is determined to be the
ministry of choice for people of integrity who desire to provide the
youth of Romania with the grace of the Gospel and hope for a
better tomorrow.
Building
a bridge of grace from Italy to
Romania
Our focus is the education of the Romanian youth and Italians. We
impart hopefor this life and that to
come.
We
are primarily concerned with long-term development.
If
we cannot do what we do through relationships and with integrity, we will not do it.
Our
stance is clear and unmistakable. The reason for our work is the Glory of
God.
Parameters of Romanian ministry
Target: Who?
Children with AIDS
Orphans
Impoverished Youth
Long-term Hospitalized
Youth
What?
General
Education
Spiritual
Education
Evangelism
Discipleship
Counseling
Teacher
Training
Summer
Camps
Why?
Of Europe's Children with AIDS, 60% live
in Romania.
1,895 children have died of AIDS between
1990 and 1998.
86% of those with AIDS are children.*
Romania has lost its faith--88% think that
the church has lost its ethics.
Romania has lost its hope--Most think that
to prosper you must be dishonest.**
Relief agencies which have sent containers
with items that compete with Romanian
businesses and have taken jobs from
Romanians
"Romania probes child HIV infections
for first time." The Business Review.
November 9-15, 1998. p. 2
*UNAIDS fax to SCOP dated March 4, 1998.
**Romanian news survey July 1999.
Vision
Our
long-term
vision remains the same: Build a bridge of grace from Italy to
Romania
1. Motivate
Italian Christians to reach out around the world, especially to
Romania.
2. Partner with
Romanian Christian churches and organizations.
"What do we have that is any different than what is offered by the
world?" This is a question we often ask ourselves, especially when
so many religious groups are no more loving or ethical than the "lost"
they are trying to "save". For too many people, religion has
become a mental affirmation and not an applicable truth. This is
the faith that James says the demons have.
The world needs the message of the gospel, of love, of peace, of joy.
This is the message that brings hope. Whether we are
referring to the US or to Romania, this is a message that is hard to
find outside of Jesus Christ. In an attempt to do that
effectively, one must cultivate a teachable attitude and a devotion to
learning from others. He must have a voracious reading habit.
He should have a passion to learn languages so that he can
understand people first-hand, see the filters that each of us have and
communicate with a minimum of filters and translators.
This year, God gave me the opportunity to correspond with a friend from
the ivory towers of theological academia, a graduate of Dallas
Theological Seminary. He has a fantastic grasp of things I could
just dream about--Greek, the end times, etc. But, I can't think
of any friends from university fellowship groups that would be unable
to hold their own in a debate with him about the basics of the
Christian faith and practice.
Needed: Pragmatic love
We are pragmatics. Compared to those with whom I brush
shoulders, we are interested in studying things that are applicable and
essentials of the faith. This prevents us from legalistic extremes
where people apply laws to others that are impractical and
counterproductive.
At Lehigh, I found experts in invention. In the Army, I found
true patriots and this Spring nobody doubted their excellence when they
marched into Baghdad in four weeks with so few casualties. So in
ministry, I expected to find people like me who love God above all
else. But this expectation was naif and unreasonable and, as you
could well expect, resulted in disappointment. Most of us
missionaries have families so, as I Corinthians 7:32-33 says, the needs
of the individual and family are often more important than the commands
of God. After 30+ years of single life, this is a hard principle
to comprehend and even harder to practice. This old dog doesn't like
this new trick, but if I am devoted to excellence in my marriage,
perfecting this trick is a necessity.
During the summers of my college years, I worked with people who
Wilfred McClay calls the lowbrows.
Ashland Oil hired me at an oil refinery, cleaning spills, cutting
grass, and aiding welders and pipefitters. These grassroot people
were down to earth, practical people with little thought for how many
angels can dance on the head of a pin. Then, when I was in medical
research, I daily interfaced with highbrow
academia. There, theory and idealism often crowds out practical
reality. They tend to be more pacifist and more left-wing--not an
easy place for someone who prefers Rush Limbaugh to Howard Stern.
Understanding both points of view is probably the reason why I am
a middlebrow today.
As McClay observes, "The
highbrows [have become] ponderous, impenetrable, professionalized
academics, whose air castles of thought were surrounded by moats of
jargon designed to keep the dabblers and dilettantes at bay."* However, the lowbrows
"were the manufacturers and purveyors of commercial mass entertainment,
with debased aesthetic standards and a coarsening effect on the
populace." We live in a world where "political discourse was
debased by the domination of the [lowbrow]... instead of being elevated
by contributions from on high."
As a result, the
vital center of ideas still stood largely unoccupied. The
leavening effect the two halves of the American cultural schism might
have had upon one another--and occasionally did have--was hard to find,
and harder to sustain. Those few hardy souls who were able to
cross over--a Leonard Bernstein in music, a Tom Wolfe in literature, a
David McCullough in history, an Andrew Wyeth in painting--won the scorn
(often masking envy) of the illuminati and were dismissed as
middlebrows, popularizers, and sellouts. (ibid, p. 84)
Content to be a middlebrow As middlebrows in ministry (considerably less talented than
Wyeth, Bernstein, et al were in their fields), Aurelia and I don't
expect a great reception by the highbrows. "Yet it is precisely in
that vibrant democratic middle ground, where ideas drawn from elite and
popular cultures mix and mingle, and where the friction between idea and
lived reality is most powerful and productive, that the genius of
American culture has been found in the past."(ibid)
This was the power of pragmatic Jesus over the theoretic Pharisees.
