The Tapps to Moldova!

We're back!

2007-12-25T15:38:00.000-05:00

We made it back to the States on Christmas Eve without any problems! Our luggage arrived and everything, praise the Lord! So, we'll spend the holidays with family and figure out what God has for us next. We tentatively plan to work and begin raising a son in the U.S. for the next couple of years, and then see where God takes us.

Thanks so much for your prayers and support! We couldn't have made it to Moldova and back without them! Please keep in touch!

(Aside: Justin has written a lengthy debriefing about his time in Moldova for his sponsoring organization, BPN. It includes his observations on the church, the economy, politics, and Business as Missions overall. If you're interested in reading a public version, just send him an email: justintapp@pobox.com).

We wish you all a VERY Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Our last day in Moldova! (Justin)

2007-12-23T03:08:00.000-05:00

It's hard to believe that the time has come to say goodbye! We've had such an incredible time here, learned so much, and made so many great friends. We're very thankful for this experience!

We've had some tough goodbyes in the past couple days, including a mini going away party at the Invest-Credit office.

Vasile and I met online this morning and he showed me his great strides the past week. The site is looking great! The difficult administration side of the site is finally complete, and in the next week the first public version should be uploaded. It is going to be higher-quality than the secular sites of its kind here.
He's worked day and night this week to get things done. We're quite thankful for him, and for your prayers for him. We will leave him with a monetary gift of the small amount of donor funds we have left. We think that's a good use of our remaining funds.

Joni has worked hard to pack everything, and we appear to be under the limit in our weight allotment.

Today we will say goodbye to our host landlords. They will come over and pray with us and say our goodbyes. They've been very kind to us.

Our travel itinerary is:

12/23 (5:45pm-6:35pm) Chisinau to Vienna.**
12/24 (10:50am-3:00pm) Vienna to D.C.
12/24 (5:15pm-6:47pm) D.C. to Cincinnati.

**We will have an overnight stay in Vienna. This was unintentional; we couldn't find a reasonably cheap plane ticket without an overnight layover and this Vienna leg was the cheapest. We've tried to save as much money in travel as possible.

We will post again when we get back to the States.

Please lift us up as we travel home for safety, connections, and luggage arriving! Thanks so much for your prayers and support over these five+ months!

Crunch Time! (Joni)

2007-12-21T18:40:00.000-05:00

I just wanted to give a quick report on the doctor's appointment we had on Thursday - our last appointment in Moldova! They did several tests and I spent a total of 3 hours there, given the 2 1/2 hours I spent in the waiting room! However, they officially declared me to be healthy and the baby is healthy, and they wished us the best of luck for our future. Overall, my experience with Moldovan medicine has been a positive one, although I'm glad to not have to continue it any longer - mainly because I'd prefer having a primary caregiver whose first language and culture are the same as mine! Praise the Lord both for our health and our positive experiences here!

The title of my post is referring to the fact that we're less than 48 hours from departure! The next two days are going to be really full for us - me with packing and Justin with finishing up his projects. Neither of us made as much progress on those things in the past couple of days as we wanted to, so please pray for God to multiply our time and give us wisdom and peace on dealing with everything that comes up!

The Countdown Begins (Justin)

2007-12-18T11:15:00.000-05:00

We're in our final week in Moldova. Here's what it looks like:

1. Vasile is working hard on completing the behind-the-scenes admin stuff on the website and getting it set up like we want. I anxiously wait for his results. He's busy with exams, work, and other things, so please pray for him to have time and energy to get the brunt of the job done this week!

The final version of the site will not be completed by Sunday, so I will be staying in touch via e-mail and Skype once we return to the U.S. Hopefully, the vast majority of the site will be finished and all that will be needed is individual information from churches, translation in Russian/Romanian, and a willing Administrator to manage the site once it's completed. Please pray for these 3 things to be completed!

2. Joni is packing things up. That's a tough job, figuring out what to take and what to leave. Please pray for her stress level and energy.

3. Saying goodbyes. We've got several people that we need to say special goodbyes to. Our landlords, our co-workers, our friends, etc. Please pray that all this goes well and that we don't make any cultural "faux pas" by leaving someone out!

Thanks so much for your prayers and support. We'll let you know how it goes!

Snow!

2007-12-15T14:31:00.000-05:00

Yesterday afternoon, Joni took this picture of snow falling on our gate.
We snapped this picture this morning from the street. You can see the accumulation! And then it continued snowing most of the day.
This is looking down our street. The snow makes everything look so much nicer, and is a lot of fun.
The problem is that they do not salt, sand, or plow the roads in Chisinau. So, the sardine-can packed minibuses slip and slide trying to gain traction on hills and such. It makes the ride across down much more interesting, especially at night as roads become sheets of solid ice!
Today we attended an international craft fair hosted by the International Women's Club. I think every humanitarian and international aid organization was represented, along with representatives from over a dozen countries. International foods, music, dancing, crafts, and information about what each organization is doing. The proceeds go to various charities here in Moldova. You can read more about it here.

One of the highlights was that Peace Corps and a few other American groups were selling American books, magazines, movies, and even American food-- Campbell's Soup, Hungry Jack pancake mix, etc. That was a very big deal to the large number of ex-pats who were there.

There were also Moldovan schoolchildren performing traditional songs and dances, accompanied by Santa Claus. They went around to each booth and sang carols and blessings. Santa Claus was pretty terrifying. Joni got this good pic of him loudly bringing Season's Greetings to some foreigner.
The snow was a blessing. Overall, it was a great day and we felt like we contributed to some good causes. It's sad to think we'll be leaving here in a week; the time sure has flown.

The Christmas Tree Saga Part 4 (final chapter?)

2007-12-14T04:19:00.001-05:00

Last night we attended a "Town Hall Meeting" for Americans at the U.S. Ambassador's residence. I asked the Ambassador what his office was doing to foster better relations between the Chisinau Mayor's office and the national government. He joked a little about the Christmas tree controversy, but stated that he was doing what he could to convince both sides that cooperation with the opposition was essential to good governance.
He also gave some background into why both sides dislike each other, and says this is mainly a problem in the big cities like Chisinau, and not in the countryside.

On Wednesday a group of 50-100 protestors, mainly youth but including the Mayor and other officials, took to the National Square.

"Many of them brought artificial fur trees, which were put within the fenced place, designed for the chief New Year tree of the country. Then during several minutes the young people were standing silently and holding pictures of the European capital cities, where the New Year trees had been already installed. After this they left the square peacefully. The protesters placed a symbolic small fir tree in the place where the Christmas tree once stood with baubles conveying such messages as “Right to Personal Freedom”, “Right to Security”, “Right to Free Expression”, “Freedom of Thought, Conscience and Religion” etc."

News link 1. News link 2.

Apparently, the controversy contributed to quite an ugly day in the Moldovan Parliament. As we returned from the Town Hall meeting last night, we passed by the original fir tree (which was moved off the Square) and saw it still being guarded by several policemen.

When in Moldova...

2007-12-12T10:12:00.000-05:00

...look like the Moldovans do! It's fun here now that the weather has turned very cold, because everyone's pulling out their serious winter gear. Fur hats, scarves, long leather coats, you name it. My missionary friend, Nancy Russell, loaned me this leather coat so I could stay warm this winter, but I must say it also makes me VERY stylish...It has a zip-in fur lining, a fur neck ruff, and a thick fur-lined hood. No getting cold in this dude! The fur hat was just a silly addition at Kelly's house where we took the picture. Even if I wanted to wear it, I couldn't because it was too small for my head! It made for one nice picture, though! And yes, people really DO walk around looking like this on cold days here.

The Chisinau Christmas Tree Saga (Part 3!)

