholars have suggested that Jesus was really, truly, the first thinker / philosopher to put forgiveness in a positive light. Before him, it just wasn’t an idea in the world.
Our ideas of hypocrisy, our hatred for it, the sick feeling we get when we see someone acting hypocritical all come from Jesus. Before Jesus, a hypocrite was simply a Greek term for an actor. Then Jesus came around and talked more about hypocrisy than anyone else. He literally re-invented the term, creating in it the negative associations it carries today. He was the first person to condemn hypocrisy, acting one way for some people and another way for others – before him, it wasn’t a bad thing, just something you had to do to get by in life. Scholar Eva Kittay noted, “It is clear from the literary records that it was Jesus alone who brought this term hypocrisy and the corresponding character into the moral record of the Western world.” If you can’t stand when people are acting like hypocrites (even Jesus’ own followers!) that’s a mark of His influence in your thinking. Without his thinking on hypocrisy, you wouldn’t care about it. You’d call it wisdom, just like everyone else before Jesus called it.
Most of our ideas of sex and marriage come from Jesus. It’s funny to me that people call Christianity’s ideas of marriage without divorce and sexual purity “traditional” and “old-fashioned.” The reality is that these ideas were new things to the Western world when Jesus introduced them. In the ancient world, marriage was flexible. Men had multiple wives, concubines, and mistresses. It was considered normal for men to visit prostitutes and commit adultery, as long as it wasn’t with a married woman. Homosexuality, bestiality, incest, and sex with children wasn’t just accepted but in many ways held up as the ideal. The emperor Comodus had over 200 young boys and girls kept as sex slaves, doctors prescribed orgasms to children to help with certain sicknesses. Even the gods of ancient Persia, Greece, and Rome lived lives of sexual promiscuity and misconduct. If you’ve ever felt disgusted by pornography, if something inside you cringes at the thought of adults having sex with children, if it seems somehow wrong to engage in sex with animals, that’s Jesus’ influence in your life. If you want your marriage to last for life, if you’ve dreamed of that perfect man romantically sweeping you off your feet in devoted love, if you’ve watched Pride and Prejudice and found yourself wanting a romance like that of Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy… you have Jesus to thank for showing you a better way of sex and marriage.
Say what you will about him, the fact remains that Jesus has shaped everything in our world today for the better, often in spite of the foolishness and stubbornness of those of us who call him our leader.
Jesus is the reason you think the way you do. He’s the reason our world looks the way it does. Say what you will about him, his influence is undeniable.
Who Is This Man?
I haven’t written here in a long time… Life has been crazy busy, and I plan on putting up some new testimonies and ministry / life updates soon, but in the meantime, I’ve begun writing for my friend Camil’s blog ARPS, which stands for “Art Religion Philosophy Science.” I’m supplying the religion part in the midst of a bunch of philosophers and scientists, though I’ve never been a fan of “religion,” per se. I love Jesus, but all the trappings of “religion” kinda’ just freak me out.
Anyway, since I’m writing about Jesus for the ARPS blog, until I get my act together and write other stuff here again, I figured I’ll at least post here what I’m posting there. Hope you enjoy some of my thoughts on Jesus…
I meet a lot of people every week, and usually concepts of religion and spirituality come up in one form or another. Most people in Romania (and America) know the name of Jesus, they’ve been to a church service, they can tell you the story of how Jesus was born in Bethlehem and died on a cross and rose again. They’ll tell you stories of how he healed the sick, how he walked on water, how he understood the Father better than most.
Our heads are filled with lots of information about Jesus, but we don’t really know Him and we’re not really letting His life change ours.
I forgot where the quote originates from, but someone once said, “We’re way too familiar with a God we barely know.”
At the end of chapter four in the book of Mark, there’s a story of Jesus calming a storm on the Sea of Galilee. Of course, you already knew that, because we all know all sorts of facts about Jesus, right?
Anyway, Jesus is in the boat with his disciples when a big rainstorm appears. The rainstorm turns into a thunderstorm that’s so fierce that Jesus’ disciples, fishermen who make their living on the sea and aren’t scared by little rainstorms, start to freak out.
They look for Jesus, only to find him sleeping, completely unaware of the storm. You can’t blame him. Jesus just got done with a full day of ministry, it was late, and he was tired. So he took a nap while he trusted his disciples to get him where he needed to go.
So the disciples, scared and a little offended that Jesus doesn’t seem to be concerned, wake him up and yell, “Don’t you care that we’re going to die!?” So he wakes up, takes a look at the fierce storm, and simply commands it to stop. And here’s the crazy thing – it actually stops.
After this, no doubt Jesus went back to sleep, but the disciples, the account records, are terrified even more than before. The story tells us they’re “filled with great fear” and begin to ask each other, “Who is this man?”
“What just happened? Did you see that? Who is this guy? What kind of power does this guy have? What kind of person is this? Who does this sort of thing? I thought we were just hanging out with a really godly carpenter who loved God and knew the Scriptures really well… but this is, this is something different…”
Earlier, when the wind and waves start rising up, the Bible records that the disciples are afraid. The word Mark uses is a word that’s only ever used negatively in the Bible. It’s a word that means the disciples were weak, wimpy, cowardly, frightened like little girls seeing a big spider (I have 3 little girls, so I can say this). It’s like Mark is telling us, “The storm was so bad that everyone was acting like wusses, scared out of their minds and whining like babies.”
But at the end of the story, after they see Jesus calm the storm, the word Mark uses for fear is an entirely different Greek word. It’s usually used in the positive sense, like having a fear of God. It’s a word that means the disciples were so filled with terror that they’d rather run away if they could. It means intense and fearful awe, terrifying reverence like we’d feel if God himself stepped into the room and we saw him in all his glory.
Suddenly, it’s like the disciples’ eyes were opened and they realized that something more powerful and more terrifying than a storm at sea was in the boat with them.
“Who is this man? I thought he was just a carpenter, a really good rabbi, probably a prophet… but this? Who is this man?”
I think we all need our eyes opened like the disciples. Instead of being terrified by the wind and waves around us, instead of treating Jesus like a character in a child’s bedtime story, instead of getting annoyed that he doesn’t seem to be helping you, I think we need to let him open our eyes, bringing us to the place where we look around and ask each other, “Who is this man? I thought he was just a religious figure, I thought he was just someone grandma talked about, but this… what is this? Who is this man?”
They’re Just People…
Today was my oldest daughter’s birthday, so we spent a good part of the day at one of the parks here in Bucharest, eating lunch, getting ice cream pops, and playing. While at one of the playground areas, I was pushing one of my girls in a swing when a high school-aged boy sits in the swing next to hers with a couple of his buddies by him. He must have heard us speaking in English, so he asks, in fairly good English, where we are from. (Always every new person’s question to us.) When I tell him that we’re from America, expecting to hear the usual “Wow, America,” I am not disappointed. (After you get asked that question and receive that same response so many times, you come to anticipate it, not in pride, but just in a this-is-how-nearly-every-conversation-I-have-with-a-new-person-goes kind of way.)
Then all three boys started saying with this dreamy, far-off kind of voice, “America. It’s so beautiful there.” (I doubt they had actually ever been there. I mean, have you driven hours upon hours through cornfields of Indiana?)
Always amazed at how people put America on this pedestal of being the ultimate paradise while being totally ignorant to the multitude of problems there–there are problems everywhere, and America is not excluded–I reminded them of beautiful places in their own country, how America has several big, ugly cities just like Romania has Bucharest (I’ve grown to like Bucharest, but it does have a sort of depressing architectural theme to it.), and how America is not perfect and has its own problems, that Romania is not unique in that.
Dumbfounded, they asked, “Like what?” Clearly, they don’t watch CNN International and BBC News like I do to keep up with what’s happening back in the States. When I mentioned that where we used to live in Milwaukee, we could hear gun shots when our windows were open, that there were lots of problems with drugs and gangs in that city, they were shocked!
But then they went back to bewailing how terrible Romania is, especially Bucharest with all the “gypsies” here. Every time I hear someone rant or complain about the gypsies, it strikes a nerve in me and hurts. I think of our gypsy church near our house and of how generous and loving those women are to me and my children, how they give things to our kids when they themselves have so little, how they really want to live good lives. They’re like family to me; well, really, we are all in the family of God together, and those women are my sisters in faith. So, hearing someone throw out brash comments like that, generalizing and stereotyping a whole group of people based on racism and prejudices, is really bothersome.