He was scorned by the highbrows but the sinners and the tax
collectors found a friend in Him. He polarized the Pharisees and
changed the world like no man in human history has or will. (After
all, He is God!) God tells us, "Little
children, you are of God, and have overcome [the world]; for he who is
in you is greater than he who is in the world."(1 John 4:4)
Over the past few years in Romania, God has let me witness an
overabundance of highbrow knowledge and an underabundance of
practice. Part of it is that I had 22 years of marital bliss with
only the Lord Jesus Christ, while many others experienced few if any.
This is not something to be depreciated nor boasted of, it is
pure grace of God.
The ivory towers have jargonized the definitions of words so that they
no longer recognizable in the original Greek or in the present English.
One highbrow theologian here deconstructs Greek and English words
to twist Scripture to his liking. This is a very real temptation
for all of us, and to keep us faithful to the original text, God
provides us people with other interpretations. These are not
enemies but our friends who keep us open minded and accountable.
We must not be adversarial towards them but must love them.
Aurelia and I want to bridge the gap, the largely unoccupied vital
center of ideas, and apply Christian concepts to the lives of the poor,
neglected Romanian children. One Italian group commented on how
pragmatic I was--how much I put faith into practice, something they
considered intimidating. I told them that Jesus has been living in
me much longer, so He has had more time to redecorate my life.
"You Americans are so pragmatic!"
But, part of it is cultural, too. We, Americans, are renouned for
pragmatism. "Alexis de Tocqueville voiced the theme early in the
19th century: To the extent that Americans cultivated science,
literature, and the arts, he remarked, they invariably did so in the
spirit of utility, not out of any high regard for the dignity of
thought itself." (McClay, op cit) But, as I was trying to
convey to the Italian group I was teaching, we must practice love,
practice truth, practice honesty, not just learn and talk about it.
"Let us not love in word or
speech but in deed and in truth." (I John 3:18)
May we always respond to God's call to pragmatism!
"we were to remember the poor, which
very thing I was also eager to do." ~~~The Apostle Paul
(Galatians 2)
Poor children get poorer
education (Ballantine, 1989;
Macionis, 1994) and less exposure to the computer.
Tuberculosis is so strongly viewed as a disease of poverty that
children don't even want people to know that they are at the TB
hospital. (They even renamed the hospital this year, to take out
the word "tuberculosis" .) Romania has the largest TB popullation
than any other European country. Since Jesus' ministry seemed to
have more success among the poor, we feel that our ministry here
is strategic and extremely well-placed.
The children in this hospital are from the lower strata of society,
since TB affects the poor. Common vectors of transmission are
being near someone with the bacillium who coughs, sharing eating
utencils, and poor sanitation techniques due to no hot water.
Also, researchers have just discovered that smoke from wood stoves
produces an inflammatory response in the lungs, and this makes it 2.6
times easier for TB to infect someone. (Mishra V, Retherford R, and Smith K) Poverty increases the
probability that a child will be subjected to these transmission vectors.
More Romanian children were abandoned last year than any
time in Romania's history. However, the government (under pressure
by the European Union) continues to close orphanages. The result
is that many of these children get tossed in the streets.
Under such pressure, in July the hospital had to find a disposition for
over half of the children under their care. Children with living
parents had to be sent back to the parents indifferent to the fact that
their home situations and sub-standard schools were the cause of their
developmental retardation. First graders that can't speak, 2nd
graders that don't know the alphabet, and 6th graders that can't read
came from these same village schools to which they had to return.
The children that are from unknown origin will be retained in the
hospital or sent to an orphanage that will likely be soon closed,
forcing them into the streets. Oana (see Annual Reports for 2001 and 2002) is
still at the hospital while Rodica was sent to an orphanage inTargoviste.
Two floors were consolidated into one, healthy children
with unhealthy children. This means that we started working with
truly contageous TB patients and had to start taking more precautions
against getting sick. Please pray
for God to keep the healthy children (as well as us) healthy.
In this way, this state-run hospital reduced teaching staff,
forcing into retirement anybody who is over 50 and has had 30 years of
work. The director's position has been eliminated, so Ionel has been
replaced by a lady who seems to be equally favorable towards our work.
Nothing should have to change there.
Working at the hospital is very draining and could drive
a youthful couple of 30-somethings like us crazy. I don't know how
some of their professors manage when they are in their 50's and 60's!
Aurelia takes the kids needing help in basic education and I
usually hold computer classes. In the halls, the kids are
constantly fighting, yelling, and knocking on the doors, impatient for
their turn to learn. They will beat on each other with sticks
and any body part that can gather some inertia. Many of the children
who remain in the hospital have good reason to feel fortunate and
unfortunate at the same time. They are fortunate to have our
donors supporting them and people like Amanda (a short-term missionary)
visiting them. They are fortunate to not be among the
thousands on the streets. However, they have the misfortune of
being in a place where they are unsupervised most of the summer.