2007-12-11T05:30:00.001-05:00

More news. Yesterday, the mayor signed an ordinance instructing workers to restore the Christmas tree to the central square. When city workers arrived, they found the tree guarded by "tens of police officers." Thus, the tree remains where it is.

The Chisinau authorities have expressed concern about the central authorities’ unwillingness to celebrate Christmas on December 25, with the Christmas tree in Chisinau’s central square expected to be officially lit on New Year’s Eve and not earlier.

Since Moldova is mainly a European Orthodox country, Christmas is celebrated here on January 7 as per the Julian calendar after a 40-day fast.

The political struggle continues.

The Chisinau Christmas Tree Saga

2007-12-10T14:40:00.000-05:00

The saga continues! Oddly woven into a news article about how Chisinau City Hall is having its heat cut off, there is a long story about the Christmas tree. The English version is a little confusing.

Apparently, on Friday the mayor of Chisinau (a young, Western-minded, non-Communist) ordered a Christmas tree put up in the central square. The mayor had 3 youth from the Liberal Party guard the tree in his own personal car. He apparently anticipated trouble, as they were armed with video cameras.

The police (who knew whose car it was) came, arrested them, drove them around the city for hours and erased their video. The police also ordered the tree cut down and moved off the square. They placed it behind the Arc de Triumph across the street. Here's picture of where it is now. The youth were released, but may have suffered some emotional trauma: "(One of them) said that in such conditions the youth do not see any reason for remaining in the country, but, at the same time, they gained strength." The Mayor responds:

The Mayor described the given actions as “a gift made by the central authorities to the Chisinau residents on the International Human Rights Day”, which is celebrated on December 10. According to him, the three young men have been hostages of the government that does what it wants.

So... happy Human Rights Day! And, bah humbug!

Christmas Cards

2007-12-10T07:21:00.000-05:00

Alina (Ghena's wife) makes fabulous Christmas cards and sells them internationally. You can look at her designs here:
http://www.davidsonrose.com

I am posting this months after I promised I would, so I feel really guilty. If you're interested in ordering some cards, we can perhaps bring them back to you when we return to the States in 2 weeks.

Baptism Today (Joni)

2007-12-09T07:36:00.000-05:00

I had the privilege of being able to witness a baptism at church today! Well, actually, it was 41 baptisms! I really wish I had brought my camera! It was a sight unlike anything I've ever seen before. I'll do my best to describe it for you.
This is a previous picture of the stage of my church, and I've cropped it to zoom in on where the baptistry is. Until today, I didn't even know there was a baptistry there! The floor comes up from that part behind the choir loft where the plants are sitting in the picture, and the bottom window of the cross is actually a door! So the baptisees lined up along the front of the church, then filed up along the left side of the stage beside the choir and down into the baptistry. The baptisees (about 15 men and 25 women - They don't baptize children.) were dressed in all white and were a neat sight to behold! Two pastors in blue robes led the procession and preceded them into the baptistry. Then they went in two-by-two, and each were dunked by a pastor after affirming their faith. There was a guy standing in front of the choir loft holding a microphone on a stick to the mouths of the pastors and baptisees, so we could all hear what was going on. After being dunked, the newly baptized then proceeded out the rear door where the cross had opened, so they were actually getting out of the water behind the wall, and it worked so smoothly that way! Each time the ones who had just been baptized were getting out and the new ones were getting in, the choir sang a little "Praise the Lord, Alleluia" song - even though they sang it 21 times, I never got tired of it! It was so neat! And I was shocked that they were able to baptize all 41 people in just 20 minutes!

Especially moving were the man and wife that were baptized together - what a change in that family! There were also two sisters who were baptized together, and I know that was meaningful and special for them. Most moving for me, though, was this really old lady who clearly was physically ailing. But you could see the determination on her face even from where I was sitting in the balcony. She had to have an usher on each side of her helping her up the stairs of the choir loft, and it took about 5 men to get her down into the baptistry. Then she was baptized by herself so she could have a pastor on each arm helping her back out of the water. But what a victorious moment when it was accomplished! Praise the Lord!

And then the most entertaining part of the day was after the baptisms were completed and we were waiting for the baptisees to get dressed and come back out to their seats. The choir sang, and then a lady got up and was doing a solo. I noticed that the women who had been baptized were slowly coming back out to their seats one by one, and I was surprised that their hair was dry! I thought, Are all 25 of those women really back there using hairdryers? Can the electric system hold that? And surely enough, right in the middle of the poor soloist's song, boom, the power went out. A few of us in the audience snickered because we knew what had happened. All the hairdryers had overloaded the circuits and popped the breaker! We sat there in silence before about 30 seconds before someone finally decided to take action. We for some reason had a live brass band playing that day, so they struck up a tune while they tried to get the power back on. They got it back on before the band had finished their song, and not too much longer all of the baptisees came out, most with perfectly dry hair.

It was a neat, fun, and moving experience, and I'm so glad that I was able to witness it before leaving Moldova!

Bah, humbug!

2007-12-07T05:34:00.000-05:00

Here's a great article that says so much about life in Chisinau, Moldova. Installing the official Christmas tree requires agreement with both the city and national government, who don't talk to each other. Anyone who wants to take their own initiative will be arrested on site. :-)

"The central authorities do not forbid the installation of a Christmas tree in the National Assembly Square before December 25, Minister of Culture & Tourism Artur Cozma told Info-Prim Neo.
At the same time, Cozma said the central authorities were looking for “a live, big, beautiful and representative fir tree”, which would be erected in the Square at the end of December.
“What’s the hurry with the 25th of December?”, answered Cozma when asked to clarify whether the Government’s quest for a Christmas tree would end before that date. The Minister suggested, however, that most probably it will take quite a while. “When we find it, we will think how to bring it to Chisinau, how to install it…”, the official explained.
Earlier this week the Chisinau authorities expressed concern about the central authorities’ unwillingness to celebrate Christmas on December 25, like i n most places around the word, which could leave Chisinau’s central square without a Christmas tree on that date.
Chisinau Deputy Mayor Lucia Culev said there were instructions not to erect any Christmas trees in the Square and “anyone who disobeys will be picked up by police”.
Chisinau Mayor Dorin Chirtoaca said he will wait for the confirmation of these rumours, and if they happen to be true, “will seek alternatives for the winter holidays to start before December 30”. At the same time, the mayor stated that he is inclined to avoid any arguments with the central administration on this matter and rather seek to come to an agreement as to the preparations of the city for the holidays."

New Years is when people typically do their Christmas-like rituals. The Orthodox Church's Christmas (the Orthodox Church is supported by the central government) is actually January 7th, so that may play a part in the "what's the hurry?" statement.

On Time (Justin)

2007-12-05T04:21:00.000-05:00

Maybe the most difficult thing I've had to deal with here is the concept of doing things on time. You hear this complaint from Americans in just about any foreign country, but it seems a little more acute here.
I once joked with a British guy here, after he'd waited a long time for someone to pick him up "on time," that Moldovan time is GMT + 2 hours and at least fifteen minutes.

This morning I was told I'd be picked up at 8:30. Then, at 9:15 I received a call saying "we'll be there in 5 minutes!" The car finally arrived at 9:30. It was raining outside, so I ended up going in and out of it while waiting. Unfortunately, someone showing up an hour later than they stated is quite common here. It's hard to make dinner plans with someone.

Paying bills on time is a big one for me. In America, our credit scores are penalized if we make a late payment. Here, there is no credit score, so there's less incentive for people to pay on time.