Before I go further, I will note that the main speaker of the group of boys held a two liter plastic bottle of cheap beer in his hand and was obviously not sober. When I commented once on how good his English was, he said only when he’s drunk can he speak it well. I tried not to press the conversation too much, because of the awkwardness of the situation: a mother of four at the park with her kids, talking to an intoxicated high school guy is just a little weird, but I digress.
Later on, the boys asked about there being many black people in America, only they used the “n” word! (Ok, I must interject a side note here. These kids obviously didn’t use the “n” word in a derogatory sense, and it’s not the first time one of us has heard a Romanian refer to a black person with that word, and it’s never been used in a mean way. We always correct them and urge them never to use that term, for it is extremely derogatory in American culture.) They went on about how they have no problem with black people and wonder why others do, because, “They’re just people, like you and me.”
“Yeah, kind of like the gypsies. They’re just people, too,” I said. They tried to make excuses but failed, and I had to leave to go rescue my toddler boy from some high up place he’d climbed up to. But when they left later, the main guy admitted, among other things, that he is, in fact, half-gypsy. Sometimes, I really have no explanation.
But, I’ll leave you with some wise words from Naomi. “Why do some people not like the Gypsies? They’re just people with different color skin. That’s stupid to not like someone because of that.”
A Million People to Thank
1 Thessalonians 1:2-3 – “We give thanks to God always for all of you, constantly mentioning you in our prayers, remembering before our God and Father your work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.”
When we arrived in Bucharest exactly one year ago, we didn’t know anyone in this city. Well, we had e-mailed and skyped with Filip a bit, but we didn’t really know him. Now, a year later, we’ve got a million people to thank for helping us make it this far. I will never forget how we’ve been shown so much love and hospitality by people who barely knew us.
Some of you read our blog posts, and some of you don’t, but I’m not writing this for you. This is for me and Jesus, because I never want to forget you and how God used you in our lives.
Because we have so many people to thank, I’m limiting myself to thanking only those people we’ve met since moving here, and I’m only allowing myself to mention the one thing that meant the most to me, or this post will never end…
Filip, thank you for everything, from our first email exchange to meeting us at the airport to challenging us in our Romanian.
Adiel, thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule to pick us six strangers up from the airport at midnight on a national holiday.
Peter, thank you for dropping everything to help us get our visas.
Sorin, thank you for talking to us in Romanian and putting up with our bad grammar.
Adi, thank you for refusing to leave Bucharest to see your family, preferring to “do what Jesus would do,” as you said it, and move all our luggage into our new apartment for us first.
Simona, thank you for showing us how to buy food at the market, instead of wasting all our money at Mega Image.
George, thank you for driving us to the big market and back, loaded with potatoes, onions, garlic, and squash for the winter.
Laura, thank you for introducing Jessie to her favorite bookstore / coffee shop.
Adela, thank you for helping us get our electricity back on when we popped a breaker.
Irina, thank you for your constant encouragement, prayers, and friendship. And for the “bumpy cars.”
Adi, thank you for joining us for evangelism time and again.
Alex, thank you for calling and getting together for coffee after being out of the country for a year.
Cornel, thank you for leading your church into revival and for catering to the presence of God.
Costel, thank you for the best mashed potatoes and chicken ever.
Alina, thank you for meeting us at Immigration, grilling the workers there, and getting us the final final list of everything we still needed to get our residency permits.
George, thank you for allowing Jesus to use you to shine with His love in the midst of Bucharest’s homeless men and women.
Tiberiu, thank you for sharing food and songs with us in your home and for introducing me to iaurt de baut.
Cristiana, thank you for coming with our family for the Tour of Bucharest by bus last summer.
Sorin, thank you for giving up your life for 2 weeks last summer to serve alongside us in evangelism and ministry.
Dan, thank you for helping me get my photos from the Cora at Sun Plaza.
Paula, thank you for teaching us how to evade the police while picking Ben up at the airport.
George, thank you for giving our kids cookies when you popped into our house to pick up that form for Peter.
Peter from Immigration, thank you for giving me your self-made final, detailed, easy-to-follow instruction manual on what papers we needed to get our kids’ visas.
Andrei, thank you for spending time together playing bass and talking about the Bible.
Andreea, thank you for organizing Naomi’s birthday party after we’d been in Romania for less than a week.
Robert, thank you for Monday mornings with the homeless at Politehnica.
Sarisa, thank you for a day with the Zarnescus, eating Romanian food and playing Dutch Blitz.
Cosmin, thank you for joining me for a day of evangelism in Cismigiu last year.
Alex, thank you for getting us out on the street preaching.
Cristina, thank you for asking me all about home-schooling that day in Buşteni.
Laura, thank you for the home-made jam.
David, thank you for showing me your pictures of Brasov while we road the train together, convincing me that, yes, I need to live there. 🙂
Rick, thank you for joining us to pray and worship while you were here in Bucharest.
Estera, thank you for coming up to us our first time at Missio Dei, when we felt awkward and out of place, and introducing yourself, making us feel welcomed.
Emi, thank you for being our guide and translator when Grandma Susie wanted to take us bowling.
Gabi, thank you for that day in the mountains of Busteni, hiking and talking about Jesus.
Gianni and family, thank you for the amazing day climbing trees and swinging on zip lines at the adventure park.
Crabby man downstairs, thank you for cheering up after we gave you Christmas cookies.
Teresa and the kids, thank you for sending our kids home with stuffed animals.
Jason, thank you for working with us every week to reach the Gypsies.
Vasilica, thank you for not giving up on your family or all the drug addicts who gather in your home, constantly sharing the Gospel with them and never losing hope for their salvation.
Simon, thank you for smiling in the midst of suffering, separated from your family and your home, in a country whose language you don’t understand.
Rita, thank you for singing us the same song every Monday night, always full of passion, always with a beautiful voice.
Kaze, thank you for coming up and introducing yourself at 3DS.
Ştefan, thank you for standing strong in the word of God in the midst of a culture that doesn’t care.
Ioana, thank you for translating for Jessie her first time at Elim Church.
Sorin, thank you for taking off my glasses and wiping the dirt off with your shirt the first day we talked at Missio Dei.
Sebastian, thank you for introducing us to Genni Shoarma.
Emanuel, thank you for putting up with my terrible Romanian at Starbucks.
Mihai, thank you for taking hundreds of amazing photos at Râşnov last year.
Raluca, thank you for loving our kids so much and playing with them every time we visit Spiritual Revival Church.
Mikey, thank you for giving me all the inside information on hiking in Romania.
Rob and Camelia, thank you for crashing our place one evening to play with our kids.
Luis, thank you for inviting us to play volleyball at Crangaşi.
Peter Pan boy downstairs, thank you for yelling out, “I can fly!” every time you see us. Life in Bucharest would not be as fun without you.
Pardelion, thank you for your heart to give my family money to help us in this new city, while you had so little.
Gheorghiţa, thank you for joining us for worship and prophesying over us as the Holy Spirit led you to speak.
Ryan and Andrea, thank you for sharing with us your heart to end human trafficking in Romania.
Serena, thank you for being the smiliest, happiest, most joyful High School student in Romania, despite the bad things that have happened in your life.
Cristi, thank you for introducing us to the work of Campus Crusade in Bucharest.
Jacob, thank you for always walking in faith that God is ready to do miracles through you.
Oana, thank you for inviting us to the coolest, trippiest, artsiest movie either of us had seen in a while.
Daniel, thank you for bringing us to IKEA to get beds for our kids, and for introducing us to the best desserts in Bucharest (Paul and Zoomserie).
Bogdan, thank you for explaining to me your love for Orthodoxy.
Eugen, thank you for letting me practice my Romanian on you.
Gabi, thank you for allowing us to use your home for Gypsy church.
Kelda, thank you for laughing so loudly it scared my wife.
Mândra and the kids, thank you for giving our kids pillows.
Isabella, thank you for yelling at me at the park, thus beginning your friendship with my wife.
Marian, thank you for inviting us to your house for your son’s crazy birthday party.
Catalin, thank you for sharing your testimony with our group at Mihai Bravu.
Mirela, thank you for such a warm and welcoming reception in Sibiu.
Sorina, thank you for patiently and clearly correcting our Romanian, not just trying to understand us but helping us learn to speak better.
If I’ve forgotten anyone, forgive me! We’ve been so blessed this past year, completely amazed at how many new people we’ve met and loved, how many people have opened their lives and hearts to us, people we never would have known if we’d stayed in America.
Sometimes, it’s frustrating because we’re so far from where we want to be, our work is so small compared to what needs to happen, but God is good, and He’s the one building this house, in His time, in His way, and He’s a really good builder.