The summer time is the worst for these children.
The staff is short because they go on vacation. At best, the
staff basically leaves when we get there. At worst, we will go
days without seeing the people that are supposed to care for and
educate the children. Then it becomes a zoo with children walking
on ledges outside, leaning on patched screens three stories above the
pavement, or just beating each others heads on the stone floor. It
got so bad that we had to register complaints. Whether or not we
were the catalyst, some of the staff got replaced by young girls who
have impressed us in their first month on the job. Let me
introduce you to some of the children. Cristian is a 13 year-old that comes
from a very poor family in Arges. He was unable to understand
oral communication because he couldn't tell the difference in sounds
between letters, especially 'b' and 'p'. He was embarrassed to
be called upon to read because he couldn't. The kids would make
fun of him so he was very inhibited, compounding his problem.
After 5 months of working with Aurelia, he was able to read and write.
His reading comprehension is good now. He who couldn't even
hold a pen when Aurelia started working with him began taking dictation!
He has now returned to his family. Please pray that he will continue to
progress. The children are growing and Aurelia is having a
great time teaching.
Rodica (below) was 6 years old when
we found her several years ago. As I was doing a regular trip down the
dark unlighted hall of the hospital, there was Rodica, alone, standing on the black and grey
stone floor, gazing half at the green and white tiled walls and half
at the intervening space.
"What's your name?" I asked.
Without replying, she punched me.
"Why did you do that?" I asked.
Another punch was her reply.
It was a good 5 minutes before I got her to say anything. That same day
I learned that she didn't know a single color.
If
you asked her the color of anything, she said, "verde". Rodica came from a Bucuresti orphanage, where she
was totally neglected. She learned that hitting and misbehaving would
get her the attention for which she thirsted. In fact, her 10
year-old sister was so violent that last year, she knocked another child
out with a wood plank that she found somewhere. She was soon
kicked out of the hospital. But Rodica stayed, each day
greeting us with a slug to the legs.
She was a bright girl and
quickly learned 16colors. She had an attention span
as short as her temper, but she was soon tamed by our affection. Not
long after that, she had learned to count and her alphabet. By the time
she entered school, she was nearly normal. She is now learning to
multiply. Best of all for us, her punching has been replaced with
warm hugging.
Spiritually, she had a warm heart for God also. Her behavior has
improved very much and she is generous with the clothes and toys we give
her. Aurelia asked her, "Why do you let all the other girls wear your
clothes?" She replied, "Well you taught us to share with others." She
became one of the most eager and capable quoters of Bible verses. The
scars of orphanage life remain with her. She is still very jealous of
attention and when Aurelia is working with someone else, she always
wants to return to the center of attention.
With Rodica and all the
children, we hope to introduce them to
a vital relationship with the Lord. On June 29, Ionela had a heavy heart to know the
Lord. She wanted to know if God could forgive her grandmother for
practicing witchcraft. After we responded
affirmatively, she
asked,
"Can God forgive me and love me?" I asked Amanda to chat with her
as we continued the service with the other children. After about
30 minutes of chatting in her broken English, Ionela prayed to follow Christ.
This is only one child, but it is one step towards the revival
that needs to occur in Romania so that the civilization can attain its
God-given potential.
Please pray that God
would provide the people to continue this work.
As with TB, Romania has the largest pediatric AIDS population in
Europe, more than all the rest of Europe combined.
Our AIDS work is composed of two portions: The Romanian portion
of HIVAnonymous.com
and our sponsorship of the work of Erika Tonko with children in
Timisoara who are HIV positive.
The site continued to
grow and serve more people. We saw a distinct growth in unique
visitors this year as you can see in the graph to the right. We
estimate that we are in the top 0.1% of Romanian AIDS sites.
How do I participate in this work?
Print a donation slip.
In November, Mission Network
News in the US, broadcast a segment on Erika's work.
Unfortunately, they don't name Erika and the person from
Greater Europe Mission (GEM) claimed it as solely their work. I
wrote to the broadcaster but they don't seem to want to correct the
error. (In reality, GEM is affiliated with the foundation
providing daily supervision for Erika, so they do have a right to
claim some part of the work.)
Erika continued working at two hospitals, Louis Turcan and Victor
Babes. She has approximately 10 children to whom she ministers
each day, plus family members. Her degree in social work is put to
good use as she does her best to bring God's Word, song, and comfort to
these suffering children. We have been proud to sponsor her work.
You can read a copy of Erika's February Report by clicking here.
Due to financial and personnel constraints, Go Ye
Fellowshp is likely to pull out of this work this year. Please
pray that God's will be done here.
How do I participate in this work?
Print a donation slip.
Romanians are struggling for their spiritual identity.
They are moving from communism to capitalism, from absence of
pornography, drugs, and MTV to free market economy where everything is
permitted, from superstition to science, from the shadow of atheistic
USSR to the shadow of a liberal and secular Europe.
In Romania, our community education programs for teens and adolescents
include Bible study and prayer groups, English lessons, and the iBiblioteca Christian library.