Example: Our cellphones are on someone's "family plan," so we're reliant on them to pay the bill.
We get text messages from Orange saying "tomorrow is your due date!" However, after the due date there is a 2-week grace period for paying. You receive a few text messages saying "if you don't pay in 5 days your service will be disconnected!" Orange even makes it easy to pay, you can just buy cards at any kiosk on the street. The owner of the family plan never pays on the due date, but waits until the very end of that grace period. This makes me quite nervous. If we lose cell service, Joni can't call me if she needs something, I have to borrow other people's phones, etc.

Sure enough, last month our service was disconnected because the owner waited until the last possible day, then something came up and he couldn't make it to the store. When it approached time to pay the internet bill I started calling him every day to remind him. It made him angry, but it made me feel better.
(Yesterday he called and said he'd paid the bill early, ie: 2 days before our service was cut off again. I was very surprised and happy!)

I learned in my Corporate Finance class how to calculate the time-value of money, and that you should always wait as late as possible to pay your bills. "Wait until it costs you goodwill with the other party," or in other words until it is unethical.

Invest-Credit deals with late-payers all the time. These people are mostly Christians, but struggle with paying on time. I get to listen to Roman chide them out over the phone as any good bill collector should. I asked him this morning:
"Roman, do you think not paying on time a sin?"
He thought for a minute and replied:
"Yes. Because you're lying. You say you'll pay at a certain time and then you don't pay, so it's a lie."

As Christians, we should conduct business transactions "as for the Lord," (Col. 3:17). We should be examples of our ethics and good work that the World will look at and marvel at (Matt 5:16). Our reputations should be spotless (Eph. 5:3). We should be the best clients, the best customers.

It's important to instill in Christians the ethic to pay on time to ALL their creditors. This Saturday, Invest-Credit is holding one of its client trainings, where they teach things like ethical business practices. Maybe there will be a session about paying on time? That'd be nice to hear.

Girls' Day Out... to Romania!

2007-12-03T14:29:00.000-05:00

On Sunday, our friend Tanya needed to make a trip to Iaşi (pronounced yahsh), Romania to pick up something from a coworker. It's only about a 3 hour drive, and she wanted some company, so she invited us and Kelly to go with her! Justin needed a day to rest before starting another work week, so it was just us girls who decided to take a day trip to another country!

We left at about 9 in the morning, arriving in Iaşi right at noon. Tanya was supposed to meet her coworker at a mall, so she waited for him while Kelly and I wandered the mall. Moldova definitely does not have anything that looks even remotely as Western as this mall! Romania is newly in the European Union, so I guess they want to prove they belong there! Kelly and I looked like country bumpkins coming to the big city for the first time... eyes big, ooh-ing and ahh-ing at everything. The mall had all sorts of neat Christmas decorations, and they were playing American Christmas music over the speakers, so it was just like walking into any mall in America!One thing I had definitely been excited to learn about this mall was that they had a KFC in their food court! Now, in the States I'm not a huge KFC fan, but I have been absolutely craving chicken strips during my pregnancy, and Moldova does not provide anything even remotely like what I've been wanting. So we stopped at KFC and got me a large order of chicken strips to bring home with me!I didn't eat them for lunch, however, because Tanya said that Iaşi had a Pizza Hut, and THAT'S where we were going for lunch. However, when we arrived where the Pizza Hut used to be, it wasn't there anymore! At that moment, though, Tanya remembered a really neat place called Little Texas, and she said we just HAD to eat there. It is a restaurant that was opened up by an American, and they serve real authentic Tex-Mex food! (Read the NY Times article that includes this restaurant here.) It was so neat walking in there and seeing the swinging doors, the longhorns over the door, the huge Texas flag on the wall, and the life-size cutout of John Wayne to greet you!

After splitting appetizers of nachos and chicken quesadillas, Kelly and I ordered the Colorado Chicken Burrito that came with rice and beans, and Tanya got a Barbecue and Mushroom Burger. The food was AMAZING and definitely authentic. I felt like I was back home in Waco for that hour! :)On the way back out of the town, we stopped at the Gelateria Venezia for some Italian-style gelato, which was also delicious. Then we hit the road back for Moldova!

Our border crossings weren't the smoothest they could be - long lines and inefficiency. However, we made it and we are SO GLAD we went! And now I have another stamp in my passport - I've been to Romania!

Thank you, Tanya, for letting me tag along and making it a fun day of new experiences!

By the way, I had my KFC chicken strips for lunch today, and they were DELICIOUS! :)

A Day Against Traffick

2007-12-01T14:35:00.000-05:00

Tomorrow is the National Day of Prayer Against Human Trafficking in Moldova. This was organized by some international NGOs in cooperation with the various denominations here. I know some churches will have some prayer meetings and possibly sermons about the situation.
If you watch any documentary about sex trafficking you'll always see Moldova highlighted, as many of the women and children are trafficked into Romania, Bulgaria, Italy and other places for exploitation. (Apologies for previous email we sent stating this was a few weeks ago, we misunderstood the schedule in church that day). Ask yourself this Sunday: What am I doing about injustices like these? What is the Church doing?

Here are some numbers of significance (HT: Smitty at Cloud Chasing):

27 million slaves exist in our world today…in the year 2007. Slave trade generates $32 billion annually (it will soon overtake drugs and arms trafficking). MORE slaves are in bondage today than were bartered in 4 centuries on the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Each year 800,000 to 900,000 HUMAN BEINGS are bought or sold. Nearly 200,000 people live in slavery at this moment in the US…an additional 17,500 new victims are trafficked through out borders each year. Over 30,000 additional slaves are transported through the US on their way to other international destinations. 80% of trafficked persons are female; 50% are children. 1,000,000 children are FORCED to sell their bodies every day in their global sex trade.

Book Review 2 (Joni)

2007-12-01T13:34:00.000-05:00

Justin and I have both recently read books about Moldova. Justin read a deep and ponderous tome exploring the historical and political facets about Moldovan identity. I read a book by a British comedian exploring his misadventures in accepting a bet that he could beat all 11 players on the Moldovan national soccer team at tennis or else he had to strip and sing the Moldovan national anthem on a public street in downtown London.
Playing the Moldovans at Tennis by Tony Hawks was exactly as funny as my brief description of it above makes it sound. This is Hawks' second book and also Hawks' second bizarre bet. (The first book/bet involved something about hitch-hiking across Ireland with a refrigerator? That book is next on my "to find and read" list.)

Besides the hilarity of the whole situation, the book is actually pretty insightful about Moldovan culture. It definitely expresses very well the feeling one from a more Western country gets upon arriving in Moldova and trying to accomplish anything. The adventures set forth in this book took place in 1998, so it also helps me understand how far Moldova has come in just 9 short years. Some things are very different from the way they were back then (For example, now Moldova has street lights at night. Back then, the government wouldn't pay for the power to light the streets at night - the danger of falling into an uncovered manhole was imminent.), but some things are still very strangely the same (For example, there is still a strong possibility that the inattentive person could fall into an open manhole...).

I have come across some who didn't think the book was as great as I did. (My husband is one of those people.) The storyline is pretty basic and could be outlined in about 10 pages. However, with the humor and insights, Hawks manages to fill about 200. Justin thought this was kind of gratuitous and wished he would just get on with the story. I, for the most part, enjoyed all of his notes and side stories, especially things involving the family he lived with in Moldova. He in fact was able to form moving relationships with them, and it was very neat to see him explore how to cross that line into becoming accepted into the hearts of Moldovans - something I am still trying to learn about.

And Hawks is just plain funny. By page 6 I was laughing out loud, and by chapter 2 I had tears streaming down my face. I literally had to stop reading and put the book down so I could start breathing again because I was laughing so hard! Not every chapter was that funny, but just when I started to get bored and wish the story would move on, he would include a funny story that had me laughing again. (The one where he compared the way one of the Moldovans played tennis to a man trying to ward off an attack by a swarm of bees comes to mind...)