30 Reflections on April 30th of One Year in Bucharest
One year ago today, on our son Isaac’s first birthday, we flew out of Chicago and became Bucharest, Romania bound. Lately, I’ve been reflecting on all the things I’ve learned, all the trials we’ve faced, all the discouragements and joys, the friends gained and the friends and family left behind. This blog post is a list of such reflections and observations and interesting things learned, some very random, some deep. And these are my thoughts…Jake and the kids undoubtedly have their own unique takes on this past year. But, here I go.
- It’s been a year since I’ve driven a vehicle! And I’m perfectly content with that. I do miss the American phenomenon of road-tripping, but it’s an adventurous change that I don’t even really think about much anymore.
- Bucharest is not Romania. Sure, it’s in Romania. But the real Romania, the heart of the people, culture, beauty, food…it’s in the countryside and smaller towns and villages. To say Bucharest represents all of Romania, would be like saying Los Angeles represented America. If ever I am discouraged, a little train trip out of the city renews my love for this nation and its people.
- In America there seems to be this “fad” interest in home gardening, home food preservation, eating organic foods, living simply, line-drying clothes, eating local and in-season produce, etc. But, here in Romania, this is what people have done for years, out of necessity and wisdom. Which brings me to something I will do differently this next year: buy lots more summer and fall fruits and veggies when they are tasty and cheap, make tons of jams, pickles, fermented cabbages, and freeze as much as I can. Because prices shoot up in winter.
- I miss black people. Milwaukee was so diverse, and we lived in a neighborhood where whites were the minority.
- I think it is funny that we were so happy when spring arrived because our clothes dried on the balcony in one day instead of in one week during winter. During winter, our clothes would freeze on the line, so we brought them in and draped them all over the chairs, doors, radiators, and chairs to finish drying at night.
- I have decided that I am not a dog lover. Many Bucharestians would be apalled at what I’m about to say, but I’m going to say it. The thousands of stray dogs, including the one who tried to chase my husband up a tree and the one who came after me with my kids, should be put out of their misery…and out of ours. They are mean, ugly, pitiful, a nuissance, and a terrible blemish to the city. I’ve seen them shivering in the cold, passed out half-alive in summer heat, limping with broken or missing limbs, itching themselves like crazy, missing chunks of fur, eating garbage. Their lives are miserable, and I think they should be rounded up and “put to sleep.” The end.
- The giant concrete bloc apartment building soak up the intense summer heat and radiate it like an oven on the streets. Everyone sweats, everyone smells, and everyone crams like sardines into the trams and buses with their armpits in your face because it’s too hot to walk. But, I love the longer summers here and how dry they are rather than muggy. And, I like how all the apartment blocs block a lot of the cold winter winds.
- Ok, speaking of summer…the mosquitoes here in summer are of the demonic nature. They start in April and will not die until late into November. They bite over and over and over, and they are sneaky about getting in. Couple that with the lack of screens on windows, and you learn how to tolerate stuffy, hot apartments quickly.
- I love Romanian food, from sarmale to ciorba, from cozonac to cremșnit, from șaorma to musaca, from the sausages to the tomatoes and strawberries that will blow your mind. The honey here is poetic and the kilograms and kilograms of apricots we eat in the summer are sweet and addictive. There are only a couple of things I haven’t liked and several more I haven’t tried, but I’ve found myself making mămăligă for my family and serving food with a bowl of smântână.
- On the topic of food. There are dessert shops on practically every block selling the tastiest treats, but I find myself hesitant to order the chocolate ones because, almost always, they have rum essence in them for flavoring. I must be too American, but I still have not acquired the taste for this, and neither has anyone else in my family.
- I really miss my mom and dad. And sometimes I get sad that it would cost our family around $6000 to get round trip plane tickets to visit them. I wish flying were cheaper.
- We have made some wonderful friends here, and I love having brothers and sisters in the family of God here praying for me and loving me!
- Romanian is hard. The grammar is hard. Speaking it is hard. And sometimes I get really discouraged and feel like I’ll never learn it or I get discouraged that I don’t know it already and feel bad that people whose natural language is Romanian have to use English with me. But our friends are very patient and encouraging with me.
- One of my favorite Romanian words is “Bada!” There is no direct translation into English for it, but you use it to contradict someone…not in a mean way, necessarily. Like if I try to say something in Romanian and then apologize for it sounding bad, someone might say, “Bada! It was perfect.” It’s just a cool word.
- If your kid is under two years old…he or she must have a hat on. In the summer, put on a sun hat. Any other time, the hat must cover their ears and be tied under the chin to keep out the curent. Otherwise, you risk old ladies coming up and rebuking you without reserve.
- Big cities can suck the life out of you. It’s busy, people are always rushing somewhere, and getting around takes a long time. You can feel like your day is absobed with a hundred menial things that shouldn’t take long, but they do, and it’s easy to get drained and discouraged. I always have to remember that the Bible says to do everything as unto the Lord. Heidi Baker says that even sweeping the floor can be holy, holy, holy and a form of worship if done in the right attitude.
- I’ve gained an appreciation for passionate worship like we experienced in the church we came from. At the charismatic and pentecostal churches we’ve visited here, the worship has often been good, powerful, with a sense of God’s presence, but no one really expresses the joy and freedom of Jesus. I miss dancing, clapping, rejoicing, spinning in worship with “all my strength.” Maybe that’s part of my American background as well.
- Romanian kids are really cute. And the way they roll their “r”s when speaking is great!
- A lot of sources and people say that Romania is one of the most “evangelized” nations in the world. After the fall of Communism, missionaries poured in. But to see the society now: the abundant sexual immorality, the party attitude of most young people, the high rate of abortion, the rate of domestic violence, the racism, the materialism, the legalism in the churches–you would not know it. A lot of people here say, “We are Orthodox, leave us alone.” But most Orthodox have no idea if they are “good enough” to go to heaven; they do not believe that their faith in Jesus alone is what saves them and reconciles them to God. They abhor “pocaiți,” literally “repenters,” and mock them because they think it’s ridiculous that a person should repent of their sins. A lot of people like hearing about Jesus, because they’ve never met Him personally and have never heard the simple gospel of truth.
- Communism is bad. This could be a whole blog post in itself. But, communism is one of the worst things in the world, I’m convinced. Unchecked capitalism is pretty bad too.
- When I feel lonely or discouraged, this verse is a comfort to me: “So Jesus answered and said, “Assuredly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or lands, for My sake and the gospel’s, who shall not receive a hundredfold now in this time—houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions—and in the age to come, eternal life.” Mark 10:29-30
- One of the most encouraging things someone can say to me is, “I’m praying for you.” They don’t have to say anything else, because I know if they are praying, God hears and will answer. When people say, “You’re awesome or you guys rock or God is going to do amazing things through you” or anything like that, it doesn’t mean as much as knowing that the fervent prayer of a righteous person does much.
- I’d never been out of the country before moving here. Heck, I’d never even been on a short-term mission trip. Not because I didn’t want to, but I got married shortly after I started following Jesus and then I started making babies right away! I had no idea what to expect. One thing, though, missions work, well at least long-term missions work, is not glamorous. For me, I do similar things as I did in America: change diapers, discipline kids, teach home school, help with ministry, clean, cook, and try to build relationships.
- Meeting with God, alone, every day, undistracted is the most crucial and important part of ministry.
- Going grocery shopping without a car for a household of seven people gets heavy!
- Bucharest has really nice parks to get the kids outside releasing wiggles, and it is the place where I most easily meet new people.
- I am thankful for those who helped us when we had no idea what we were doing. Our friend Filip picked us up from the airport, got us a place to stay while we searched for apartments, got us a real estate agent to help us find a place to live, took us shopping, made us feel welcome, and helped us get settled. Our friends Irina and AndreEa and others planned a birthday party for Naomi during our first week here, to help the kids feel loved and welcomed in a new place. Our pastor friend Peter and his wife Geta helped us with all the crazy paperwork and running around to get our visas. And so many others. What a blessing! I am overwhelmed with gratitude.
- I often think about some of Oswald Chambers’ teachings from My Utmost for His Highest, and how he talks about the drudgery of everyday life and letting God build character in you through boredom, loneliness, discouragement, frustration, etc. Wisdom from wise, older fathers and mothers in the faith like that means so much more to me now than the zeal-without-wisdom untested faith. Discouraging and frustrating things happen, but they are temporary and the word and love of God reigns true and supreme forever.
