After the evangelistic ski camp in February we continued to develop friendships with the nonbelievers who were open to meet with us. We had a few informal meetings and Remember Ski Camp and we started an evangelistic Bible study. I continued to meet weekly with Cosmina, the Philosophy student, who attended the camp and was fascinated with the love, openness, authenticity she saw in the midst of our Christian community. We have had many good discussions about God when I've read to her passages from the Bible. But it's so obvious that apart from a miracle of God she won't depart the philosophical ideas she dives into every day. I know this is true of every non-Christian but I think it's more obvious with the philosophy students.

This year Easter is coming sooner than other years, therefore we've already planned the evangelistic Easter Celebration on the 30th of March. We've put posters in the facilties and given out flyers for the event. The Easter program will be filled with many songs about the death of Jesus Christ, a Gospel presentation given out by a Romanian pastor and a personal testimony. We have also gone four times into the student dorms with questionnaires about Easter, which help us start evangelistic discussions and talk to the students about the only true God. It's my highest pleasure and joy to share the Gospel with them and I am so glad to see that they are so open to talk to us about spiritual matters. At the same time, I was very sad to see that the belief of evolution is increasing very much in their world-view, together with relativism that was already prevalent among them. I wonder what can be worse than that!? In my discussions with them I felt like I encountered the Great Chinese Wall. They are irrational, inconsequent and illogical in their thinking and they don't see it when evidence is shown to them. The darkness and ignorance of the people in the world makes me have a sense of helplessness when I think that there are so few workers in the bountiful harvest of the world. One of the students whom I talked to last week told me after I shared the Gospel with him, "I've never heard these things in my life!! Why don't the priests tell us these things?".

In the student dorms I met many different students. A few were very Orthodox, but most of them were evolutionist and atheist in their thinking. One evening I had a long discussion with two science students, a young man studying Paleontology and his girlfriend studying Geodesy. Mihai and Adriana are very intelligent and know a lot of science. We had a long talk about various things as I shared the Gospel with them. Toward the end of the discussion Mihai was really interested to meet again and talk about these things. So we exchanged e-mail addresses and phone numbers and got together the next evening in a restaurant in down-town Bucharest. I also brought with me my colleague Ruxi and a Christian young man, Dan, to help out with the discussion. Mihai was so passionate about fossils and dinosaurs that he even brought with him his fine drawings with different dinosaurs and reptiles! He knew all the complicated names of the dinosaurs and the legends around them, and so on. It was quite impressive! Still it was so sad to see that his world-view was so centered and directed by evolutionary theory that he wouldn't even consider it only as a theory. His whole thinking was shaped by evolution, and it was interesting to see him connect every new peice of info he had as reliable bits in the evolutionary process, even though it was obviously only pure speculation. He believed evolution is a scientific fact and that he could talk for hours about the 'proofs' and motives to consider evolution as a science not a theory. He and his girlfriend still think that God is out there, but not too much involved in our world because they only acknowledge His presence in some dark periods of their lives. During our discussion we mostly talked about evolution and Christianity. We challenged them to consider knowing God through Jesus Christ by reading the Bible, not merely through science. Their quest for God was only through science. At some point Ruxi told them that through creation we can know some things about God, but we can never know His Person. God came to planet Earth to make Himself known to us in Jesus Christ. What an incredible action for people like us who never deserve anything! "Do you want to know this Jesus Christ?", asked Ruxi, and Mihai answered immediately, "No!" I want to stay with science; it's enough for me." Quite sad. We will still try to keep in touch with them, maybe meet again for a discussion if they are open to that. This was one of the stories that I encountered during my recent discussions with the students in the dorms. In a way they are all the same, sinners in deep darkness and ignorance, in a world that is becoming darker and darker every day, with less of the 'light of the world' that Christians should bring in their midst. Let us pray that God raises up more workers to His fields, more Christians that bring the Light in this world.

The student group in Brasov invited us to their motivational conference, March 12-14. Ruxi and I had a wonderful time there as we were very glad to see among them a few people who seriously seek the Lord and have a desire to witness among their colleagues. There were a few non-Christians in the camp and I got to talk with one of them. Claudiu is Catholic and he started to come to the student group and the evangelical churches in Brasov two years ago. He told me he comes because of the atmosphere and the people who are serious about spiritual matters. I asked him how does a person go to heaven, and he gave me the Catholic answer ... by doing good deeds. He probably heard the Gospel many times, but he still doesn't understand it. I shared with him what I believe that there are the doctrinal flaws of the Catholic church. Then I told him the Gospel. He asked me, "then where is our merit?" He was surprised to hear that salvation is based only on the merit of Jesus Christ.

They invited a pastor, Corin, to have the main messages of the conference, and I was very impressed with the reformed view of his teaching!! That is very rare in Romania! He taught us about God's will, what it is, how to find it, about spiritual gifts, because the theme of the camp was "Discovering Your Calling". At lunch time I told the pastor I've never heard a Romanian pastor teaching things like that in my whole life. Praise the Lord for such sound teaching! The last day of the conference the students asked Ruxi and I to share some thoughts with them. I had a burden to tell them about 2 Corinthians 13:5, "test yourself to see if you are in the faith..."