So I would recommend this book to those who want to be entertained and learn a bit about Moldovan culture.

DISCLAIMER: There is some language in this book, and I've spoken to others who found some of the humor to be off-color. Please don't read this book and then be offended or think I'm some kind of heathen. If you might be offended, don't read the book!

News Update (Justin)

2007-11-29T05:10:00.000-05:00

1. Joni got her latest blood tests back today. Her bilirubin levels were great, everything was great. That should be her last blood test! Praise the Lord!

2. The final version of my project website's front page should be completed by tomorrow.

3. I've been given the task of helping create the official Invest-Credit website. This will mainly involve writing much of the content in English so they can translate it into Russian and Romanian. Here's a competitor's website, you can see how high the bar is for us (note at the top you can choose English an option. This organization receives a lot of funds from the Soros Foundation).

4. McDonalds now does home delivery here! I saw the sign on the way to the office today. I doubt that we'll be taking advantage of that, but I thought it was cool.

5. On Sunday, we're tentatively scheduled to take a day trip to Romania with Tanya. Another stamp for the passports!

Book Review 1 (Justin)

2007-11-28T06:59:00.000-05:00

Joni and I have been reading books about Moldova. I finished The Moldovans by Charles King. Considered the definitive history of the people and country.

If you spend much time in Moldova, or plan to, this book is a MUST read. From the 1300s to 2000, King has done amazing research into the fascinating history of this part of Europe. He explores the Moldovan identity crisis. I learned that what I wrote in my previous post doesn't even cover half of it. Reality is always more complicated than it seems.
I found it fascinating how from 1812-1989 there were large battles for the Moldovan identity. Romanians didn't treat Moldovans all that well when they owned the territory, and the Soviets were inconsistent with their manipulations of the language, changing their mind about 3 times and killing or imprisoning those who followed orders the first two times.
King also covers the troubles in the 1990's, the issues with minority people groups, and possible political consequences for the future. He does a really thorough job of defining the various political views and giving their histories.

I give the book 4 stars for a really well-researched history on Moldova. I learned a lot.

Thanksgiving Celebration

2007-11-25T14:34:00.000-05:00

We were very blessed to have a WONDERFUL Thanksgiving celebration right in our own home! We had four American friends over - Kelly, Shauna, Tanya, and Rachel. We didn't eat until about 4:30, but the girls arrived at 3 to help me cook the last of the meal, and it was so much fun cooking all together!!! Of course, my tiny kitchen only holds about 1, but we managed to squeeze 4 of us working in there all at once - we're good friends!

In this picture, Tanya, me, and Kelly are working on the turkey. We decided not to try to do a whole turkey, so we just bought some turkey breasts and I found a yummy-sounding recipe on cooking.com called "Turkey Breast with Mustard Sage Crumbs." So Tanya placed the turkey breast on the pan, I coated it with Dijon mustard, and Kelly put on the crumb topping. Good teamwork, and the results were DELICIOUS. Meanwhile, Rachel was at the sink peeling potatoes.

Once the turkey was in the oven, Kelly went to the living room to work on the table decorations, and Justin helped her. She wanted to make origami turkeys, but they turned out to be more difficult than expected. Between the two of them, though, they managed to end up with one perfect turkey, and he was definitely a good addition to our Thanksgiving festivity! In this picture, he's really enjoying his apple cider.

Justin also, being the gentleman of the group, brought home some beautiful flowers to adorn our banquet, so I arranged them in a teapot for display.

Our table was a sight to behold once it was finished! We had the turkey breasts, green bean casserole, broccoli casserole, mashed potatoes, candied sweet potatoes with apples, Stove Top stuffing, cranberry sauce, and croissants! We're very thankful to Tanya, who had brought over many American items for the celebration, which enabled us to do the green bean casserole, sweet potatoes, stuffing, and cranberry sauce! She also brought the festive paper plates and napkins, which made cleanup much easier!

In this picture, from left to right, are Rachel, me, Justin, Kelly, and Shauna (Tanya was our photographer!). The food was all delicious, and we had a FANTASTIC time together - eating WAY too much. After the meal, we watched a little bit of football we had downloaded... You can't have Thanksgiving without watching football, right?! Then we ate dessert - apple pie (made by Tanya) and pumpkin pie (by Kelly)! Both were delicious. And then we rounded off the evening with a vigorous round of Phase 10 before saying goodnight.

It was such a fun evening, and we are SO thankful for the dear friends God has given us for our time here in Moldova.

Cultural Note (Joni)

2007-11-25T07:39:00.001-05:00

I had a funny story this week that I wanted to share on here. Inna is one of the daughters in our family who lives next door and owns our house, and she is also Justin's language helper. She is a gorgeous, talented 19-year-old. When she came to our house on Friday evening for Justin's language lesson, I noticed she had gotten her hair cut. So I mentioned it, and the conversation went something like this:

Joni: Inna, did you get your hair cut?
Inna: Yeah.
Joni: I love it! It looks great!
Inna: Well, thanks. I liked it for the first hour after I got it cut, but then I didn't like it anymore.

I didn't laugh at her then, but I did laugh over it later. What woman HASN'T said this over a new hairstyle?! So it looks like in some respects women are the same everywhere, no matter what country they live in!

A Moldovan education

2007-11-22T04:31:00.000-05:00

One of the best ways to learn language and culture is to read the same textbooks that children read in school. In post-Soviet countries there are textbooks for teaching Russian to non-native Russian speakers. I discovered this method in Azerbaijan, where I bought a collection of books teaching Azeri to Russian-sector students. They were all printed in Soviet times, and had lots of stories about the horrors of child labor in evil Capitalist countries like America. It gives you an idea of what the government wanted children to know early.

So, I found a textbook for teaching Russian to primarily Moldovan-speaking 6^th graders. It’s filled with wonderful stories, Moldovan poems, legends, and information about the country. (Fortunately, it was printed in 1997, so nothing bad about Capitalists). Here are a couple that struck me as, well…Moldovan.

One exercise required putting the sentences in proper order. Yes, I did it correctly:

1. Tanya put on her fall coat and went out into the yard.
2. There were other girls there.
3. Tanya began to play.
4. She ran and began to get hot.
5. Tanya unzipped her coat.
6. And then she drank some cold water.
7. That evening, Tanya became ill.
8. Her throat and head hurt badly.
9. Tanya was sick a long time.
10. Later, the doctor came and gave her medicine.

The exercise’s discussion question: Why did Tanya get sick?

In Eastern European countries there isn’t much said about microbes and washing your hands but there is a lot said about “never drink cold drinks,” and “stay away from any draft!” The tightly-bundled babies in the summer and the looks of horror older people have when they feel a draft on the minibus is evidence of this.

There’s a section in the book that features Aesop-like fables with animals. Most have a good moral to the story. Then, there’s this one:

“A cat was happily playing in the meadow with her kittens. At that time above them, a giant hawk flew by. He saw the kittens and swooped down to the ground. The hawk snatched up one of the kittens. But he couldn’t make it back into the air because the mother-cat pouncedon him. The fight began.
The hawk let go of the kitten and began to tear the skin of the mother cat with his claws. He poked the cat in the eye but the cat didn’t give way. She threw the hawk to the ground and grabbed him by the throat. The hawk couldn’t get free from the mother-cat. And the cat bit off his head. And thus, the fight ended.”

Wow. I guess the moral of the story is “it’s a cruel world out there.” Or, “don’t mess with the mother-cat.”

My least-favorite story is one that goes like this:

“The teacher called Vasile to her desk and asked him to write on the blackboard in Russian: ‘Radu eats lunch at 2:00.’
Vasile went to the blackboard and wrote: ‘Radu eats lunch in the course of 2 hours.’
All the students began laughing, and Vasile asks them why.
‘Shame on you for not paying attention!’ one of his classmates said.”