- I like when people visit us. I like letters and care packages. 🙂
- Jesus is with me always. Even to the end of the earth.
Mama și Copilul: Iubește-i pe amândoi!
A few weeks ago, our family participated in Marșul Pentrul Viață here in Bucharest. It was the third annual march for life in this city, and it was an honor to be a part of it, joining with about 500 others to declare, “România pentru viața!, or “Romania for life!” For a slide show of pictures from the event, go here; you’ll even see some shots of us in the mix! If you’re wondering what some of the signs say, here are a few translations:
–I regret the abortion I had.
–We are the generation for life.
–Real doctors don’t kill babies.
–Adoption, not abortion
–Mother and child: love them both
–50 years = 22 million abortions
–A person is a person no matter how small
There were women carrying baskets filled with replicas of tiny babies that said 500 babies a day are aborted in Romania. Five hundred a day! There are about 22 million people in Romania, so if America, which has a population of about 314 million, had the same abortion rate, that would be 7136 babies a day murdered! The current number of abortions per day in the U.S. is somewhere around 3,200. Romania’s abortion rate is more than twice that of the U.S., and the equivalent of the current population of Romania has been killed off by abortion in just 50 years. Romania is a lovely country with beautiful people, but it is a nation that has killed half it’s people through abortion in 50 years, according to these statistics.
Here are some more statistics about abortion in Romania:
–According to this website, Romania has the highest abortion rate in Europe, more than twice the EU average, with 480 abortion performed for every 1000 live births. That’s almost a third of all pregnancies ending in abortion. However, not all abortion facilities report, so the rate could be even higher.
–According to this site, Romania has the second highest rate of abortion in the world, second only to Vietnam (which, if you do some research on this problem in that nation, it will disturb you and move you to intercession like nobody’s business), with a rate of 78 abortions per 1000 women ages 15-44.
The abortion situation in Romania has changed a lot over the past 60 years in Romania. In 1957, abortion procedures became legal. When that happened, about 80% of pregnancies ended in abortion. Romania was a very poor nation, there was little to no availability of contraceptives, and people thought they couldn’t afford to have children, so they they flocked to abortion centers. Because of this, the birthrate started to fall drastically, which would eventually lead to poor demographic growth.
In reaction to this, in 1966 communist dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu declared abortion and contraceptives illegal, and practically overnight, everything changed. This law was called Decree 770, and it stated that abortion was illegal for any woman under 45 or who had less than four children to have an abortion. This was and is definitely out of the norm for communist nations. However, Ceaușescu did not make these laws because he regarded human life as sacred and unborn children worthy of life; he simply wanted to make more workers and see his country become more powerful. He promised government childcare centers, adequate medical care, and jobs, but he failed to deliver, and many children were abandoned, left on the streets or in horrendous conditions in state orphanages.
The birthrate shot up quickly for about a year or so, and then started to go back down as many women sought illegal abortions. Some sources say that as many as 9000 women died from complications from illegal abortions. Now, a lot of people use Romania to show what would happen if abortion was outlawed, arguing that abortion should be widely accessible, safe, and legal. It’s a difficult subject to tackle, a very emotional one. But just because women will seek out abortions whether they are legal or not, even at the risk of their own lives and health, does not make it right.
Anyway, after Ceaușescu was violently overthrown and executed at the end of 1989, virtually overnight, abortions again became legal, and, according to this site, the rates shot up and nearly 1 million babies were killed in 1990, compared to only about 315,000 live births. People began the killing without even questioning whether or not it was right. Now, granted, the dictator was harsh and communism destroyed much of the hope and joy of the people. It crushed religion and indoctrinated people with the humanistic atheism that communism is generally notorious for. Without hope of a rescuer and seeing the evil that can come out of people who have no fear of God and having no value for human life other than cogs in an industrial machine, what else could be expected? Who would want to bring children into such a life?
The rate of abortion has been gradually falling in Romania, but it is still very high. There is no easy answer to this, but one thing is for sure: Paul exhorts the church in Philippians 2:14-16 to, “Do all things without grumbling and faultfinding and complaining [against God] and questioning and doubting [among yourselves], that you may show yourselves to be blameless and guileless, innocent and uncontaminated, children of God without blemish (faultless, unrebukable) in the midst of a crooked and wicked generation [spiritually perverted and perverse], among whom you are seen as bright lights (stars or beacons shining out clearly) in the [dark] world, holding out [to it] and offering [to all men] the Word of Life (AMP).”
The church is to be set apart and separate from the world and the world’s way of doing things. We are to be blameless and uncontaminated from the things of the world, including all of it’s lies and propoganda. The world is crooked, wicked, and perverse, and all of its trappings lead women into thinking that they must abort the babies inside of them. But the church is to hold out the word of hope–real hope is something that the world cannot offer–as it shines like bright stars in this dark, dark world.
Sure, we must speak the truth in love, that abortion is wrong. But we must provide hope! We cannot just point fingers and condemn the women. Are we willing to open our homes to an unmarried, pregnant woman who has no place to go? Are we willing to adopt the children that would otherwise be aborted? Are we willing to sacrifice some of our comfort to give so that other families can eat and feed the children that they do have? Are we willing to provide for their babies’ needs? To befriend those women who have no other hope? Are we willing to demonstrate that children are a blessing, to raise our children to be godly, to show that we really are “pro-life,” pro-children, pro-family? And then those children will grow up to be blessings and change things in our society, to continue to rescue those in the dark by being bright lights who hold out the word of hope themselves. And we must pray, pray, pray. God has put such a strong burden on my heart for this issue, for the women and families who are considering abortion or who have had one (or many), and for the children.
I loved the theme of this year’s Marșul Pentru Viață, Mother and Child: Love Them Both. Assume, Help, Adopt. It implies that we cannot just change the law; we have to see hearts, lives, societies changed. This can only happen through the power and hope of the gospel.
On the cool, hopeful side, check out what these folks are doing here in Romania! We’ve met some of the fruit of their ministry and it’s so great to see what God has been doing through them. They’re even from our neck of the woods in Wisconsin! Here’s a pro-life video from their website.
Evangelism, Grandma Susie Style
Last week, I received a really unusual call. I had been frustrated about doing a lot of evangelism, developing relationships, meeting people, etc. but so little of it has led to noticeable, lasting fruit yet. People have been willing to talk with us about God and even meet up a couple times, but it’s been difficult to build strong, lasting relationships with people centered around the Gospel. Our prayer has been for disciples, followers of Jesus, fruit that remains, to the glory of the Father.
So last week, my phone started to ring. I looked down at the number, which came up as “Alex Unirii.” When I meet people, I try to put their name and number in my phone with something that I can remember them by, because in Romania there are so many similar names and I already have a hard time remembering everything. So I have an “Alex Street Preacher,” a “George Australia,” a “Kaze Elim Church,” an “Andreea British Accent,” and an “Alex Unirii,” among others.
“Alex Unirii…” I thought to myself. “It can’t be… That’d be crazy…”
So I answered assuming that it wasn’t Alex who I had met at Unirii, because I never expected him to call. “Hello?”
“Hello, this is Alex. We met at Piaţa Unirii last year. Do you remember me?”
“Yeah, of course,” I said, remembering the odd series of events that had led to our meeting.
“I owe you a cup of coffee, don’t I? I want to talk more about this stuff you were telling me about, about Jesus and churches.”
And so we decided to get together in a few days.
That’s nuts, I thought as I hung up the phone, wondering at the amazing God we serve. Last year, when we moved to Romania, our friend Susie, who we affectionately called “Grandma Susie,” came with us for our first month, to help watch the kids as we got situated, learned about the city, and figured out what we were doing.
On her last Sunday with us, we took a cab to visit Missio Dei church, which was meeting a short walk from Piaţa Unirii. For some reason, the roads around the piaţa were all blocked, and our taxi driver refused to find a way around, preferring instead to drop us off on the side of the busy plaza.
We knew the general direction the church was located in, so we started walking that way, planning to figure things out eventually. It was a really hot day, painfully hot. I think we all lost a few pounds of sweat as we walked, and Susie started to feel really weak. In the middle of the piaţa, we saw a tent with people giving out cups of cool water.
“I need some water,” Susie gasped, so we walked over.
Susie was funny because she unashamedly spoke English to everyone she met in Bucharest. “Thank you so much, young man. God bless you for this water,” she told the young guy who handed her a cup.
“You speak English.” he noted, and then, like most Romanians we meet, he asked the obvious question, “What are you doing in Bucharest?”