The situation in Romania
The Romanian economy continues to struggle but it has probably seen the
bottom of its depression. Missionary friends of mine write,
'We recently came across an article stating that there are 50% more
people on pensions or disability than there are workers! Many
people have gotten pensions for "disabilities" such as varicose
veins or crossed eyes. Retirement age was 55. Somebody years ago
decided that this was a good way to keep down unemployment. The
demographics and the strain on the economy from this is tremendous.'
We are working to develop the social capital of the country with
English lessons and Bible-based character development. Let me give
you an example of a recent get together with the kids.
"What do you do that makes people angry?" I asked the newly
spiritually reborn children in our Bible story time. This led to a
discussion on what sin looks like in their culture.
"I hit my sister," volunteers one. "I curse," confesses
another. "I call my brother 'stupid'." These are some of the
things they came up with and they decided to work on renouncing
them.
Having the kids define sin is within their culture is what we were
taught in the Perspectives
class.
It is so important to
avoid putting requirements on them that make no sense in their
culture (like the headcover groups do) as well as to ensure that you
help them avoid sins that really disrupt the culture like is
typical for Repenters.
I guided them to hold each other accountable. Whoever was
able to go a day without committing their pet sin got a point in the
next session's competition. (This is something that perhaps
America could use. Last year, with Enron hogging the
headlines, ethics was the rage. Now, morality seems long since
forgotten, conveniently dwarfed by the gross offenses of a dictator
half a world away. As Christians, however, we are not to compare
ourselves to others to make us feel better. We are not to take
comfort in that we are better than our neighbor but whether we are
better than we were last month.)
Each of our classes finds the kids trying to respond to as many
questions as possible. There is screaming, chearing, laughing and
shouting. To the untrained eye, you wouldn't imagine that we
are having Bible story time. Every point counts towards the
special prize like a seashell from North Carolina or a candy.
They are so incredibly interested in getting together that they are
begging to come every day. If I only had the time... In
addition to Bible story night we have English lessons with the Bible,
game night, and Aurelia even taught practical life-training (hygiene,
manners etc.) These are with the adolescents. Then, there
are the teens!!
iBiblioteca grew to over 900 articles during the year. A few of
these are written by myself, but virtually all of them are links to
articles written by some of the most famous Romanian theologians. I
often field questions from visitors. Because of my background in
research, I know better than to give my opinions. Instead, I refer to
published works to provide answers for these seeking individuals.
As you can see from the graph on the right, for the time
which data has been collected, there has been a rise in the amount of
people to whom we minister. The two months of June and July were
when our server was down. In July we found a new provider who is a
professional and this is perhaps one reason why we have more visibility.
In fact, by the end of September, we were the #1 site on the major
search engines for the following topics: spiritual
growth, and Bible
in Romanian. We are in the top twenty in many topics, including
prayer and salvation. We have reason to believe that we are in the
top 0.2% of Romanian Christian sites.
Iustin has been partnering with me in this work and we have been able
to help him get computer trained and to afford a computer. He will
be increasing his role in our Internet work.
Please pray that God's blessing continues upon our
work.
The Italian Evangelical church is mostlyintroverted with
little orientation towards a vision to reach the world for Christ.
They consider Italy in need of receiving missionaries, not of sending
them.
This year, we continued development of the Bridge of
Grace from Italy to Romania. We want to motivate
Italians to reach out to Romanians. This would serve two purposes.
Italians need to expand their idea of the international Church and
Romanians need evangelism and discipleship from people closer to their own culture and who
have walked in their shoes. For more about this bridge, click here.
As is explained in the linked report, this Bridge of
Grace is similar to the one my boss is building between Norway and
Turkey and to one that the MacTavish's are building between Spain and
Romania. So, we are not walking untrod ground but we have some
great resources with people with whom we have had a long-term
relationship.
For instance, as I wrote in
the section about Valea Iasului Hospital above, Ionela's grandmother
fits into the area that Paul G. Hiebert of
Trinity Evangelical Divinity School calls the "excluded middle".
From a practical standpoint, Protestants tend to believe in a
physical world and a spiritual world, the latter being a domain in which
God is virtually the only active agent. If pointedly asked, we
say we believe demons and angels, but do not usually recognize their
activities.
This arose "in the 17th and
18th Centuries with the growing acceptance of a Platonic dualism and of
a science based on materialistic naturalism.... The result,
Lesslie Newbigin has argued, is that Western Christian missions have
been one of the greatest secularizing forces in history." (emphasis
mine) The Orthodox and Catholics see a world with many more
messengers and active agents. Unfortunately, they believe that
these are saints while the Bible tells of many stories where angels
interceded.
Through witches, ego-centered
humans "seek to control supernatural powers through rituals and formulas
to achieve their own personal desires." (ibid) The local
evanghelica libera pastor puts a "Christian" twist on it, telling
people that if your car doesn't start, you'd better determine for what
sin God is punishing you. The implication is that you do what he
tells you to do so that a deity will bless you with a car that starts.
Teaching people that God can be controlled through our actions
glorifies self, not our Father.
The Italians believers know
what it is like to escape the Roman Catholic saints orientation.
