The week-long trip to Romania in August was a life-changing, confidence building, mind expanding experience, a boost to spiritual growth and lots more. On the first day we had a 4 hour drive to meet our hosts (Hope Church, headed by Pastor Raul Costea) in Draganesti Olt. After a nap we visited a home shared by three families who although not having much materially were very happy and extremely welcoming to us which was very encouraging. We also witnessed a church being built from scratch by the congregation with the help of Canadian missionaries.

 

We met young people from other parts of Romania and also from Italy and it was amazing to note that a lot of the people doing God’s work were educated enough to have degrees but had chosen to devote their whole lives to Jesus and work for His Kingdom. The next day we attended a prayer meeting and joined in street evangelism by going into the community with the other young people who acted as translators. Whilst the immediate results from street evangelism did not appear positive, since a lot of people were of the Orthodox faith and had a different viewpoint from Evangelical Christians, we still enjoyed it.

Our hosts are sold out to doing God’s work and meet everyday to do something different for the Kingdom, including collecting garbage, which we helped with. Every Saturday they have a children’s ministry where they go out and get children off the streets to play, teach and have fun with them. They also had a youth event which we participated in.

On Sunday some of us went to a little village for morning service which normally involves a two-mile walk to church for the congregation in order to worship God and fellowship.

The others went to the main church and really enjoyed it and we all came together for evening service at the main church.

Throughout the rest of the week we did more community outreach activities by playing football with children, playing volleyball with some girls. These were all different ways of drawing the youth and community in to develop friendships and then use as an opportunity to preach the Gospel to them.

This trip was really refreshing and all who attended (Pastor, Thierry, Tireni, Tobi, Pinder) and me came back with testimonies. It was a huge blessing.

Holly Jones