I don’t remember exactly how Susie responded, because I was preoccupied trying to figure out how to get us all to the church, but it was something like, “This young man and his wife moved here to tell people about Jesus, and I came to help watch their kids for a month. I’m leaving soon, but they’ll be here for a long time. You should meet up and hear more about Jesus.”
Alex, the young man, my “Alex Unirii,” explained he was interested and would love to know more, so we exchanged numbers and I promised to give him a call.
Well, over the next 3 months, I called him about 10 times, he answered a few of those times, but we never were able to get together, so then I just stopped calling, figuring he wasn’t interested.
And now here he was, almost a year later, calling me out of the blue like this.
God, this is crazy. Only You would do something like this, I thought to myself, excited to see what He would do.
Well, last night, I got together with him and his fiancée, I shared the Gospel, I told Him my testimony, we talked about life, food, plans for the future, the church, and, of course, the beautiful Romanian countryside. Alex shared how he really wanted to follow Jesus, and he really liked the idea of the church, but everything he saw in the church seemed so different than what it should be. People seemed so concerned about buildings, money, and stuff that didn’t matter, rather than just following Jesus. We agreed that things shouldn’t be that way.
“I want to help you,” he kept saying. “Right now, I need to find a job, but I want to help you any way I can. Money, translation, showing you around, anything. I want to help.”
After almost three hours that passed as quickly as 15 minutes, I felt like I had just met our Romanian counterparts, two people who I felt closer to than made natural sense. We come from different worlds, we barely know each other, they’re just beginning to search for God, but He began knitting our hearts together last night, and I’m excited to see where He takes things from here. To start with, Alex and I plan to get together once a week to go through the Gospel of John together and talk about what it looks like to follow Jesus, so pray that God leads him into a real relationship with Himself in the process.
Before we parted, I prayed that God would guide them, protect them, and continue to work in their lives. When I got done praying, Alex shook my hand and told me, “Thank you for showing us the path,” and I left, in awe of our all-powerful God who can draw people to Himself even through a cup of water on a hot day almost a year ago.
And that, my friends, is evangelism, Grandma Susie style.
Food for the Stomach and Food for the Soul
Since moving to Romania, we’ve been praying nearly every day, “Lord, send us those who have a similar heart to us. Send us those willing to reach this city for You. Send us people not afraid to reach Gypsies, the homeless, street kids, college students, young families, or whoever God sends our way. Send us those who aren’t afraid to get their hands dirty!” And God has been sending people to us.
A few months ago, we met Robert when we were visiting a big church in town. We instantly connected because Robert has a heart for the homeless and wants to do something to reach them for Jesus, and we have a heart for everyone, so we were a good match. 🙂
We’ve gone out a couple times delivering food to the homeless, but I think we’ve come up with a simple plan that’ll be really fun to keep doing consistently.
Near where Robert lives, there is a nondescript building that you would easily walk right past without thinking anything of it. Tucked in the midst of some ancient trees and an overgrown lot is an old building that serves as the base of an organization that exists to assist the homeless. On a rotating basis, the building is used as a clinic, a classroom, a counseling office, an art studio for the homeless, and, what drew our interest, a free bathroom and launderette.
Every Monday, the facility opens its doors for the homeless to come and wash their clothes, shave their 7-day-old five o’clock shadows, get a hot shower, and walk out feeling new.
“People are there all day long,” Robert told me, “so it would be a great place to give away some food.”
Homeless ministry is tough. People sometimes take advantage of you, they take your help for granted, they don’t want to change, etc. So I went in this past Monday morning with a thick hide on me.
I was pleasantly surprised.
Overall, we handed out about 10 liters of hot pasta and about 30 tracts to the homeless men and women who gathered, and everyone seemed genuinely excited and blessed to have a couple young guys surprise them with a free meal. No one scowled at us, and almost everyone’s face lit up as soon as we told them we had some homemade hot pasta. Romanians (especially in Bucharest) don’t smile for no reason like we do in America. If a Romanian smiles, you know they’re really happy. Whenever we handed out a plate of food and a tract, we told them, “Mâncare pentru stomac şi mâncare pentru suflet.” Food for your stomach and food for your soul.
My favorite moment was when an old man with crippled hands approached us gingerly and asked for food. As he ate, he told us about his previous experiences in church. After his first plate, he still looked hungry, so we asked if he wanted more. “Da,” he said shyly, so we piled on another portion. This time, as he ate, he told us, “You can pray for me when I’m done eating.” We felt honored, and we prayed with all our hearts for this man who Jesus loved so much.
I also loved the guy who came bouncing over to us, shyly asking if he could have another helping, throwing in, “This is really good. I like it a lot.” That’s Kaufland’s cheap macaroni noodles and spaghetti sauce for you.
My least favorite moment was when we ran out of food. I had carried all the pasta I could possibly bring on the subway, filling our biggest stock pot with a ludicrous amount of spaghetti, but it wasn’t enough. We scooped out platefuls of spaghetti for just over an hour, providing one warm meal to 26 hungry men and women, but it barely made a dent. Streams of people would keep coming by all day, long after we were gone, and that itself was just a small portion of the over 5,000 homeless living on the streets and in the parks and sewers of Bucharest.
Just as we finished scooping out the last of the pasta, an old man walked over. “Do you have any more?” he asked. “No,” we apologized, “we just ran out. I’m sorry.” He walked away disappointed but understanding.
Afterward, we met with the director of the nonprofit, learning more about homelessness in the city. She’s been working with the homeless for 16 years, so she knows a little about their situation here. Though the situation is varied, most of the homeless here are a result of economic problems, most tracing their woes back to the fall of Communism.
Communism was bad for Romania, but it did provide a job and a home for all. When the revolution happened, factories closed, people lost their jobs, bills went unpaid, and families fell apart through divorce and separation. Countless men and women ended up on the streets with nowhere else to turn.
With the recent economic crises worldwide, homelessness has been increasing in the city.
While we were discussing things, the director mentioned, “We’ve got to understand this problem is our responsibility. No one else is going to fix it. That is what is so hard to get people to understand.” When she first started helping the homeless in Bucharest, very few people wanted to help. Now, slowly, people are beginning to take responsibility for changing things, seeing the need to do something to help.
Unfortunately, the situation is pretty much the same in most churches, Orthodox, evangelical, or otherwise. Many homeless complain of getting kicked out of churches, even if they’re going honestly and not to beg. I’ve experienced both sides of it. I’ve been at churches where homeless street kids have snuck in and gone from one person to the next during an altar call, trying to scrounge up a few lei. But we’ve also had some good friends, who aren’t homeless but look it, kicked out of a church because they didn’t dress nicely enough. Both situations make you feel sick inside.
After our conversation, Robert and I were interviewed by a Bucharest newspaper about what we were doing there. The interview lasted about an hour, and at one point, I was asked, “Why are you doing this?”
I thought for a minute and answered, “Honestly, the reason I’m out here is because Jesus said to be out here. He told us to love the poor, to give generously, and to treat others as we’d want to be treated.” I recounted the story Jesus tells in Matthew 25:31-46, about those who fed the hungry, gave water to the thirsty, and clothed the naked. He tells them, “as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.”
Ultimately, God’s heart is not Communism, a forced equality where some are more equal than others, to borrow from Animal Farm, but He does expect us to take responsibility for the hurting, the poor, the hungry, and the naked in our lives, bringing healing, help, food, and clothing.
And, most importantly, bringing the message of Jesus.
Robert and I plan to keep going every Monday morning to bring plates of food, but ultimately, our prayer is to get a Bible study going for these guys. If they’re not comfortable (or welcomed) at churches, then we’ll just bring church to them.
Pray for God to use us, not just to alleviate a little hunger, but to bring the Bread of Life that satisfies every craving, the Water that never runs dry. And pray for the other 4,974 homeless in Bucharest who we didn’t get to meet this past Monday.
Through the Foolishness of Preaching…
1 Corinthians 1:21 states, “For since, in the wisdom of God, the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save those who believe.” (Good ol’ KJV)
In context, I think Paul is referring here to the content of our preaching being seen as foolishness in the eyes of the world, not the mere fact that we’re preaching it, but street preachers the world over have used this verse to explain why they preach open-air, even though it seems offensive, foolish, annoying, or old-fashioned… and in that vein, I will use it too. 🙂
I get it that not everyone reading this will preach open-air, and probably a lot of you are even offended by the mere thought of it. I used to be just like you, so don’t worry, I’m not gonna get offended if you don’t wanna jump up on a street corner and start shouting about Jesus. But regardless of your persuasion, I enjoy it, and street preaching has never been classy or high-brow in the eyes of the world. It has, however, been one of the main ways the Gospel has spread, throughout history and the Bible. If you read the Bible without judging it through your modern perspective, I think you’ll have a hard time finding a method of spreading the Gospel that is more prevalent than open-air preaching.