Weekly, they have to deal with people who consult witches, since
the average Italian spends an astounding amount of money to seers.
They emerged from Mussolini's dictatorship and poverty decades
before Romania dealt with Ceaucescu. They spent decades cleaning
up their acts to overcome a reputation for immorality almost as bad
as Romania's. Their social
and family-oriented cultures are similar as is their language and
their economic
and dictatorial histories.
The Casa Biblica bookstore continued to prosper. We get
approximately 5 customers a day.
Please pray that God's blessing continues upon our
work.
The Internet is receiving ever increasing levels of travellers.
Everything is available to the Romanians and Italians in their
maiden voyage into hyperspace: pornography, cults, the occult,
truth and urban legends. We see the need to present ultimate
Truth, Jesus Christ.
Here is an overview of our ministry:
Evangelism/Discipleship
Missionary Assistance
AIDS
Liv-n-LetLiv.net
informs anglophiles of the spiritual and cultural situation among the
youth of Romania and Italy.
Integrity
InterNetwork helps missionaries in Romania to find partners
that are ecumenical and ethical, and a way to reconcile differences. Best
Practices Guide helps missionaries in Romania to share what they have
learned in resolving logistical problems.
Our partners and the
founders of HIV Anonymous
maintain this site.
HIV Anonim is
intended to provide a Christian answer to the temptations that Romanian
youth feel to engage in promiscuous lifestyles that damage them
spiritually, psychologically and physically. We provide
information, news, and a forum where they can encourage each other to
resist temptation.
Interactive
gospel presentation under construction
Possible
future expansion of HIV Anonymous.
This year, I myself got trained so that I can more
effectively train others. My first week of 2003 was at a Perspectives "intensive" course.
One of the main thrusts of the course is to break down barriers
between denominations and rally all to reach the world for Christ.
This was already our work in Romania. We are trying to
build bridges between all believers and help non-believers to establish
a relationship with God.
In contrast, there are many legalistic fundamentalist groups called
Repenters,
what Perspectives would call likely a small socio-peoples, composed
of 3-4% of the population. Each of them usually distinguishes
their group as the "true" church and won't cooperate with the majority
of believers. They have their own traditions and cultures which
are usually rather foreign to most Romanians. They usually require
people to become a part of their culture in order to be accepted as a
brother or sister in Christ. Thus, they build what we call
"cultural barriers" between people and God. Instead of bridges,
they are digging canyons. I don't write this because we have
anything against them, but to outline a difference in perspectives.
Since I am from a scientific background, I put great stock in
precedence. If my idea is different from the bulk of the
historical church and, even worse, I am unbending in asserting that
belief on others, I had better have a mass of verses to back me up and
some valid reason why few of the millions of saints before me didn't
think of it. Otherwise, I am in great danger of becoming a cult.
To you, this may sound like clear common sense. But
there are some missionaries and pastors, not to mention laity, who
insist that their Repenter 4% is "God's movement in Romania." We
had better compare what we understand of that Word with the assent of
the saints, and not create a fracture and battles within the Body which
germinate from peculiarities in our logical processes.
As you know, morality has been a keyword for us and this
ministry. Not long ago media seemed to "get religion" and
morality got some positive reviews. Time magazine selected
the three female whistleblowers, Sherron Watkins of Enron, Coleen
Rowley of the FBI and Cynthia Cooper of WorldCom, for their Persons of the Year
Now, I don't presume to count myself equal to these brave
women, but I noticed many common traits. Two out of three of them
expressed a faith in Jesus Christ. All were overachievers in their
youth. Rowley discovered a lack of interest in ethics while
working for the government just like I did at
the University of Michigan. So, I felt good seeing that there
are others out there getting recognized for holding the straight
line.
Gregory "Boyd suggests that Western worldview assumptions
may have turned the Church away from the mission of fighting evil to a
practice of merely explaining evil." (Hawthorne
S.) Thus, taking a stand for integrity with a society like the
Integrity InterNetwork puts you at odds with the Western Christian
worldview and doesn't make you any points with your fellow missionaries.
The Integrity InterNetwork is designed to address the atrocious
ethics of many people in organized religion in Romania. It was
established with certain criteria. First, they must agree to
follow Jesus Christ as the Lord of their lives. Secondly, they
must accept that the Body of Christ includes believers in all
denominations, including Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant. To
read our goals, click on the banner above.
This year, we didn't add many members but we did resolve
some misunderstandings and bring reconcilliation to some missionaries.
The Best Practices guide is on the Internet at www.Liv-n-LetLiv.net/howdoyou.html
. Four WebPages take some of the mystery out of some
of the legal aspects of working in Romania.
This year, an article I co-authored about child
development was published in a Romanian Christian woman's magazine.
It was thrilling to minister in that way.
This year, general ministry support rose to a record
high. This was vital to the continuing of our work since I am now
married, planning to move to western Europe and to start a family as per God's
callling.
