July-September, 2016
A young missionary agreed to share with our readers his journal of experiences. This is the 3nd in a series of 4 journal entries. Enjoy!
As my friend Adrian and I were visiting a community from house to house, we saw a man whom we automatically assumed was not interested. He seemed to have his own vision about life and did not appear likely to accept our message. So we decided just to give him some flyers. But then he asked us, “Do you have a Bible? I will pay for it.”
That summer he had lost his house in a fire. He had built another house, a small one, and he said, “I know if I’ll have a Bible on the table, my house will be blessed.” And we gave him the Bible.
Next we saw a Baptist church, and I told my friend, “Let’s go inside.” But he expressed his concern, “We are wasting our time. During the time we would spend there we could do a lot of work around the area.”
So we agreed to join in on their church meeting with one condition: If they would ask us to speak, we would remain. But if not, we would leave. We went inside, and after we found a place, the elder came to welcome us, asking if we had a song or a word for the church, and we both responded, “A word.” So my partner was able to preach for 30–40 minutes. Afterwards the people wanted to listen to me too; so I spoke for 30–40 more minutes, and the church wasn’t tired. We were so happy for this wonderful opportunity to share the gospel!
In a morning when we were preparing our literature in the center of a small town, a woman came and asked us: “Are you the people that are sharing all kinds of books here in this area about God and salvation?” We were happy for her question, because we thought she was interested and was thirsty for the truth; so we gladly said, “Yes, we are.”
Then we saw her face changing as she started screaming louder and louder, “Why are you wasting money buying paper and books instead of helping the children or doing something better with them? People do not need all the lies you have here; you are wasting your time. Both of my sons are priests. They studied theology, and the country needs people like them!”
We patiently answered, “We studied theology, too.”
“Yes, but you changed the Bible, and you wasted time going to a school like this!” She continued to scream.
During this time, a lot of people came around to see what was happening. After she saw that we were not angry with her, she left. And now we were scared because of those other people. What were we going to do with them? She had left, but would we be able to leave safely from there? Then we started to share the books with them, and we started preaching. All of them were amazed. And when we wanted to leave, I heard one of the people there talking to somebody else. He commented, “That woman thinks that because her sons are priests, that she is saved, but things are not like she thinks.”
In January we started a new project in the southeast part of our field (Galati). When my uncle told me about his plan to start working in this new area, I wondered how we would begin. We have no brethren there, we have no church, we have no foundation. There actually are two families in the area, but one of them is usually gone because the husband is a minister and he has to travel all the time—and for the Sabbaths he takes his family with him. And the other family is just a couple without children and they are around 60 years old—not close to my age.
I started asking where I would stay there and what I would eat, because in the country you have your own garden, and you can take everything you want. But there in town there is no garden, and no brethren to help you. Another problem was where we would get the money to buy all the books we would need.
Then my uncle told me about a woman in that town who is not a member of our church. Apparently, when she heard what we were trying to do there, she offered to us one of her apartments to go and live there for three months. We were so happy and thankful to God because this place was in the middle of the town—a center from which the light could shine to the whole town. Then the woman said that after three months we could stay there three more months. Then after those three more months we could have the apartment as long as we were working there. So God answered the first request.
Now, where were we going to get food? After we got the place to stay, the brethren from the Field sent us a lot of food; we weren’t able to eat as much as they had sent.
Then, in a very short time, we had donations of about U.S. $4,000 just to buy books. In Romania $4,000 is a lot! Now we had everything we needed, so we started to work.
In town, it is more difficult to knock on doors because everybody is tired, busy or stressed. We scheduled a cooking class too, and started to call the people to the Gospel. Because I had no friends there that were my age, I asked God to give me a friend there. Then after only one day, the pastor’s son came with a friend of his. He introduced to me his friend and then he started to ask me where I was from and what I was doing there. I explained that I was a missionary and I was looking to make some friends there.
“Good,” he said. “If you want some friends, come with me to the gym.”
Actually, I am not used to going to gyms to spend time there—but because I wanted a new friend I decided to go. I paid the monthly entrance fee and met his friends there. So they asked me, “What kind of work are you doing here?”
“I am a missionary,” I said.
“Oh, are you a priest?” Then they started to make jokes because of me, telling everybody, “Look there, the priest is coming to the gym, the priest is coming to the gym.”
I was very upset about these new friends, but because I had paid a lot of money for that entrance fee, I continued going to the gym, but I was doing my exercises, and not talking to anybody.
Then one day, a young man came to me and said, “Gabby, listen, I have always wondered whether or not the Bible is true. I read some things from there and it looks like it contradicts itself. So I am asking you about this, thinking that you know something more and you can explain it to me.”
“Well,” I said, “What do you think is not true?”
He gave me some examples. So that day I stopped doing my exercises and I started to preach in the gym. We started to talk deeper and deeper, and when we got to talking about Christ’s second coming, his friends began listening to me, too. Then I told them about The Great Controversy. And for the next day I had to come with my bag full of The Great Controversy books to give them. That friend that had made a lot of jokes at me became a good friend, and a student of heavenly things.
At the cooking classes in Galati we had a lot of experiences, but I want to share with you about a man that enjoyed our meetings. He used to be an engineer and then, when he retired, he had a lot of money and started to drink. After he attended our meetings, within a very short time he quit the alcohol, replaced the coffee with water, and he quit eating meat. All these things in only a few weeks! Then he started to come and worship with us; because we have no church there we were gathering in an apartment—so he asked us to go and worship in his apartment. His wife was not so interested in the truth, but because her husband was not drinking any longer she was happy every time she would see us. She used to teach at a school, and she told us she would go to the school director to ask him to give us a room to worship there on the Sabbaths because there was more space. Meanwhile this man is always praying for himself and for his wife, too, to decide to follow him, and to get baptized together.
All these experiences have kept me in the church, because when you’re out doing missionary work, you realize you have no friends. You cannot trust anybody on this earth, only Jesus.