Ah, the traumatic and brutal education of public schools. Radu’s mistake in Russian was a common one of forgetting to write the preposition “at.” This probably happens often in my Russian speech as well, but I’d rather just be told I made a mistake rather than “Shame on you for being careless!” But, Vasile probably never made that mistake again, so maybe it really is a good thing.

So, just a couple examples of what I learn while studying. Much of the book is surprisingly a-political, not much history or discussion of current events or even geography. Much of it is just about family, nature, and education. I will probably keep it forever.

The Nutcracker

2007-11-19T02:54:00.000-05:00

On Saturday we went with a group of friends to see The Nutcracker ("Щелкунчик," in Russian). It was fantastic!
First, we met for dinner at a new Italian restaurant. It's owned by this little Italian guy who only speaks Italian and bad Russian. It's the type of place that serves bruschetta as an appetizer, and has real oil and vinegar on the table for your bread and salads. Here's a pic, you can see the owner/chef in the middle. Joni had a fettucini alfredo that came with ham, and Justin asked for the chef's special and got one of the best penne dishes in tomato sauce he's ever had (also with ham). For desert we had homemade tiramisu, which was incredible! The prices weren't bad, the place was packed with Americans, and we had a great time! Then, it was off to the ballet!

The show was packed and the audience was really into it, applauding a lot. When they really get into it, everyone starts clapping in unison to the beat of Tchaikovsky's music. We were really impressed by the stage props and the orchestra. In a neat twist, the Nutcracker was a real person from start to finish, no toy props were used.Apparently, several of the dancers also perform in plays (like Romeo and Juliet) at this same theater. Quite a bit of work and rehearsing for only one performance per show.

A great Saturday evening with good friends and fun culture in Chisinau!

Project Update (Justin)

2007-11-17T03:54:00.000-05:00

I had 2 crucial meetings with Vasile in the past week, as there has been much concern about the website not being completed on time. First, the basic skeleton is near completion. The page has at least one cool feature that will differentiate it from other commerce sites here in Moldova. It will be very user-friendly.

Meeting with Vasile in the office can be frustrating, because I'm trying to explain and understand things in Russian and English, which gets really hard when talking about technical stuff.
When Ghena joins the conversation I have to have him translate their Romanian dialogue to me, which is frustrating for all parties. Yesterday, Vasile called and said "Why don't we just Skype rather than go to the office to talk?" This ingenious idea saves us both 2 hours on the minibus and allows him to spend more time programming. I also discovered his typed English is quite decent, which saves me a whole lot of stress.

So, here's where we're at:
1. The front page will be completed by December 1.
2. The 4 major sub-pages will look just like the front page, so hopefully those will only take a few hours to write.
3. The behind-the-scenes administration stuff will be completed by Dec. 23.
Dima and Sasha are still working on all of this at home, and Vasile just has to get them together occasionally to combine code. All of them are working in their spare time, around school and other for-pay projects.

We're still on track to have the first version posted by the time we leave.

Thanks for your continued prayers for their efforts! Pray for free time and creativity for them, and smooth communication along the way. Thanks!

A Pleasant Surprise! (Joni)

2007-11-14T08:53:00.000-05:00

...And it happened at the doctor's office, too! We went to the OB this morning for a routine checkup - fingerprick hemoglobin test and urine sample. We got good news that both tests were completely normal, but that's not the pleasant surprise I'm referring to in the title of this post. After doing the above tests, the doctor took me back into her exam room (I'd never been back there before!), and Justin had to stay out in her office area. I was a little freaked out at what she might do to me back there, but all she did was make sure my uterus was in the right place, and then she pulled out a little machine that looked like this:except at least 20 years older than the new model in this picture. Many of you may recognize it - it allows you to hear the baby's heartbeat! So for the first time, we were able to hear the heartbeat of our precious little one. Justin was right outside the door, so he got to hear it too. We definitely weren't expecting a blessing like that at this doctor's appointment, and we're very thankful. :)

Orheiul Vechi

2007-11-12T05:22:00.000-05:00

On Saturday, Ghena took us, Kelly, and our new Estonian/Canadian friend Robert to Orheiul Vechi or "Old Orhei" as it's called. There is a complex of caves and a monastery built into them.

From centuries B.C. it was used as a hilltop fortress, surrounded by a river. Later, Stefan Cel Mare ("Stefan the Great"-- Moldova's historical patron figure, king, and military leader) built a fortress there. Control of this territory has passed from Germanic tribes to Slavs, to Romans, to Greeks, to Mongols, to Turks, to Moldovans, to Russians... you get the picture.

This was the nearby village as viewed from a cliff high above.
In the distance you see the monastery and cave complex there where monks dug out a dormitory and used to live by the hundreds. That's what we toured.
There's a village just under the complex. This is a "traditional village home" renovated for tourism.

The belltower and entrance to the monastery/cave complex. They rang right at 3 o'clock.

These were the dormitories. This was pitch black, except for the flash of the camera. You could see on the walls where thousands of candles had been burnt through the centuries by monks.Not pictured: The worship area inside where the Romanian Orthodox priests still work and people worship. There were a lot of icons, candles, and a monk-like priest who lives there and keeps people quiet.
There was also a sign in Russian about a patriarch of the church who, just before he died, prophesied that one day there would be telephones without cords (cellphones) that would connect people all over the world, and connect them via sattelite to the cosmos. It is through these devices that the Antichrist will communicate with people before the end-times. In other words: "please avoid using your cellphone here."

Here's Joni on a ledge just outside the dormitory and worship area. Yes, it was cold. It's snowing in Chisinau as I write this post.

A cross on top of the plateau/complex. There are only traces of all the old fortresses that used to exist here.
We didn't learn much about the history while we were there, but saw some historical artifacts at a museum. The only somewhat-complete history I can find is on this website, but the English is isn't great. It was a fun time!

Heating Systems in Former Soviet Countries (Justin)

2007-11-10T12:44:00.001-05:00

In former Soviet countries like Moldova, hot water is almost a luxury. The government of Chisinau provides both hot and cold water to residents through a boiler system. The hot water is turned off in the summer while maintenance is done on the pipes. (See this NY Times article from this summer about it being the same way even in Moscow). Here’s a picture of the hot water pipe in our neighborhood.

But, November 1 was a holiday of sorts because it is when the government turns on the hot water systems to all the heating systems in the city. Most buildings use a radiator heating system (“отопление”). The radiator pipes fill with steaming hot water, and this radiates enough heat to warm entire rooms. We were fortunate enough to have a mild fall, so the office wasn’t too cold before that. Now, it’s ridiculously hot in the office (but it’s great).

Our house has a similar system, except our hot water is dependent on our own heater instead of the government. We have a European-model gas heater that runs our radiator system and even has its own thermostat, so we can keep our home a comfortable 21 degrees celcius. Here are what the radiators look like, we have one in every room.

Having the water heater means we didn’t lack for hot water this summer, either. When you turn the hot water in the tap on, you hear some clicks from the heater as it is sparking the gas burners to come to life. The water runs through the heater and heats up pretty quickly.

I imagine this system is probably more energy-efficient than the central air-heating systems we have in the States and our electric hot water tanks that run all the time.

This is the first time I’ve lived in a place that had such a system that actually worked and I think it’s great. The last place I lived had the physical infrastructure, but after Communism fell the boiler system was looted and never rebuilt, so everyone had to either cook their own hot water or install water heaters. We’re very blessed not to have that problem here!

