Tuesday, October 28, 2008

The Romanian Student

Working with students is always a work that keeps you young! We feel like we are constantly behind in trying to keep up with the changing student culture or the latest trends in electronics or the internet, not to mention new music or films. It is very clear that the Student culture has changed and is changing in many ways in Romania.

A few weekends ago (Oct. 24-26) 26 leaders met from across Romania for our organizations General Assembly. During this time we had many discussions related to the functioning of the organization. We also talked about ideas for fund raising, future leaders for the movement and about evangelism among students today!





Please pray for OSCER and our efforts to reach students across Romania with the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Fall Beauty!


Last weekend we were able to spend a few days in the mountains, enjoying perfect fall weather and the beauty of creation around us!! We were in Moeciu (60 kms. north of where we had our camps this past summer).

We enjoyed hiking together and climbing up on rocks!




Relaxing around the house we stayed in!



And exploring inside a cave!!!

Monday, October 6, 2008

Heritics??!!

We stood at a table near the dorms passing out Bibles and inviting students to come to a discussion group called "Glad You Asked", which will look at many of the basic questions people have about Christianity. One young student stopped and asked what we were doing, why, and who we were. He was visibly upset that we were passing out Bibles and that we were not from the Orthodox Church. We tried to talk with him and tell him the Bible we had was not that different than the "Orthodox" Bible, just this one had easier language to understand. He called us heretics and accused us of proselytism.

For 2 days we stood outside one of the dorm areas in Bucharest, offering free Bibles and other Christian evangelistic literature to students. Very few students stopped even with a sign that all the material was free! Many asked us if we were from the Orthodox Church and when we said no many walked on. There is still a stereo-type that people have in their minds that remains from the communist days against the Evangelical church in Romania. It's amazing to see the reaction of students when they find out we are not Orthodox. One guy tired to get his friend to put back the Bible after he found out we were not Orthodox. But the guy said, "That's alright, I'm multi-religious!" Many of these students have never read the Bible. Please pray for the 25 students that took Bibles, that God would work through His Word and they would come to the discussion group that will start on 15 October! We continued this week passing out Bibles at the dorm areas!

After talking with the first guy mentioned above, one of the staff said, "it is amazing just a few years ago students where open to all kinds of different things like meditation and new age philosophy and now it's only orthodoxy." Another interesting fact was that last week there was only one student who came up to the table and said that he was a Christian. He was an international student from Nigeria!

The Business School in Bucuresti with a banner welcoming the students back!