The
vEmporium came to age this year and became the #2 site on Google for
"inexpensive gifts". We started selling cosmetics on the site as
well. If you are interested, click on the banner above. Returning
the blessings
Through my weekly Markets Outlook
publication, readers have been blessed to have 5 consecutive
years where they have outperformed the stock market, both in rising and
falling markets. Doing our small part of blessing the
economy and citizens of the United States in time of war and
economic hardship was a blessing to us as well.
If one figures that the
readers have at least $10,000 invested, I've been able to bless them as
much as this ministry has been blessed by our donors. This is a way I bring blessing to my donors
so that they can bring blessings to the needy. If you are an
investor, I welcome you to take advantage of this. Let me know
if you are interested in receiving it for a free-will donation.
Discussion. Support for the work
continued to diversify, meaning that we are less dependent on a few
donors. This should continue.
Last year, we
were short on the year-end giving and the number of donors fell. I
don't know why this occured. This year, we should recover some of
that loss.
A negative turn of events was seeing the support from outside the US
decrease. The only support came from purchases of items from the
vEmporium and this money went right to the people who created the items.
Thus, we received no support from people outside the US. A
part of this might be that the European economy fell into a recession.
Since wages in Europe were already lower than those in the US,
disposable income declined much more. Another reason could have
been that we shifted our focus more towards ministering in Italy, so
there was a perception that our ministry to the poor and orphaned in
Romania would be decreasing.
One event that touched my heart was when a little poor boy named Bogdan
offered to donate 5000 lei (about 15 cents) to us. He had been in
the English lessons and gave his life to Jesus. I might have been
able to handle the situation better but I was so shocked and touched
that I just thanked him and declined.
DONOR DIVERSITY
Diversity
CY
1997
CY
1998
CY
1999
CY
2000
CY
2001
CY 2002
CY
2003 (Projected)
Number
of donors (excluding special projects)
5
33
43
56
57
40
45
Percentage
from 4 largest donors
100
43
37
36
35
36
34
Percentage from outside USA
0
3
6
3
4
2
1
PERSONNEL
FY 1998
FY 1999
FY 2000
FY 2001
FY 2002
FY 2003
Missionaries Supported
1
2
3
2
3
3
Short-term or part-time missionary-months
3
9
19
43
4
11
Total missionary-months
15
33
55
67
40
47
Year-to-year Increase
+120%
+67%
+22%
-40%
+17%
Annual turnover in personnel
0
0
0
20%
0
0
Discussion.
We had two people to visit us as short-time
missionaries at Valea Iasului.
Rathna was on Curtea de Arges TV in October as he has been
bringing music to the hearts of Romanians singing on the radio,
at weddings and in restaurants. One of the things I wanted to do
was to find something that
interested him so that he could get serious about his time as a
volunteer. Children, singing, English lessons, Bible studies,
nothing seemed to interest him for long. He's a young 20-something
on his first trip out of his country, so I just ended up letting him
play tourist.
After the end of the fiscal year, as of this writing, we have had to
terminate the support of Erika's work. Due to our move to Italy
and the financial commitments required, it is likely that we will likely
no longer be able to support another worker. Plus, our not having
control of her activities would put in question the accountability for
your support. Thus, turnover will increase and total
missionary-months are likely to decrease next year.
With the caveat of James 4:13ff, we
have the following expectations for our work in the three countries. May
God grant us the grace to bless Him in whatever ministry He puts us.
Please pray for those who direct us at Go Ye, that God's will is
clear to them, as we submit to our authorities.
Here are the prayer requests I have
for you. Please beseech the Lord on our behalf.
Italy
The Casa Biblica will continue
to serve Italians who are searching for and following the Lord.
Early in the fiscal year, I plan
to publish a series of articles on Liv-n-LetLiv.net that should help
missionaries to understand the Italian culture.
It seems likely that I will get my visa.
Aurelia's will come later. The American embassy says that
it should not be hard to get hers once mine is in hand. We will
see. Please pray that both these occur.
I have received a
request to work at a university which will provide opportunities to
reach students for Christ but will provide no funding. This will
give me the legitimacy that missionaries need in the minds of the
students. The simple missionary is looked upon as an oddity when
he comes to a country that is already "Christian".This is the biggest
obstacle right now. Please pray for more support.
Germany
I have a visa and a vision is taking form.
We plan to be establishing a ministry to refugees that will serve
as a training ground for Italians interested in missions. We
should be able to learn from my boss who does the same thing in
Augsburg. Please pray that we get established and can keep
supervisors focused on our mission.
Pray for us in our attempts to motivate to
missions.
Romania
The iBiblioteca should continue to grow in its service
to Romanians who are searching for and following the Lord.
An article that I co-authored about emotional
intelligence in children should be published.
The
Integrity InterNetwork will continue to serve as a forum for Christians
to resolve issues and encourage ethical conduct.
The vEmporium should continue to grow and benefit the
needy Romanians
HIV Anonim will continue to educate and encourage
youth who want to avoid sexually transmitted diseases and who suffer
from AIDS. We hope to see support groups form with the same
goals.
There are people from around the world who are
presently praying about coming to work here short-term and long-term.
May God guide them in their plans.
Eventually, I hope to be bringing Italians to Romania
and complete the Bridge of Grace. The door to our apartment (left)
should continue to welcome missionaries and students for years to
come.
