Well as you can see I am home from Romania and I have been a little bit under the weather but I have been rejoicing for all the wonderful things I got to see in Romania. As we’re just a couple of days before Thanksgiving, I can’t help but feel overwhelmed with a sense of appreciation for what God is doing in the world through people just like you, me and people in Romania, Cuba, China and other places in the world. These are people who don’t see themselves as special in any way but I get to see them being used by God in very powerful and special ways. It just makes one feel humble that you get a chance to meet such people all over the world. Indeed this year I have spent over a week in Mexico, a week in Cuba, a week in Zambia, a week in China and almost two weeks now in Romania. In addition I spent a week out in Hawaii training a whole group of future missionaries. So it’s been a tremendous year of travel for me and in every place I go I get to see what God is doing well among us. There’s lots of things to be critical about in the church today. There are lots of faults that we’re all generally aware of and yet in my work I get to see us at our best. That really makes me feel very privileged in the work that we do. I’m reminded of Psalm 16 in which we read that: “the Lord is my chosen portion and my cup. The lines have fallen for me in pleasant places. Indeed I have a beautiful inheritance. I bless the Lord who gives me counsel.” This is the Psalmist David just rejoicing in how things are working out, the good and evil, ups and downs, hardships and breakthroughs, but overall what God is weaving is a great story. I experience that and I hope that you are experiencing that as well. And in this Psalm, besides the Lord himself being his joy, his portion and his cup, he says this remarkable statement: “As for the saints in the land, they are the excellent ones in whom is all my delight.” So David also just took time to give thanks to God for knowing the people in his life that were responding to the call of God and walking faithfully with God in his time.
I get a chance to do that with you and with believers all over the world. So let me give you a kind of a travelog of my most recent trip to Romania. We started out at a very large conference called the Romanian Leadership Forum, R-O-L-F. I was invited to give a keynote address there which I did to about 415 or so leaders from all over Romania. These are pastors, journalists, counselors, bloggers, artists of various kinds, doctors–quite a group of leaders. I had the chance to speak to them about how the aroma of Christ goes out into the world as the fragrance of life and was able to again summon the Romanian leaders to continue to do that very thing, to be a gospel-driven person who is bringing life-saving works into their neighborhoods, whatever that looks like. In our case it’s pregnancy crisis intervention. To that end we spent almost two weeks in Romania going to about six different cities. So after Cluj, we went up to Oradea and there we had a chance to preach in two very large and significant churches, one of about six or seven hundred people and the other with about a thousand to twelve hundred people that were gathered there that night. I spoke to both of them about the biblical call to rescue the innocent based on Proverbs chapter 24. And again to show them how believers all over the world are starting to rescue the innocent, one mother and baby at a time so that we can get and embrace the work. While I was in Oradea, I had a very special opportunity to go and visit some of the people that were praying outside the abortion clinic with another organization called 40 Days for Life. You may not be aware of that organization but it’s a commendable pro-life organization and they’ve organized prayer once or twice a year outside of abortion clinics all over the world. So I went there to encourage them and to speak to the gathering, about a hundred and some people, as they concluded their 40 days of prayer and fasting outside these abortion clinics. So that was in Oradea. We then went to several other cities where we had a chance to teach our Four Questions to various groups of pastors and leaders from those communities. We had a couple of good meals. Probably the most surprising meal that we had was when my traveling companion and fellow PassionLife partner, Tony Eradia, ordered a simple hamburger and the size and shock that he had when he saw the size of that hamburger. It was one of the joyful, surprising moments of the trip and made us all laugh quite a bit. We went on to conclude our work not too far from the city of Bucharest where we were preaching and giving out books and fetal models. One of the exciting things that happened on this trip is that my book, Answering the Call, was translated into Romanian and published there so we were able to hand out quite a few of these books in Romanian, especially for pastors, medical doctors and people who want to take time to read through an issue. This was a great addition to our trip and a great blessing for us to have this now in Romanian.
So anyway we made our way home. Before we departed I had a chance to sit down with the missionary that organized this whole trip for us, Brad Hayes. He’s been in Romania many years now and I just thought I would share with you the conversation that I had with Brad as he summarized the trip.
John: We’ve just finished all of our work here in Romania and I want to take these last few moments to introduce Brad Hayes who is an American missionary. How many years have you been here?
Brad: 23.
John: And where’s home for you?
Brad: Well 23 years ago we moved here from Milwaukee, Wisconsin and we live in Calarasi, Romania.
John: So you might want to look that up on Google to see exactly where he lives but Brad basically organized our training through six different cities, the travel and you fed us well.
Brad: I’m glad.
John: And nobody got sick.
Brad: Nobody got sick.
John: We got to teach the Four Questions, answer people’s questions, preach and teach. So give me one or two of the takeaways that you saw over the last 12 days.
Brad: Well two things right off the top of my head are: number one for me personally being the helper, chauffeur and all that, I was John’s understudy and went to every session and I learned a lot. What I learned will help me a lot personally and help me to impart it to others. But then I think the thing I’m excited about that I saw happen in the last week and a half are a good core group of pastors, church members and different churches that we visited that are already very passionate about pro-life ministry. But then specifically to start with the Four Questions that John’s been teaching which are a very good way to start pro-life ministry.
John: Well we have people that have prayed us through this trip and I’m going to keep encouraging them to pray about Romania. It seems like Romania has had a rough history and yet their economy is growing. There’s a lot of signs that things are kind of breaking through and I know that you would want that to break through in the church and things to spread. There’s also pregnancy centers here in Romania that have been around for a long time and they want to be able to grow and they want to reproduce in other cities like the one that we’re in right now and so it’s an exciting time. And yet it just seems like we’re always going to have to work for it.
Brad: It’s worth it. It’s worth working for.
John: I just want to thank you for all the work you put into this.
Brad: My big pleasure.
John: We’ve got some generous people that support us and if people wanted to help you here in Romania, where would they go to make a contribution?
Brad: Thank you for saying that. If somebody wanted to help our organization here you can give at our website at www.handsofromania.org. You can give through PayPal and or just go to the giving section. We are Outstretched Hands of Romania but the website is Hands of Romania.
John: So we have made some contribution to our efforts here but I’m going to go home and give another one: to you and to Jaloo and from my heart to yours, just tremendous what you’ve done. 23 years of hard labor for the gospel takes faith and perseverance and it’s a thing to admire. I know that you’re probably in it all so deep but when you come in and you visit and you see what 23 years of faithful work can produce, it’s admirable. So thank you.
Brad: Thank you John. God bless you.
John: God bless you.
So let us give thanks for all that God is doing and let us press on together to do the great work that God has called us to do, as part of his enormous great work of redemption around the world. Thank you.