About a year and a half ago, our family walked through the field near camp and up to a road. We walked until the road y-ed. At the y was a familiar sight here in Moldova, a crucifix. We knew that beyond this crucifix on the road that goes to the right was a village we had heard of but never visited, Tabar?. On that day, we felt a tinge of sadness as the Holy Spirit led us to ask, “What about the people in Tabar?? How will they hear the Gospel?” While we were still living at camp, when the leaves were off the trees, we could look at our living room window and see that same road that goes to Tabar?, and again those questions rose into our consciences.
In Romans 10, Paul teaches that salvation is as simple as faith—confessing with the mouth and believing in the heart. There is no need to invent a way to go up to heaven or to get out of the grave—as if either were humanly possible—because Christ has already done both. God’s only requirement is faith in what Christ has already accomplished. But no one will believe in the Gospel if there is no one sent to preach the Gospel. One of the most remarkable developments in redemptive history is that God has chosen to use human messengers to proclaim his reign through the Lord Jesus Christ. Isaiah foresaw this great surprise and exclaimed, “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news” (Isa 52:7; quoted in Rom 10:15)!
Over the following months, when Tabar? would be brought to mind, we would follow the Lord’s instruction to “pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest” (Matt 9:38), and just as Jesus first instructed the disciples to pray in this manner and then answered their prayer by sending them out as the requested laborers, God is now sending us to proclaim his Gospel in unreached villages.
On January 10-15, about fifteen of our students will be returning to evangelize four unreached villages in the area. We will be handing out tracts door-to-door, visiting public schools, and, if the Lord opens the doors, preaching. In the days to come, please pray for the following villages that we will visit:
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Vatici (pronounced Vah-tich) - This is the location of our camp and school. We have a small church here, but it is spiritually sick. Many of the initial converts refused to be baptized and have since fallen away. Pray that God will re-establish his church here.
Tabar? (pronounced Ta-ba-ruh) - We only know of one disciple of Christ in this village, a young woman who was saved in our camp, but God has opened a door to the public school there. There is also a small Orthodox monastery in this village, a possible source of opposition.
Morozeni (pronounced Moor-oh-zen) - This is a somewhat larger village. We know little about it. As far as we can tell, no one has ever preached the Gospel there.
Di?cov? (pronounced Dish-co-vuh) - A small village near Morozeni which also has never been reached with the Gospel as far as we know.
Pray for Igor, Josh’s translator, who will be leading the group. Pray that God gives him wisdom and helps him to discern the leadership of the Holy Spirit.
Pray for the students also. Pray that God will guide them and give them confidence as they proclaim His Word to people both on a personal and on a public level. Josh, and if weather allows Stacy Leigh and Jude, will mostly be tagging along and praying. The students will be doing the real “heavy-lifting.” But if God gives opportunities, Josh will preach.
The Bible clearly demonstrates that any true work of God will face opposition from the Enemy. So, we expect and welcome such opposition as an opportunity for God to demonstrate His power. Pray that God will do just that and give us wisdom when opposition comes. The Enemy may target the unity and the purity of the team, or he may use false religion. Sometimes in Moldova Orthodox priests and monks threaten physical violence against those who proclaim the Gospel. There may even be persons oppressed by demons in these villages. These are all opportunities to display the power of God through our weakness.
If it pleases God to bring persons to faith in these villages, then they will be formed into Bible studies—embryonic churches—and we will lead them over the following months to grow in Christ and to form a church.
Please remember to check this website, the Facebook page, or Josh’s Twitter between January 10-15 for updated prayer requests. May the Lamb that was slain receive the reward for His suffering!
The day began bright and early as I met the team of students and led them in a time of prayer and Bible study. I wanted them to remember that we have nothing more or less to offer than the authority of the Bible proclaimed with Spirit-given ability. After prayer, the students continued to plan and put together gift bags until lunch. After lunch we headed out into the mud of Vatici in six teams of three. We gave out gift bags that contained a calendar, a gospel tract, a story for children about the true meaning of Christmas, and a few other items. As we met people in the street or saw them in their courtyards, we gave them this small gift and told them about the Great Gift that God sent on Christmas. I did not stay to hear reports from all the teams since I was eager to get home to Stacy Leigh and Jude, so there may be more stories to tell after I hear them tomorrow. Our team saw few positive responses. Many of the young people had come to our camp and knew the gospel although they did not understand it. Most older persons also had much head knowledge from their Orthodox background, but this knowledge was mixed with deeply entrenched error. One woman told us that the Bible says that you must venerate crucifixes, and when we explained to her that the Bible did not say this she would not believe it. One young man said he would come to a youth service the students are hosting on Saturday night, and one woman promised to come to church on Sunday although she was a little drunk when we spoke with her. Our team’s experience was that people were kind and enjoyed speaking with us but had little interest in what we had to say. We saw spiritual hardness that only God can soften. Tomorrow, we will do the same thing in the village of Morozeni. We pray that God will open the hearts of the people there to pay attention to what we say, just as he did with Lydia thousands of years ago (Acts 16:14).