The obstacle to growth here
right now are resources, human and financial. Please
pray.
2004 will have its challenges
and opportunities. Through God we can make the best of both.
Aurelia, Erika, Iustin, and I join all the children in thanking you for
your participation in this ministry. Paul says in Philippians
1:7 "In the defense and confirmation of the gospel, you all are
partakers of grace with me." Those who participate in our work,
and even more those who mobilize others to participate share a vital
part in fulfilling God's purpose around the world. It
is an exciting era.
In general, the truth of the Bible is pragmatic. Its viability
can be evaluated by testing its truth in the real world. I don't
claim every promise made in the Bible and apply it as my own. We
see that Jesus and Job had many occasions where righteousness went
unrewarded in the physical world. That is true in our lives also.
I don't believe that God can be manipulated to act as we want Him
to by our doing what He wants us to. We must do everything God
wants even if He doesn't do everything we want.
Avoid extremes
Lack of pragmatism in faith leads to a theoretical Christianity and an
unchanged life. David Landes,
economist from Harvard, would say that pragmatism separates the First
and Third Worlds. Not applying knowledge to life results in lost
opportunities and poverty.
"One can be utterly besotted with ideas, yet fail all the more readily
to make use of them in the right way. In some respects, the
emergence in the 20th century of an entire class of individuals who deal
professionally in ideas--and the more ideas the merrier--has only
deepened the problem." (McClay, op cit) If I were to ever
lead a ministry, I would choose a missionary who had a good handle of
the basics that he puts in practice over a theological grad who keeps it
all theoretical and can tell you why every other type of Christian but
his own is "nutty". As William James writes, "What difference
would it practically make to any one if this notion rather than that
notion were true? If no practical difference whatever can be
traced, then...all dispute is idle." (Pragmatism. 1907)
One instance of where non-essential and non-practical issues of faith
produce division, arguments, stress, and unhappiness is in the
discussion of original sin.
The Dallas graduate friend got bent out of shape when I told him
that for adults, original sin
is a moot issue. In God's eyes, the sins that each of us as
individuals have committed greatly outweigh a single man's biting of a
forbidden fruit. This man wanted to waste a lot of time and energy
proving to me the importance of Adam's sin on my salvation. I told
him that if he thought that he would have fared any better than Adam, or
that if it weren't for Adam he would make it into Heaven on his own
goodness, he has a distorted view of himself.
Most
missionaries and churches are preaching a works-based or
knowledge-based salvation. The former is overly pragmatic and the
latter is under pragmatic and what James calls demonic. Read my
article on the subject by clicking here. Chuck Colson agrees with me on the serious
problems of seeing holiness as only keeping rules.
"First, it limits the
scope of true biblical holiness, which must affect every aspect of our
lives.
"Second, even though the rules may be biblically based, we often end
up obeying the rules rather than obeying God; concern for the letter of
the law can cause us to lose its spirit.
"Third, emphasis on rule-keeping deludes us into thinking we can be
holy through our efforts. But there can be no holiness apart from
the work of the Holy Spirit--in quickening us through the conviction of
sin and bringing us by grace to Christ, and in sanctifying us--for it
is grace that causes us to even want to be holy.
"And finally, our pious efforts can become ego-gratifying, as if holy
living were some kind of spiritual beauty contest. Such self-centered
spirituality in turn leads to self-righteousness--the very opposite of
the selflessness of true holiness."
Aurelia and her sister
noted the difference in levels of pragmatism on our last trip to
Moldova. Romanians are "more cultured" because they learn a great
deal about things they will never use. (And we at Lehigh lamented the inutility of some
of our classes!) They have a much broader education but are less
practical. Tocqueville complained of our lack of philosophical
education. America, he said, was where "the precepts of Descartes
are least studied and best applied." Walt Whitman, Matthew Arnold,
Sinclair Lewis, George Steiner and many other intellectuals complained,
"America is a philistine society, interested only in the arts of
self-aggrandizement and enhanced material well-being, reflexively
anti-intellectual, utterly lacking in the resources needed to support
the high and disinterested curiosity that is the stuff of genuine
cultural achievement."(McClay, op cit)
"So breathtaking a statement formulates on a national scale the
powerful, if largely informal, everyday American social taboo against
discussing either religion or politics in public. The taboo makes
for a considerable measure of social peace, but it would be hard to
imagine a deeper devaluation of the role of ideas." (ibid)
Have the right focus
This brings up another subject. In our public discussion of
religion, in our teaching of a pragmatic faith, we want to be
missionaries for Christ not missionaries for American culture,
materialism, etc. As missionaries in a foreign land, we must not
incorporate cultural issues like baseball and apple pie in what we
portray as Biblical. Instead, we must teach the Bible and listen
to understand the people we serve.
“Does the gospel we proclaim present
people with other threats that are unnecessary, because it calls for
the abolition of harmless customs or appears destructive of national
art, architecture, music, and festivals, or because we who share it are
culture-proud and culture-blind?” (ibid) Taking a note from the typical missionary's
loathing of pictures of Jesus, Mary, and the saints, many Romanian
converts think that they must destroy historical works of religious art
in order to become Christians. This is part of the Romanian
"canyon", a term that Steven Hawthorne uses in Perspectives: A
Reader.