I don’t want to provide a justification for street preaching here (read some good articles here and here), but to give you just a handful of verses on the topic…
- Proverbs 1:20 – “Wisdom cries aloud in the street, in the markets she raises her voice…”
- Judges 9:7 – “When it was told to Jotham, he went and stood on top of Mount Gerizim and cried aloud and said to them…”
- Jeremiah 11:6 – “And the Lord said to me, “Proclaim all these words in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem…”
- Isaiah 29:21 – “…lay a snare for him who reproves in the gate…”
- Matthew 3:1 – “In those days John the Baptist came preaching in the wilderness of Judea…”
- Luke 16:7 – “And [Jesus] came down with them and stood on a level place, with a great crowd of his disciples and a great multitude of people…”
- Acts 2:14 – “But Peter, standing with the eleven, lifted up his voice and addressed them: “Men of Judea and all who dwell in Jerusalem…”
- Acts 17:17 – “So [Paul] reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews and the devout persons, and in the marketplace every day with those who happened to be there.”
- Acts 17:22 – “So Paul, standing in the midst of the Areopagus, said…”
Charles Spurgeon once said, “It would be very easy to prove that revivals of religion have usually been accompanied, if not caused, by a considerable amount of preaching out of doors, or in unusual places.”
George Whitefield said, “I believe I never was more acceptable to my Master than when I was standing to teach those hearers in the open fields.” and “I now preach to ten times more people than I should, if had been confined to the Churches.”
John Wesley wrote in his journal once, “I preached on the green at Bedminster. I am apt to think many of the hearers scarcely ever heard a Methodist before, or perhaps any other preacher. What but field-preaching could reach these poor sinners? And are not their souls also precious in the sight of God?”
Anyway, our friend Alex Grigorescu invited us to join him in some street preaching near Piata Obor last week. I was excited to go, hearing horror stories from other ministers here of the dangers of street preaching. I overheard one seasoned missionary saying, like a salty old sailor talking about the whale that got the best of him, “If you wanna prove your stuff, just get out on the streets and do some preaching. You’ll find out what you’re made of real quick.” Others told me stories of having angry dogs let loose on them, boxes of knives thrown at them, and the usual rude comments and angry gestures. Needless to say, I was excited.
Well, to skip to the end of the story, it was a lot more mild of an experience than I expected. Maybe there’s something wrong with me, but I honestly was hoping for more anger, demonic manifestations, and fits. A riot would have been really nice. 🙂 Half joking. Though I have always liked Acts 17:6 – “These men who have turned the world upside down have come here also…”
We did get a few people shouting, “Go back home!” “We’re all Christians here!” “I was born Orthodox and I’ll die Orthodox!” and some Romanian phrases I haven’t learned yet, probably because they’re a little more vulgar. Most people just ignored us, a lot looked quietly mad, a few shouted at us, and a handful were really open to the message.
Overall, it was an OK experience. I’ve had times of street preaching that were a lot better and times that were a lot worse. I honestly felt like I didn’t make a whole lot of sense at times, but some people were genuinely interested in hearing us preaching.
My favorite moment was when I passed a tract to a young man from Sweden who quickly asked in English, “What’s this?”
Let me preface what follows by saying I normally answer more intelligently than I did on this occasion, but for some reason everything got jumbled in my head and came out kinda’ mixed up.
Hear me out as I offer some lame excuses. I wasn’t expecting someone to talk to me in English, so all I had in my head were Romanian phrases I had been reciting silently to myself. Besides, I didn’t know how much English this guy spoke, so I was trying to think through what words he would be familiar with. On top of that, I figured he was Romanian, and Orthodox, so I was trying to answer in a way that was sensitive to his cultural background and wouldn’t just instantly make him closed to the Gospel. It was really noisy and people were everywhere, shouting, talking, running, and it made it hard to think straight. I was cold and my brain wasn’t working so well. All these factors combined to clog my thoughts and trip up what I was trying to say. At least, that’s the story I’m sticking with. 🙂
Regardless, I include this here first for your amusement, second for your instruction on what not to say, and third for your encouragement. If God can use this, He can probably use you.
“What’s this?” he asked.
“Uh, well, it’s the message of the Gospel,” I answered, feeling a little like Ned Flanders.
“What’s that mean?” he asked.
“Umh…” and this is where things got really stupid as I tried to explain the Gospel in a way that Orthodox Believers could grab ahold of without just ignoring it as “not Orthodoxy.” So I sputtered out something like, “It’s about Jesus, that He died for us… There’s Hell, and it’s real, and we all deserve it.” I don’t think I succeeded in explaining the Gospel in a way anybody could grab ahold of.
“I don’t want to go to Hell,” he said somberly.
“No, that’s good. I mean bad, Hell is bad, but it’s good you don’t want to go.”
“What do I have to do?” he asked.
“Just tell Jesus you want to live for Him, that you’re sorry for the sin in your life. And live for Him,” I explained poorly, resorting to Christianese and bumper-sticker slogans.
“It’s that easy?”
“Yeah, pretty much.”
After asking if we were Mormons (boy do I get tired of this question!), he had to run, but he gave me his phone number and said he wanted to get together and talk more about following Jesus.
Please pray for this Swedish college student, that God would continue to speak to him and lead him into a relationship with Himself through Jesus. And pray for me to make a little more sense next time! 🙂
In Search of the Homeless
A young man who’s been helping us with translation, Robert, has a heart for the homeless in Bucharest. He’s got a wild life story, and I’ll share it sometime, but for now, just now that he grew up much like most of the homeless in this city but then, through the grace of God, has completely turned his life around and hopes to have his own business some day. In the meantime, he’s finishing his PHD and has made himself available to help us with some of the work we’re doing.
Robert is a great guy who loves Jesus more than anything else, and I hope you all get to meet him someday.
Last week, we were talking with Robert and he mentioned that he’d like to bring food to the homeless sometime. “OK,” I said, “when would it work for you?”
We decided to go out this past Saturday, hoping to find some people in need of a bowl of soup and the Gospel. We didn’t really know where to go, not knowing the big homeless spots in the city yet, so we asked God to guide us, like Abraham leaving Haran for the Promised Land.
We were on our way to a place that, according to Robert, is usually packed with the homeless on Mondays. We weren’t sure what we’d find today, being Saturday, but we thought it’d be worth a shot.
On the way over, suddenly I had a picture of Titan Park pop into my head. I had a memory of being at Titan a few weeks back, when there were handfuls of homeless hanging out in the woods surrounding the park. “Hey, we’re near Titan. Let’s go there,” I suggested, so Robert took a right turn and brought us to the park.
When we got there, we grabbed our giant pot of soup, some bowls and spoons, and some tracts, and we started walking through the woods looking for homeless people. None in sight. What do you do when you’re looking for the homeless? You can’t really just start shouting, “Homeless guys! We’re here! Come out, come out, wherever you are!”
As we walked and looked for the homeless, we saw a group of three guys sitting on an old concrete slab. “Hey, they might be homeless,” we thought, so we cautiously started meandering over indirectly, trying to look inconspicuous with our giant pot of soup.
“Should we ask them, ‘Hey, are you homeless?’” one of us joked.
As we neared, we saw they were nicely dressed, clean-shaven, and definitely not the homeless guys we were hoping for, so we veered off in search of real homeless people, not these frauds.
Ultimately, we didn’t find any homeless at Titan that day, but as we drove down the street, suddenly Robert pulled over. “I saw a guy back there! Let’s get him some soup,” he shouted. Before Ben and I could get our seatbelts unbuckled, he was talking with the man asking him if he was hungry.
His name was Marian, and though I didn’t catch most of what he was saying about his life, I could tell he was extremely grateful for the soup, and surprised that God would lead us specifically to him. Before we left, we prayed for Marian, that God would protect him, lead him, and reveal Himself to him, and Marian thanked us for the soup and the time.
He also told us about a place where most of the homeless he knew tended to gather. He said it was basically a garbage pit swarming with hungry, poor, homeless men, women, and children. We didn’t have enough soup with us that day to head in there, but we’ll find it one of these days, when we have a lot more soup with us, and maybe some more Romanian speakers along to help out.
