Headed home

Saturday, October 27, 2007 – 1:37PM – over the Atlantic Ocean

 

Seat 36F on Northwest flight 93 to Detroit is not so bad.  The legroom is sufficient, and the standard issue pillow is fairly comfortable.  International travel is always interesting.  I’m in the window seat of a three-seat row sitting next to a Philippine medical doctor who lives in Holland and works in Germany.  She is sitting next to a Sri Lankan agricultural development PhD who now lives in Dallas after living in Serbia for seven years.  He travels alternately on a Serbian or American passport and is on his way to the Caribbean for a vacation with his Serbian wife.  Meanwhile, little old me is just waiting to get back to my simple life in Virginia Beach.  Amazing.

 

Dr. Bom departed from Timisoara on Thursday morning in order to fulfill some teaching obligations at Regent this weekend.  The rest of the team traveled to Oradea after dropping him at the airport and spent two fruitful days there.  First, we met with Silviu Tatu, another contact that Bruce knows from OCMS.  He looks like something that just stepped out of a story of Transylvania with his piercing eyes and jet black beard.  He spearheaded a meeting with four other local pastors, and Bruce took the lead in explaining a lot about KPC, the EPC, its church government structure, KPCLU, and what we do in our biblical worldview teaching.  Apparently, the pastors we met are struggling with some church organizational issues and also desire some broader training in societal interaction for their people.  It was a good meeting but the lunch with Silviu afterward was even better.  It turns out that he and his wife have chosen to homeschool their children this year and are among the first in Romania to do so!  As we talked about that, we quickly discovered that his views of education and family align perfectly with our typical teachings in those areas.  God was so good to arrange such a conversation, because Silviu completely relaxed with us and we were able to delve more deeply into our views.  Divine appointments!

 

Shortly before we left on this trip, my Dad mentioned that a choir member had told him that he sat next to a Moldovan pastor on a recent flight.  In their conversation, they talked about our International Reformation ministry in Eastern Europe.  The pastor was excited and suggested that we contact him to see if a visit to Moldova was possible.  Of course, this really excited me because Moldova is the missing link in a completely filled 20/30 window and it is in a perfect position to benefit from the Reformation Institute we’re setting up in Kiev with and for the Belarusians.  Moldova is situated between Romania and Ukraine with easy road access to Kiev.  The people speak Romanian and Russian, and the government is still officially Communist.  The trifecta!  I shared my thoughts on the opening with Bruce, and we chalked it up to another nice idea if God should open the door.  Well, in Oradea one of the pastors at the small morning meeting was Adi Stanciu.  We met him in 2005 on our first trip to Romania.  He has recently stepped down from his pastorship and is now the Executive Director of the Romanian Missionary Society.  They have a publishing operation and while we were in their bookstore looking at the great publications they’ve translated and made available, we stumbled upon a conversation about Moldova.  Adi lit up and said, “You have to go there!  There is a great reformation movement underway there.”  What an amazing confirmation!  He has some contacts there as does Florin, our Romanian friend and regular guide/driver/interpreter.  So, perhaps we’re headed to Moldova next year.  Again, amazing!

 

We finished our work for this year on Thursday and Friday at Emanuel University, a Christian university in Oradea.  On Thursday afternoon, we were participated in the chapel service for students and community business leaders.  Dave spoke for a about an hour and half on Christian leadership and his business background.  He did a great job on short notice.  Bruce spoke briefly about globalization and worldview, and we took questions from the audience.  The chapel was a soaring room with what must have been a five story sculpture on the front wall representing the trinity and the crucifixion and a beautiful stained-glass window.  Dinner was with a business professor (younger than 30) from the school who immigrated to the States from Romania when he was twelve but has now moved back to minister in his native land.  This guy was really fascinating.  He bought his first business at 17, financed solely with his mother’s credit cards, and went on to be a Fulbright scholar and PhD!  A great immigrant story of America’s opportunities.

 

On Friday morning, we were scheduled to teach junior-year business students for their regular management course class.  Before that, though, we were invited to appear on a half-hour program on Radio Vocea Evangheliei.  Dave, Bruce, and I took about ten minutes each answering questions on leadership and respecting authority, globalization and Christianity’s response, and banking and economics.  It was really fun, and I was so pleased with the answers that the Holy Spirit impressed upon me.  Bulgarian TV last summer and Romanian radio—also broadcast by satellite all over Europe—this year!  Media moguls, we are.

 

So, we entered the classroom on a bit of a high and had a great time teaching the students about God’s dominion covenant with man and how that plays itself out through stewardship in economics and business.  The professor had asked be at dinner the night before to speak to the students about the necessity and importance of accounting—a near universally hated course in business school.  The students and our team all had a good laugh as I talked about how much I, too, hate accounting!  I explained, though, its necessity in the stewardship mandate and economic fulfillment, and I think they really caught the idea.  These smaller face-to-face teaching times are usually the most productive, and this was both a great opportunity and great fun.  We left Oradea very fulfilled.

 

Work was done.  Time for some fun before we headed home.  Hungary is only 30 minutes from Oradea.  Why not?!  More to come…