This morning the majority of our team went to Morozeni, a village without any evangelical witness (two young men went to cut wood for an elderly person in Vatici as a way to demonstrate Christ’s love). Since the majority of people here just celebrated Christmas on January 7, we sang some carols at the center of the village and were able to speak to the people who stopped to listen. Then we split up into small groups meeting people on the streets and stopping at homes to give out gifts and share the gospel. Igor, Dina (a student), and I spent a lot of time with a husband and wife who had a lot of interest. They were fascinated to hear the Bible read and had many questions. We left a Bible with them, and they seemed eager to read more. We pray that God uses his word to transform their lives. In the afternoon, part of the group stayed to share the gospel in Vatici while the other part returned to Morozeni. Igor and I drove to Chi?in?u where we picked up about 300 Bibles from a European missions organization. Some of the Bibles are for adults while others are for children. It is very important to get Bibles into the hands of the people of Moldova because they continue to live in a pre-Reformation state. The priests tell the people not to read the Bible because they cannot possibly understand it. The Jehovah’s Witnesses, who have preceded us everywhere we go, also tell people that the Bible is not clear. The literature of the Watchtower Society is necessary to understand it. But we come with the message: Read your Bible. You are able to understand. See what it says, and believe it! We pray that God will use these Bibles to bring salvation to these villages. Tomorrow, we will be visiting the pre-school and grade school in Morozeni and the grade school in Tabara. The schools are allowing us to give out our gifts and put on a short program of songs and drama. I will be delivering a short message about the true meaning of Christmas. As an American, the openness of the public schools here seems very strange. I thank God for this opportunity and pray that he works in the lives of the children tomorrow.
We have experienced few times that have reminded us of our complete dependence upon God’s grace as the past month. At the Bible Institute, both of us—Josh for his New Testament classes and Stacy for her English classes—have been working hard during the end of the semester crunch time, and for the past few weeks Josh has been “burning the midnight oil” to wrap things up for his Southern Seminary online class. God has been supplying every need through these times, but by far the greatest demonstration of his grace occurred one week ago when Jude fell on his head from the second floor of the house where we are living. We rushed him immediately to the hospital here in Orhei where he had some x-rays to check for a fracture in his skull. We had about three very scary hours while he would not calm down or stop crying, but after a short nap, he woke up completely himself—talking in his gibberish language and wanting to run down the hallways of the hospital and climb on everything. Except for a cut on his head and a few bruises, he acts as if nothing happened. We have thought of every “what if” for the situation and have concluded that it was only by God’s mercy that he was not seriously injured. This week is finals week for our students, but at the Bible Institute we do not like to think of this time only as an ending. We like to think that we are sending our students out over the winter break to proclaim the gospel, just as Jesus periodically did even during his earthly ministry (Mark 6:7-13). Most will be ministering through their home churches. Some will be returning to Vatici in January for a week of evangelism in the surrounding villages (we will tell more about this in next month’s update). We expect this month to be much more peaceful—a time for rest, family, and celebrating the advent of our Lord Jesus Christ. We hope you will pray for us and for the people of Moldova as you celebrate Christmas with your family. Christmas and missions are inseparable. It reminds us that the eternal Son of God was sent by the father to become like us, suffer for us, and proclaim the message of reconciliation with God. It reminds us that in Jesus all the hopes of the Old Testament are fulfilled—all the families of the earth are being blessed through the Son of Abraham and the forever Kingdom of God is being established by the Son of David (Gen 12:3; 2 Sam 7:12-14; Matt 1:1; Luke 1:32-33). This truly is “good news of great joy for all the people” (Luke 2:10). Celebrate Christ’s birth this year by praying for his mission in this world.
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