After talking with Marian, we met another homeless guy, and while we were getting him soup, a man walked out of a store. “Are you here to feed poor people?” he asked.
We explained how God had put it on our hearts to bring soup to the homeless, so we were just going wherever He seemed to be leading us and serving as He opened doors.
“Follow me,” he said. “There’s a poor family in back that really needs some food.”
As we approached the trash-covered house where two families and five kids lived, we got a picture of the flip-side to homeless ministry. “A lot of born-again Believers come here,” the man told us. He began naming churches we knew who had sent teams of people with food, prayer, and the Gospel to these families. “They come from America, too. You can take pictures. Everyone takes pictures.”
I felt like a pawn in some homeless-feeding system, my generosity and heart to serve being taken advantage of by professional beggars who were themselves used to being taken advantage of by well-meaning Christians seeking an outlet to feed the poor, snap some photos, upload them to Facebook, and feel better about themselves. Well, the kids were cute and the family was hungry, so regardless of whether we were being taking advantage of or not, Jesus led us here, and He told us to feed those who have no food.
So we poured bowls of hot soup, and they scarfed it down like people who hadn’t eaten all day.
Then Robert shared a word from God, telling them how we were led here today by “coincidence,” proof enough that God cared about them and valued them highly. When we left, we promised to come back, because we want to establish a long-term relationship with this family, not just blow in, snap some photos, feel better about ourselves, and then move on.
And, case in point, no, we didn’t take any pictures.
Thursday Nights in Our Living Room
Thursday nights, we invite English speakers to our home for worship, prayer, and Bible teaching. It’s one of the meetings I’m most excited about, but it’s also been the slowest to get going.
Why am I most excited about this meeting? Well, honestly, I’ve got a lot of selfish reasons – I get to speak in my native language, without a translator, and worship God in English, using songs that I like, with people who speak and understand the language really well. Plus, I get really ministered to during the meetings, no matter how many other people show up. The presence of God has been really strong at our little meetings, so I always leave encouraged and strengthened.
But beyond the selfish reasons, having a meeting in English should, by nature, draw young people who have a desire to change the world. From what we’ve learned about Romania, if you want to go to a good college, get a good job, or travel anywhere outside the country, you learn English. Understanding English is required to get into many universities, and most international businesses, the ones with the good jobs, won’t even consider you if you don’t have a minimum level of fluency. If someone wants to come to a church service almost entirely in English, it means they’re already hoping to do something with their life that makes an impact. At least, that’s the theory.
And I like the idea of God using our weakness to show His greatness. We’re trying really hard to learn Romanian – we’re studying on our own, we have a weekly tutoring session, we talk with people in Romanian whenever we can – but our brains, cluttered with subway maps, grocery lists, Bible verses, new friends’ names, diapers, and dreams, refuse to get with the program and learn.
It’s not my fault. Scientists have shown there’s a chemical in our brains that helps with language acquisition. It’s strongest when we’re young, and by the time we turn 30 or 35, it quickly starts to plunge to nothingness. So, by fact of nature, I have begun to enter that plunge downward.
Recently, a fellow missionary joked with me, “I tell people that those who speak three languages are trilingual, those who speak two are bilingual, and those who speak one are American.” There you have it. We’ve been cursed from birth.
Seriously, we’re committed to keep learning Romanian any method we can, but right now, it’s just a very slow process. Many American missionaries here don’t even try learning Romanian, and some say we shouldn’t even try, it’s not important, but almost every Romanian we talk to says the opposite. They all say they would be able to receive better from someone who takes the time to actually learn the language. I think I’ll go with the Romanians on this one.
So, the process is slow, but we’re learning. We tell people here, “Înţelegem mai mult decât vorbim.” We understand more than we speak. Often, we’ll find ourselves understanding a person fine, but we just can’t find the right Romanian words quick enough to communicate effectively.
So, back to Thursday nights. I love Thursday nights, but every week is a little different.
Week to week, we never know who all is going to show up. It’s in our home, so I know we’ll have at least 4 kids and 3 adults. 🙂 But beyond that, we never know. Some weeks, it’s a bunch of Americans, a Canadian, and an Australian. One week, no one came but a Baptist youth pastor. Other weeks, a handful of high school students showed up. Or sometimes we’ll get a few college students, missionaries, and business men together.
We’re praying that God speaks to some people, “Get involved and make this part of your routine,” but right now, a lot of people are cycling in and out on an irregular basis, which makes it hard to establish any sort of normal rhythm but keeps us trusting God.
One week, the clock reached 7 pm and no one was here but our family. We were expecting at least a few people, but none of them showed up. “Well,” we decided, “we need God, so let’s worship Him like He deserves anyway.” So we worshiped like there were thousands gathered with us, and by the time we finished our first song, our friend Jason from Canada had shown up. We were still small in number, but God showed up strong that night, ministering to each of us on a deep level, convicting our hearts of sin and covering us with His love. That little meeting with four people worshiping together was the most intense sense of God’s presence I’ve had in Romania yet. My heart aches for more people to know this God who speaks so deeply to our hearts.
Another week, a handful of us had gathered together, including a High School student who had never come before. After the “official” meeting was done, she asked if we could pray for her because she couldn’t sleep at night. So we prayed, and she came back a few days later with the report, “Now I’m sleeping great! Thank you for praying!” She also asked us to pray for her legs, which were constantly in pain. Doctors said she was just growing too fast and would have to put up with it. Well, Jesus had a different diagnosis. He came not just to heal our sins but to heal our sicknesses too, so we put our hands on her legs and commanded them to be healed, and Jesus healed them! As far as I’ve heard, she still hasn’t had any pain in her legs. That’s just what my God does.
Another week, all the “regular” attendees (if you can call them that) were either late or just didn’t come, but 5 new people came who had never come before, and God’s presence was so strong that we could have spent hours just worshiping Him together. When we finished the time of prayer and worship, I shifted gears to teach on the fear of God, and I was so overcome by the weight of it that I don’t know if I made much sense at all. If any of you who came are reading this, I apologize for being so tongue-tied.
Pray for God to grow the Thursday night group at our home, and pray He continues to bring His presence to encourage, strengthen, and free His people. We love opening our home up and having people worship and pray and look at the Scriptures together with us, but I want so many more people to know this God who ministers to us deeply in ways that only He can do. So many of us only know a God of religion, a God who did the impossible during Bible times but now just speaks about nice, understandable truths through His Word and preaching. But God is bigger than that. God is a God of mystery and depth, a God who wants to reveal His glories to His people.
And I think it’s this impossible-to-understand God that we all, deep down inside, really yearn for. We don’t want a God who’s easy to explain, a God we can hold onto and put in a box. We want a God who’s big enough to fix our problems, strong enough to reach into our darkness and pull out His light, bold enough to do and say what no one else can.
Motherhood in Bucharest
Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about parenting and being a mother, what it means to raise children and what does that look like practically. I guess I’ve thought about it a lot since moving here to Bucharest, because, well, it keeps popping up in conversation nearly everywhere we go. Our family is not huge by any means; we have four children so far, but we’ve seen way bigger families in the States. Years ago, we would have just been an average-sized family there, or perhaps on the small side of average…back when people really believed when the Bible said that children are a blessing from the Lord.
But here in Romania, and Bucharest in specific, we are a big family, o familie mare. On the subway, on the tram, on the bus, walking down the street, shopping at the grocery store, ordering șase covrigi (six pretzels), taking a train ride to get out of the city for a day or two. We get stares. And everyone asking, “Are they all yours?” Sometimes my mind thinks about some of the clever responses I read in this article, but I always smile and say, “Da!” proudly. Because I am proud of my children. They are blessings from the Lord, precious gifts He’s given us to raise up as lights in the world to bring glory to Him! And most people usually respond with, “Să vă trăiască!” Something along the lines of, “May they live long!” However, I’ve gotten a few funny looks from people as they say, “Patru!?” (Four?!) And one or two older ladies would look solemn and talk about how difficult it must be.
Sometimes it gets old being stared at or always being asked if ALL the kids are mine, but it doesn’t really bother me. What I’ve been thinking about lately, though, is how much emphasis there is on external things. Are the kids’ ears covered so as to let no wind get in? No baby should be allowed to suck his thumb for any reason or it may get deformed. Girl babies should not be allowed to cry, and if they do, then the mother must not be a very good mother. Kids are bundled up in snow suits throughout fall and and winter (think of the little brother in “A Christmas Story”) with hats tied tightly under the chin. Etc.