World Series Girls' Day (Joni)

2007-11-08T05:37:00.000-05:00

I had an excellent adventure with some American girlfriends a couple weeks ago that I wanted to share with you! Tanya lives just down the street from us. She is from New York and a HUGE Boston Red Sox fan. So when the Red Sox were playing in the World Series, she would get up at 3:00 every morning to watch the live broadcast of the game on her TV! The night before the final game, Justin and I had a get-together at our house with Tanya, Kelly, and Shauna. Tanya was excitedly telling us about the next morning's game and how excited she was, and how she planned to make a big breakfast to celebrate the Sox' victory. Then she said "Well, why don't you all come over and watch the game with me, and we can do breakfast together!" Justin didn't really have much interest in getting up that early in the morning, but us girls thought it sounded like fun!

So Kelly and Shauna just spent the night at Tanya's house, and I arranged to arrive at Tanya's about 5:45. (The game started at like 2, but I wasn't really interested in watching the whole thing. I believe Tanya is the only one who got up and watched the whole game.) I arrived just before 6am, just in time to see the bottom of the ninth inning and the Sox win!!!! I can't imagine Tanya's neighbors were very thrilled with the shouting and clapping, but we sure were excited!In this picture is me, Kelly, Tanya, and Shauna. Tanya provided all the Red Sox shirts. We are all holding little plastic pumpkins, which is a tradition in Tanya's family to hold a pumpkin when you're nervous at the end of a game.

Then we made a delicious breakfast of pancakes (with real maple syrup that Tanya had someone bring to her from the States, and peanut butter!), scrambled eggs with tomatoes and cheese, Canadian bacon, muffins, and hot chai tea! YUM!!!!!!!!

We sat and talked til almost 11:00, when the other girls realized they had to get going for the day. It was such a blast, though, to do this fun thing with other Americans here in Chisinau! I'm very thankful for some girlfriends to talk to and have fun with here!

How to Learn Languages (in your spare time?)

2007-11-07T08:28:00.000-05:00

Last week, I replaced my Russian teacher with a (“less-qualified”) Russian language "helper." I want to explain the difference between the two, and give some general advice on learning languages.

When most Americans think about learning language, they think about sitting in a classroom with a textbook open. That’s only one (very weak) aspect of learning (you probably don’t remember much of your high school French, do you)?

I used to work for a missions agency that was over-the-top serious when it came to learning language. They equipped us with seminars, workshops, evaluations, materials, etc. to train us how to learn languages. From that experience in learning Azerbaijani, to teaching English to foreigners, and studying Russian in various settings, here’s my advice on how to learn a language:

1. You have to want to learn. It’s not just enough to see it’s necessary. My dad has seen the value of learning Spanish for 20 years, has bought some books and software but has never actually learned it. It takes time, stress, and pain. If it doesn’t hurt, then you’re not doing it right. Everyone can learn, it just takes some people longer than others.

2. (easy one) Expect how many hours it will take you to learn. Our government’s translation service lists their expectations for language students to attain General Professional Proficiency (meaning you can converse on the street on basically any topic and some work topics).

French, Spanish, Romanian take 600 hours.
Turkish, Russian, Greek, Hebrew take 1,100 hours.
Chinese, Korean, Lezgi, etc. take 2,200 hours.

Consider this a bare minimum, as those numbers are generally for those already learning their 3^rd or 4^th languages. If you can only devote 10 intensive hours a week to learning Spanish, then expect to be studying Spanish for at least 60 weeks.

3. Organize your language-learning hours as follows:
25% with a textbook/teacher format.
25% with a language helper.
25% on your own (homework!)
25% in the culture.

1. Textbook/teacher- Find someone who is qualified and knows proper grammar. Either let that person teach you using their method, or have them teach you via the textbook/curriculum of your choice. Strive to ONLY use the foreign language with this person,

[true, if they speak English they can explain certain things to you. The danger is that too much of your lesson will be in English. I prefer to use a textbook in English for the explanations, and the teacher to reinforce the principles with his/her own curriculum].

2. Language Helper- This is when you pay someone to sit down and practice what you’re learning with the teacher/textbook. This person can be anyone in the culture who speaks fluently. This is the person you ask “How do you say ______.” Record these conversations and practice listening and pronouncing with them. This is one resource I use with my language helper that is a HUGE help.

I replaced my Russian teacher because she was qualified for #1 (and wanted money like she was qualified), but what I really need is more #2. I have worked through a host of textbooks and can explain to you just about any point of Russian grammar. What I need is conversation practice and to learn how people really say things, instead of just a textbook way. Helpers are pretty cheap, flexible, and easily replaceable.

3. Homework- Flashcards (preferably in software format), grammar exercises from the textbook, journaling, reading, memorizing. This is where the rubber (#1 and #2) meets the road.

4. Immersion- Shopping at the market, riding the bus, going to church, listening to the radio, music, watching TV, movies, fun stuff! Just making the language a part of your day.

All 4 of these are essential to learning. In high school you probably only had #1, which is why you don’t remember your French. Eventually, you can even drop #1 and divide time among the other 3.

There are 2 quotes that I think about every day. One is on the bulletin board in the office and is written: «Кто не хочет—ищет причины. Кто хочет—ищет возможности.» Translation: The person who doesn’t want to do something looks for excuses. The person who wants to do something looks for opportunities.

The other comes from Steve Prefontaine: “To give anything less than your best is to sacrifice the gift.”

Of course, the fastest way to get your 2,200 hours is to spend 40 hours a week at it, like a full-time job. Unfortunately, only spies and missionaries get paid to spend that much time on a language. However, I find that I need at least 20 a week to keep moving forward and not forget things, and that’s a big commitment for most of us.

Other advice:

Monitor your “iceberg.” Your iceberg is how many words you know. Some of those words are above the surface and easy to access, other are buried under the surface—words you’ve learned but forgotten, usually because you don’t use them much. The more of your iceberg is above the surface (through practice and immersion) the better you are.

I use flashcard software to keep track of how many verbs I’m memorizing, and the software keeps track of what I know well and not-so-well.

Use Total Physical Response (TPR) learning whenever possible. Learn the basic actions of your day as you do them. I wake up, I eat breakfast, I shower, I brush my teeth... all of these are good for use with your helper.

Keep a notebook handy to write everything down. When you come across a new word somewhere, write it down immediately. Look up the definition and consider adding it to your flashcard list. I’ve filled up tons of notebooks with words, phrases, quick-reference grammar points, etc.

DON’T GIVE UP. 99% of people will say “I don’t have ______.” Do what you can with what you do have, and do your best to find a way to fill that ______.

Hope this helps someone somewhere!

The Transnistrian Question

2007-11-05T05:16:00.000-05:00

I've mentioned Transnistria before-- that mysterious country that's not really a country. (In most tourist guides it's recommended you spend a few hours there to see what it's like to live in a Communist police state, buy some postage stamps that no country will honor, and then get the heck out).
(It's widely feared as a no-man's-land where money is laundered and arms, drugs, and people are heavily traded/smuggled).

The #1 obstacle to foreign investment in Moldova isn't the red tape, or Communist-led government, or the World Bank's ranking of Moldova as just the 92nd easiest place in the world for Doing Business in 2008.
Fears over Transnistria are what is keeping Wall Street out. It's also what will keep Moldova from ever joining the EU. The latest issue of The Economist has an article on new developments in the situation.

"This summer, the president, Vladimir Voronin, privately flirted with a private peace deal that gave the separatists guaranteed representation in a new federal parliament and government. That produced lots of protest—from patriotic Moldovans who thought the terms too soft, and from outsiders who feared that it would end up giving the Kremlin too much sway in the new country."