“Superficial matters such as diet,
dress, music, family names or any number of other peripheral matters
are not what the gospel is all about... No people should reject Christ
because of a false impression that He is calling them to commit cultural
suicide by abandoning and divorcing themselves from their own
people. On the other hand, no 'cheap grace' should be broadcast such
as an easy, quick conversion.” (Op cit, p. 121.)
I will try to apply
Jacob Loewen's principle of never answering directly "any questions
from the new Christians such as, 'What should we do?' Instead, he
would ask them, 'What is the Holy Spirit showing you?'" This not
only gets them to have an individual relationship with God but also
develops an ownership interest in their lives and a sense of
responsibility for their own decisions. For instance, this week we
discussed what shows "egoism" to your classmates. Each of them
chose the one that is the biggest problem for them and are to report
back in two day how they improved. Additionally, the international
team that is germinating should enable us to root out many cultural
sins.
"Some of us refuse to identify with
the people we claim to be serving. We remain ourselves, and do not
become like them. We stay aloof. We hold on desperately to our own
cultural inheritance in the mistaken notion that it is an
indispensable part of our identity. We are unwilling to let it go.
Not only do we maintain our own cultural practices with fierce
tenacity, but we treat the cultural inheritance of the land of our
adoption without the respect it deserves. We thus practice a double
kind of cultural imperialism, imposing our own culture on others and
despising theirs. But this was not the way of Christ, who emptied
himself of his glory and humbled himself to serve." --Stott JRW. (The Bible in World Evangelism)
Emphasis should be on ethics and love. Italy has changed
much due to increasing influence of the Protestant north. In
Romania, stories are told about how people used to tape more corn on
cornstalks for Ceaucescu's visits around Romania. Italy of the
1960's is similar to Romania 40 years later. As my intellectual
and spiritual partners Ron and Brandi Bates write, 'As many scholars
within the social capital movement have pointed out, Christians in
Northern Europe managed to take seriously the ethical implications of
the Christmas story, and saw it as a religious duty to treat with
honesty and respect the "other" because all humans are equal under
God.' This was the Protestant Reformation that, according
to David Landes in Poverty and Wealth
of Nations was the reason for the advancement of Protestant
countries with respect to those of other religions. When northern
European concepts entered Italy through the north, it made it the most
productive region of Europe. In our experience with Africans,
Asians and eastern Europeans, lack of ethics is common to all
third-world countries. During game nights with Risk and Management, we had to put cheaters
penalties on our Indian and Romanian brothers to keep them honest
while this has not been a problem with Americans or former Soviets.
This is not a matter of race but of culture.
In Romania, where the Protestant Revolution ideas have evaded Orthodox,
Catholic, and Repenter groups, trust and ethical behavior have been
little experienced--and thus the self-discipline required is not
valued. Their worldview that personal gain is by crafty forms of
deceit and theft or at best, luck rarely by hard work, cooperation,
and strategy. The Romania word for a "smart" or a
"deceptive" person is one word, "/shmecker/". (In the communist
era, only the smart were able to swindle without getting caught.)
Aurelia said that one neighbor told her, "Romanians are among
the most smecher people in the
world--who produces the best Internet hackers???!" The result is a
reduction in their social or economic productivity. (For more
about social capital, read Robert Putnam's Bowling Alone.)
Romania needs to learn to develop trustworthiness as Italy did, and I
hope to team up with our Italian brothers in Christ in order to train
them.
"Even good changes, if they are
introduced in the wrong way can lead to cultural disequilibrium and
demoralization. Among the Ibibio people of southern Nigeria the
message of God's gracious forgiveness resulted in may people turning to
the Christian God because He was seen as much more lenient than their
traditional god. But the converts saw no need to be righteous,
since they believed God would always forgive them, whatever they
did." (Kraft CH.)
So, to be a good middlebrow pragmatic, we must focus on the inner
character of a man, not on externals that are culturally dependent.
We must put aside materialism to persue God.
Poor children get poorer
education (
Many of the children
who remain in the hospital have good reason to feel fortunate and
unfortunate at the same time. They are fortunate to have our
donors supporting them and people like Amanda (a short-term missionary)
visiting them. They are fortunate to not be among the
thousands on the streets. However, they have the misfortune of
being in a place where they are unsupervised most of the summer.
"What's your name?" I asked. 
"Can God forgive me and love me?" I asked Amanda to chat with her
as we continued the service with the other children. After about
30 minutes of chatting in her broken English, 
The site continued to
grow and serve more people. We saw a distinct growth in unique
visitors this year as you can see in the graph to the right. We
estimate that we are in the top 0.1% of Romanian AIDS sites.
"What do you do that makes people angry?" I asked the newly
spiritually reborn children in our Bible story time. This led to a
discussion on what sin looks like in their culture.
Italians to reach out to Romanians. This would serve two purposes.
Italians need to expand their idea of the international Church and
Romanians need evangelism and discipleship from people 
This year, I myself got trained so that I can more
effectively train others. My first week of 2003 was at a 
Italy
Germany
