In this past month many churches in Bucharest were involved in a project called "The National Campaign of Reading the Bible".The pastor whose church initiated this project had a wonderful testimony, which encouraged many other believers to join this outreach. Their team started reading the Bible with a non-Christian family. Then this family told the pastor, "please come back, we would like to continue reading the Bible with you",  and at the next meetings these people invited their friends and neighbors, so that this group reached 25 people!

This is so amazing and I believe it is the Lord's work, since usually most Romanians are so reluctant in reading the Bible, especially the "evangelical" Bible.

So in this outreach we have been doing questionnaires about the Bible, and then encouraged the people interviewed to read the Bible and even meet with others to read the Bible together. I had several good conversations about the gospel, and two of them were especially really encouraging for me. The first one was a very good conversation with a 11 year old boy that made me greatly rejoice. He stopped at our Bible table and I asked him if he had read from the Bible. He told me that his grandmother used to read to him when he was younger. It seemed to me that he was interested in spiritual things, even though his knowledge was more than anything about the saints he studied in the religion class at school. I was very surprised when he said, "I have waited for the Jesus films they used to have on TV for Easter, but this year they did not show them. In the past years I used to watch them even though they were late at night." We talked for a long time, and I shared the gospel with him. He listened very carefully and in the end I gave him a book with Bible stories for children. He was very happy to receive the book. Then he went home to take the bread he had bought, but after a while he came back and talked more to a guy from our team.

I also had another encouraging conversation with an elderly lady. I was talking to somebody else when I saw her looking at us and our Bible table, seemingly interested.  I looked around for someone who was free to talk to her, but I realized that all of our team were involved in conversations with people. I did not know what to do and eventually she left. But she came back, and this time I was free and started talking to her. Although she was in a big hurry, she wanted to listen to the gospel. She became more and more interested and told me, "please quickly tell me the essentials, I need to hurry but I really want to hear it." So I explained the gospel to her and she asked me several questions about Mary. I told her that Jesus is the only Mediator between God and man, and I showed her the verse in I Timothy 2:5. I told her that praying to Mary or the saints is actually saying that the work of the Son of God on the cross on our behalf is not enough. She took an orthodox Bible and seemed very decided to read and investigate more. She told me that one of her sons was telling her the exact same things that I was sharing with her.

While going with the small Christian literature table in the dorms we also had several encouraging situations. One day we went to new dorms, and because several times we have been kicked out of those dorms while doing questionnaires, we decided to put the table on the sidewalk. It was very close to the road, and right next to us on the road there were several buses which stopped for a little while because it was a traffic jam. The driver from one of the buses came down and asked the guy at our table to give him a New Testament.Then, right when the bus was about to leave, a lady in front of the bus, seeing that the driver received one, started leaning outside the bus to get one for herself. The girl at our table leaned over the fence to hand it to her! That was quite an interesting and amusing scene!

Another day we were in the dorms, and a student stopped and we started a conversation. I realized he was thinking about spiritual things as he told me that he feared God and that sometimes he stopped doing something wrong because he feared God. Because we usually don't get these kind of answers from students, I kept sharing the gospel with him. While we were talking, another guy stopped and asked him, "are you an orthodox?" and he said, "yes." Then, the other replied, "don't talk to them, they are a cult." For a moment I was shocked and did not know what to say, but the guy I was speaking to told the other, "we have freedom here", so the second guy left and we continued our discussion.

We rejoice every time we have the opportunity to share the gospel and every time somebody stops and takes a New Testament. But we realize that their interest in that moment can be very fleeting, and they can forget everything they have heard and not even open the New Testament they received. That is why we pray. Please pray with us that the Lord would cause these seeds to grow. We know that only He can do it, and this is our hope. "The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the ground. He sleeps and rises night and day, and the seed sprouts and grows; he knows not how." Mark 4:26-27

Although the students started exams and are very busy studying right now, we organized a special night for girls where we invited a godly lady to share with us several things about being a godly wife and mother. I am afraid that many girls are very influenced by the ways of the world and do not have sound biblical teaching in those areas. To my surprise, 20 girls came to this meeting in my living room and I believe it was a very profitable time. I was so glad to see that the girls want to learn what the Bible teaches about being a godly wife and mother, and we hope to have these kind of meetings more often. Lately, I have been thinking about those verses in Titus 2: 3-4, "Older women likewise..... are to teach what is good, and so train the young women to love their husbands and children". May the Lord help us to teach the younger women what is good!