Rumors of Voronin making a deal with the Kremlin were prevalent in Western blogs a few weeks ago when Voronin and Putin met in Kazakhstan. The result of the meeting was that Russia finally lifted its ban on Moldovan wines, ending a sanction that had hurt the Moldovan economy for almost 2 years. "What was the price and what secret deal was made?" is the question.

Political hypothesis #1 (The Economist's optimistic view):
Russia has gotten tired of spending the money and troops to support Transnistria. Voronin has agreed to slowly integrate the country into Moldova, making concessions. Eventually, all will be peaceful and Moldova can slowly continue to look Westward to EU membership.

Political hypothesis #2 (taken from this news source, which you have to now pay to read):
Russia has pulled out of the Conventional Forces in Europe treaty to ensure keeping its troops in places like Transnistria because it is ticked off that the West supports independence for Kosovo. Russia will never leave Transnistria, and will never allow Moldova to join the EU. The deal was made in Kazakhstan: Russia resumes imports and Moldova's government remains pro-Russia.

Political hypothesis #3:
Transnistria will declare its independence, supported by Russia. Moldova can then move on and eventually elect a liberal pro-Western government, attract foreign investment, and become a part of the EU and/or Romania.

Political hypothesis #4:
The Communists fear losing the next election in 2009. Voronin's son is the richest person in Moldova, and they have many vested interests in maintaining their control of several state and private industries. In order to keep their majority they may allow Transnistria to reunite and give them enough seats in parliament to ensure the Communists will keep control of Moldova. The Communists will keep their vested interests and continue to hamper progress toward joining the EU and/or Romania, thus pleasing the Kremlin.

The next 10 years here may be really interesting.

What is a Moldovan?

2007-11-02T06:17:00.000-04:00

Moldova is in a unique political position, and whether or not a race of Moldovans exist is a “relatively new and controversial subject,” as Wikipedia puts it. Is your ethnicity really an ethnicity? Even the Moldova Wikipedia page has been locked because of the ongoing controversy. At the office this week, I’ve been privy to a few almost-heated exchanges along these lines. It complicates the matter when you have the self-proclaimed “country” of Transnistria, the independent, seperatist area of Moldova that no other country in the world recognizes as a country.

While the law says there is such a thing as a Moldovan, and Moldovan language, in historic reality Moldovans are ethnic Romanians and Moldovan language is just Romanian. (Note when Joni was learning Romanian we didn’t call it Moldovan. This is controversial here and in talking about it with locals I have to choose which word I use carefully).

The Soviet Union did a really good job re-orienting people and re-writing some of their histories to serve the purposes of the union of the State. Moldova is one of those places where this is most evident.

Summarized history of Moldova:

Pre-1812, most of the land mass constituting Moldova was part of Romania.
1812- this land mass was taken by the Russian Empire and named Bessarabia. Russia encouraged Russians and others to settle there, and began to replace the Romanian Orthodox church with the Russian Orthodox church, and discouraged Romanian in education.
1918- Russian Empire collapses and Bessarabia joins with Romania as a single country. Transnistria splits off and forms its own Socialist Republic.
1940- Hitler and Stalin sign the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact that officially gives Bessarabia to the USSR. Transnistria is united with Bessarabia and area is officially called Moldova. (Most industry would be introduced in this Transnistrian section, made up mostly of ethnic Russians and Ukranians).
1941- Hitler invades USSR and Romania again resumes control of Moldova.
1944- USSR re-takes Moldova.
Stalin begins deporting Moldovans to Siberia and Kazakhstan, while importing Russians and Ukranians to the area. The local language is officially called “Moldovan,” and a new official alphabet in Cyrillic is introduced. Changes in the official language are made to make it different from Romanian.
USSR also begins a new education program stating that Moldovans are their own race and Romanians are something different. (De-nationalization programs like this are designed to keep Moldova from re-joining with more independent-minded Romania, whose leadership had gotten on Stalin’s bad side).
1989- Moldova passes a law restoring Moldovan language to a Latin script. “Moldovan” is still the name of official language of the country.
1991- Moldova declares independence from the USSR. Some people begin to push for re-uniting with Romania. Transnistria declares independence from Moldova and civil war ensues.
Russian troops assist Transnistria, and a cease-fire is signed. Transnistria becomes its own entity. A 1994 vote shows that most Moldovans prefer independence to uniting with Romania. Schools in Transnistria teaching Romanian/Moldovan continue to use the Cyrillic script introduced by the Russians.
2001- Moldova becomes the only country in the world with freely-elected Communist government (in name, at least). Government continues policy of Moldovan as the official language.
A 2004 census says that 60% claim Moldovan as their mother tongue, whereas only 16% claim Romanian.

Now, most former Soviet countries recognize Moldovans as their own ethnicity. Romania does not, recognizing them only as Romanians. The CIA World Factbook has a single term for the ethnic population—“Romanian/Moldovan”-- underscoring the problem.

You can read the heated debate among Wikipedia contributors here.

The local media, and even the national anthem, don’t refer to the national language by name only simply as “Limba de Stata” (“Language of the State”). The ruling Communist party has clearly made their commitment to independence from Romania. By keeping the name of the language separate from Romanian, you also keep the idea of the country remaining independent from Romania. Make sense?

So, is Moldovan the Soviet-modified Romanian written in Cyrillic script? Or is it the dialect of Romanian that’s spoken here in Moldova (and written in Latin script)? Or is it just Romanian that someone wants to call Moldovan so that people remain Moldovan instead of Romanian? Liberals argue that Moldovan was a purely Soviet invention and should be treated as such. These are the argument that happens every day among diplomats and politicians here.

While most Moldovans claim Moldovan as their language, hundreds of thousands are applying for Romanian passports and citizenship based on their Romanian ethnicity…

If there’s enough interest in this post, I’ll post some of the latest political theories about how this is all going to end up. If I’ve made errors here, Serghei and anyone else more knowledgeable than myself should feel free to point them out.

New Addition

2007-11-01T08:07:00.000-04:00

Yesterday we had another sonogram. It's getting bigger! According to the sonogram the baby is at 11 weeks and 5 days.

Everything looks healthy and good. Joni will go back for a glucose and bacteria test in 2 weeks. Prayerfully, this will not set off another round of tests elsewhere like it did last time.
Too bad sonograms are not a tradable good, as that would dramatically reduce health care costs in America. This one cost us 50 lei (about $4).

Fall Back?! They do that here?! (Joni)

2007-10-28T10:44:00.000-04:00

Today was the day that Moldova's time changed for the winter season. We "spring forward" and "fall back" the same way America does, although on a slightly different schedule. (At least that's what I hear - did America fall back a couple weeks ago?) This, however, never even crossed my mind. I forgot completely about the existence of any such thing as Daylight Savings Time. In the States, everybody makes such a big deal about it, that it's almost impossible to forget it. Here, I did not hear one tiny little word about it - completely oblivious.

So I had arranged to catch my usual ride to church with Ghena and Alina this morning, and I was supposed to be at their house at 8:45. I purposefully arrived a few minutes late, because 8:45 Moldovan time is never earlier than 8:55 American time. :) However, I waited and waited outside their house, and they never came! I called and Alina wasn't answering her cell phone... So I waited until 9:05 and finally gave up and just went back home. I figured they had left me behind since I was late.

So I went back home, planning to just do my own house church. However, I got a call from Alina at 9:30. "Joni, I saw you called me earlier. We were still in bed. Did you not know that Moldova's time changed last night?!" Umm, nope. Yes, I was standing outside your house at 7:45 this morning. Yes, I did get out of bed at 6:45 this morning. ARGH! So I had just enough time to wash my breakfast dishes, change BACK into my church clothes, and go back to their house to get a ride a go to church.