I’m not picking on Romania either. Though the concerns about external things are different than in America, American mothers have their share of external worries: how organic or non-GMO is the food their kids are eating, how stylish are their kids clothes, are they involved in enough extra-curricular social activities? And so on. We want our kids to be physically healthy, for sure, but there’s more to life than physical health.
I feel like there is so much focus on external things when in comes to parenting. Dirty fingernails, messy hair, a McDonald’s meal on occasion is fine. The important things are the internal matters of the heart. Will your child obey the first time you tell him it’s time to go home from the park or will he sneak off and hide on the slide? Does your daughter whine every time you tell her no, so that you give in just to make her stop whining? The Bible says folly is bound up in the heart of a child. Kids are selfish, rebellious, stubborn, defiant, and whiny by nature. But we as parents are to train them up in the way they should go, so that, when they are older, they will not depart from the good way of love, submission, self-control, joy, peace, and life.
The tough thing is that you may not see the fruit of this labor of love for a while, or it may take others commenting on how loving, sharing, obedient, happy, and creative your kids are. My kids don’t always wear hats when it’s chilly outside. I let them dig in the dirt with their hands at the park, and I don’t always carry hand sanitizer with me to clean them off right away. Sometimes I forget to brush their hair. And I give them chocolate, white bread, and imported apples sometimes (Fresh Romanian apples really are superior, though). But when I’m sick, they pray for me. When one of them gets candy, they will share with another who did not get any. They love to read their Bibles and listen to worship music. They like visiting the gypsies with us to pray, worship, and share about Jesus–and then they pray for them and their family during their quiet times that they would know His love for them.
These things don’t just happen; it’s called work. Childbirth is easy compared to the lifetime of childtraining that follows. If you are a parent, you are responsible for a living soul made in the image of God. Man is interested in external things, but God looks at the heart. That’s what parenting is all about. My kids aren’t perfect (neither is their mother); they will argue, tattle, ask a zillion questions in the span of five minutes, interrupt, and whine sometimes. They’re kids. But they’re little gifts from heaven that we invest tons of time, energy, patience, and love into so that they can experience the abudant and eternal life set before them.
Jesus criticized the Pharisees for being whitewashed tombs, clean on the outside but full of death and darkness on the inside. I don’t want to be like that or have kids like that.
I have a lot more to say about motherhood, but I think it may just have to come in a series of posts.
Preaching in Barbulești
A couple weeks ago, we were invited to preach at a church in the town of Barbulești. Barbulești is a small, cramped and dirty Gypsy village of about 5,000 people. Half the buildings stand unfinished with dirty cement exteriors like the church above. The other half are either little ramshackle huts or giant Gypsy mansions decorated with gold, silver, and gaudy regalia, like the one here near Cluj. Barbulești is a strange little town. It used to be one of the worst areas of Romania, home to Gypsy crime lords, gang leaders, and murderers, but about 15 years ago, everything started changing – some of the most notorious criminals were locked up, others died, and others repented and became good, God-fearing citizens. Now, the little town is known more for poverty than crime. A few years ago, it made news when France kicked a bunch of Gypsies out and sent them back here. You can read about that and some of the current predicaments of living in this town here.
Anyway, we were invited to preach at a Pentecostal church in town. The first thing I noticed when we came through the doors was that all the women were on one side, with head-coverings of course, and the men were on the other, like a lot of the older, more traditional churches in the country. Side note: when we were done with the service, we all thought it was funny that the women’s side was substantially dirtier than the men’s. Candy wrappers, clods of dirt, tissues, and plastic cups littered the women’s side, but the men’s was left virtually spotless.
We had three of us preaching that day, and I closed the service up, preaching a message about Jesus coming to destroy the works of the devil, which means we can be set free from bondage to sin, sickness, addiction, demonic torment, or any other bondage of the enemy. Jesus defeated all that stuff, so we could live in freedom!
After my message, we called people forward for prayer, if they needed anything from God, physical healing, release from demonic torment, victory over sin, whatever.
No one moved.
Dang, I started thinking, did I even make sense? Maybe they didn’t understand what I was saying…
Then suddenly one man boldly walked forward, then another, and then this whole swarm of people came forward for prayer. We were surrounded by maybe 75 or 100 people all wanting prayer. So we split into two teams and got to work, praying for God to move in this church, praying with all our hearts for people to be set free from the power of the enemy, praying until our throats hurt and we had no more strength left.
Honestly, I don’t know if we saw any miraculous healings or deliverances that day, and it broke my heart. We prayed for so many people, and I know God promises to answer and bring healing, but it sure seemed like nothing was happening. One person after another came forward asking for freedom from addictions, demonic torment, nightmares, insanity, ongoing headaches, stomach diseases, diabetes, deafness, blindness… on and on the list goes.
I want to see God move here. I want to see people delivered from sin and demons and sickness and torment, just like the Bible promises. A lot of people I’ve met in Romania’s churches (Pentecostal or otherwise) say they believe God can do it, but they don’t think He’ll do it here in Romania. Like people in America, they say things like, “That’s what God does in Africa or China or India, but He doesn’t do that here.”
That might be a nice excuse, but it’s just not Biblical thinking. Nowhere in the Bible does it say God can only heal in Third World nations or really poor places. God is the same everywhere, and I’m sure if Jesus were walking the streets of Barbulești, he wouldn’t tell all the sick and demon-oppressed, “Dang, guys, sorry. If you were Africans I might heal you, but since you’re Europeans, I just don’t know if I’ve got it in me.”
When Jesus went to a town, he routinely healed all who were sick and oppressed. Even in Nazareth, where people were full of unbelief, it says in Matthew 13:58 that Jesus, “did not do many mighty works there.” He did mighty works, just not many. Jesus heals the sick and releases those oppressed by sin and demonic torment, even in the face of unbelief. That’s just what He does.
Lord, help us! Move in Romania like you did in Judea! Heal the sick, deliver the tormented, free the captives, comfort the oppressed!
When an old man becomes a baby
Jesus said that if we want to see the kingdom of God, we need to become born a second time. When he told this to Nicodemus in John 3, he was confused and asked facetiously, “How can someone crawl back into his mother’s womb?!” Translation: “What on earth are you talking about, Jesus? That doesn’t make any sense.”
A few weeks ago, a new person showed up at our meeting with the Gypsy communities along Mihai Bravu. 78-year-old George, from Transylvania, had just come to town and moved into one of the free rooms at the house where we meet. I think we all honestly assumed he was already a Christian. He seemed really nice and normal, and I guess I figured that by the age of 78, he surely had run out of reasons to resist God and given in. Or if not, surely no amount of preaching by us young guys would convince him otherwise.
I tried to get a picture with George that night, but people kept getting in front of him or pushing him out of the way. In the photo above, he’s just to the right of the man with the leather jacket.
Anyway, when Andrei, a high school student from Elim Church, shared his testimony of how God had changed his life, forgiven him, and freed him from drug and alcohol addiction, he began to ask if anyone wanted to turn from sin and trust in Jesus. My first thought, to my shame, wasn’t, “Awesome, I can’t wait to see people get right with God,” but something more like, “Well, everyone here is either already saved, so clouded by sin and religiosity that they think they’re saved, or too old to care anymore, so I hope Andrei doesn’t get disappointed when no one responds.” Ouch. Yeah, that bad.
Thankfully, God chose to go with what He wanted and not what I expected.
George came forward for prayer and explained, to my surprise and embarrassment, that he wanted to finally, once and for all, repent of his sin and trust in Jesus. He was tired of living for himself and was finally ready to become a new man, born all over again.
Well, OK, then. I like when God proves me wrong and does something amazing despite the fact that I’m expecting so little.
So we prayed with George, who refused to stand during prayer, despite his bad knees. He preferred to come to God on his knees in humility rather than standing in the presence of his King. As we prayed, we asked that God would fill him with power to live the Christian life and to be a witness to those around him. We prayed for healing and strengthening of his worn body.
When we were done praying, he got up, saying he had felt an intense amount of heat coming off our hands, and now all the pain was gone from his legs. Praise God! He restored George’s heart and his body.
Every week, we pray for George to get healed – he’s always got some new sort of pain or ailment that comes up, sometimes an old pain or ailment that’s returned. And every week, God heals him of whatever new pain has come on his body.
Be praying for George. He’s made a commitment to follow after Jesus, and we want to see him finish strong. He may only have a year or two left on this earth, or he may have a few decades – either way, our prayer is that he’s prepared on that final day to walk boldly into the throne room, knowing who it is he’s lived for these last years of his life.
It Doesn't Matter Where 