As I was walking to their house, though, I prayed, "Lord, I am REALLY tired, and I know I won't be able to sit through a long Romanian service without getting too sleepy. Please, PLEASE let the sermon be in English today!" Isn't God so good?! Not only was the preacher visiting from Texas, so the sermon was indeed in English. But ALSO the choir sang their special music in English! The choir made up of Moldovans! Of all the church services I've been to, I've never heard a Moldovan choir sing in English. They sang "You Raise Me Up." The soloist did the verses and first chorus in Romanian, but then the last several choruses when the choir joined in, they sang in English. What a blessing to my soul! It brought tears to my eyes. I asked, and God answered more than I even imagined. What a good and kind God we have to show His marvelous love for me in that way!

The Steripen (Justin)

2007-10-26T13:44:00.000-04:00

Is the water safe to drink in Chisinau? Not exactly. The locals don't actually drink large quantities of water, they mostly drink moderate amounts of hot tea. That's normal for this side of the world. It's a good thing as the local water infrastructure is actually in desperate need of repairs and upgrades.

As Americans who drink lots of water we either have to filter it, boil it, or buy it bottled... until now. Introducing (if you've never met it) The SteriPEN. Yes, it's the clever combination of two words: "sterile" and "pen." Clever, because it's shaped sort of like a pen and it makes water sterile to drink. It says so on the box, and we're still alive as further proof that it works!
Readers Digest named it one of the top 10 products of 2007 that will change your life. It changed ours, and Googling it shows us several other happy customers.

It uses UV light to kill microbes in water and can do up to a liter at a time. We bought a 1-liter bottle of Fanta, lopped off the top and voila. The light it emits isn't harmful to your eyes if you use a plastic or glass bottle, but our bottle is clear and the glare sort of frightens me. So, here I am wearing my UV-resistant sunglasses while I stir. It's a bright light, so I usually look away. Actually, I often wear sunglasses around the house because my wife is so hot. And I'm shady. (Take your pick in which one you believe, or believe both if you want).

You push a button, it lights up, runs for 90 seconds and you have clean water. No hassles with boiling water and waiting for it to cool. We then pour it right into our Brita filter (which we brought from home, but we discovered they sell them here too) and have happy, clean water.

We picked it up for $99 at Bass Pro Shops just before we left. That may sound expensive, but the amount we would have spent buying bottled water here over 5 months comes out to much more than that. We use rechargeable AA batteries and that saves us some money too.

If nothing else, the SteriPEN also entertains American houseguests. The only Moldovan that's seen it was scared of the water afterwards (think Chernobyl), so we don't show it to locals. We highly recommend it to anyone needing to filter water for traveling, camping, etc.

News & Notes (Joni)

2007-10-25T11:54:00.000-04:00

I had a couple unrelated things I wanted to post on here and let everybody know about!

My Moldovan friend Irina sent me a text-message yesterday that she was hit by a trolleybus!! She says she is fine, just that her back hurts. Praise the Lord that she didn't have any worse injuries, and pray that she will recover quickly. Pray that I will be able to minister to her in any way that I can. And please also continue to pray for our safety in navigating the city's transportation system.
It has been RAINING here for the past several days nonstop, and it has definitely gotten cold. I don't know if this applies to most people, but I've been known to get kinda sad when I don't see the sun for a while. So pray the sun will come out and we won't have a whole country of sad people!! Pray also that I will bask in the light of the Son so that no amount of cold and gloomy weather can steal my joy. :)
I haven't been posting on this blog much, because I don't have much to say that I think pertains to it. In case any of you are wondering what I DO have to say, though, feel free to check out my personal blog, http://jonitapp.blogspot.com. I'm blogging on there about my pregnancy experience and any other things I have to say about life that don't fit on the Moldova blog.

Web-design team!

2007-10-23T13:39:00.000-04:00

HUGE breakthrough on our website project this week-- it's being created! Last week, I spoke with Vasily about getting the ball rolling. He finally had some free time to devote to the site and wanted to bring in a couple other programmers to help. The more the merrier! I searched through hundreds of templates for a homepage like we wanted, I wrote out step-by-step requirements for the designer, and now all we need is someone to build it.

Yesterday, the team began work in the CAMED office. I lent Vasily my computer to use, so we have 3 guys working at one time. I took some pictures today. They didn't really want to pose for them, and they aren't patient enough to wait for my camera to recharge the flash. So, here is what they look like most of the time.

Vasily is our chief architect. He programs and teaches programming for a living. He's in his early 20's and is a Believer. We've been talking with him about this from Day 1. Notice the cup of coffee with separate cup of sugar. Every programmer needs his coffee.

This is Dima and Sasha (notice the cool faux-hawk). They are 17, and are not yet known believers. I don't know much about them, they don't seem to speak much Russian, only Romanian and a wide English vocabulary of programming terms. I know that Vasily is their teacher and mentor. I suggested that we come up with a team name, but Vasily told me they already have one and it's secret until they build the site good enough to publicly put their name on it.

I'm very thankful for the work they're volunteering to do. Please pray for them! Pray that this site would glorify God, and that they'd come to know Christ personally!

Good news all around!

2007-10-19T10:20:00.000-04:00

1. We just got back from the doctor. Joni's bilirubin levels are much lower and within normal parameters! So, praise the Lord. Thanks so much for your prayers! She'll go to the obstetrician on Monday, but we don't have to go back to the liver specialist for another month. She will continue on Duphalac.

2. We received our "green cards" this week! So, after 3 weeks of not having our passports we have them back (can't leave the country without them) along with permission to live here! Aren't they real nice pictures of us?
3. Justin had a great meeting with our programmer on Wednesday. He's finally got some free time and is enlisting at least 1 or 2 other people to help out on the site. He's been given a detailed list of things that need to be done, so hopefully starting on Monday we'll have an office full of programmers making things for the site! That's a huge praise as well.

Thanks for the prayers and the support! Much appreciated!!!

Fellowship of Workers (Justin)

2007-10-17T13:21:00.000-04:00

Last Thursday evening, we were invited to join a few friends to go to the ballet. Chisinau is definitely European in all of the theaters and artsy culture that it has. However, the ballet sold out before we could get tickets, so we decided to meet up for dinner instead. It eventually turned into a group of 12 Americans going to an English (ie: British-style) restaurant downtown.
We were mostly complete strangers, the only connection being each other, Christ, and the work that we're doing on this side of the world. But, it's weird how you can be among American believers and feel like you've known them your whole life.
I took a picture of our group because there are 5 missions agencies represented here. I wanted to introduce the ministries that we were newly acquainted with.

At our gathering, we met Tanya Velardo, who works with Child Evangelism Fellowship (CEF) here in Moldova. She's been here for 6 years and speaks fluent Russian. CEF has an amazing ministry of doing correspondence Bible courses for kids, they have over 6,000 children who subscribe. They also work with orphanages, schools, and local villages to put on summer camps and also train local churches in how to do Sunday School and children's outreach. She's the only foreign worker with CEF, the rest are Moldovan. I was quite impressed with their ministry. I think some of the church planters reaching adults could learn a lot from how they do Bible correspondence courses. Tanya is from NY City, complete with accent.

We also met Kelly's new roomate, Shauna Caldwell, who is here for a 2-year commitment with Assemblies of God, home-schooling a missionary family's children. She's from Memphis (also complete with accent) and joined me in ordering "liver in cheese sauce" at the restaurant. (BTW-- it was delicious. Don't ever dare say I'm not Southern. The next day I went somewhere else for lunch and ordered a big crepe stuffed with liver and onions. Mmmmm...liver and onions).

Also pictured are several people from Word Made Flesh ministries in Romania, who just happened to be visiting Moldova. These folks serve in various capacities, mainly doing outreach to kids and running a community center in Bucharest. Several of them were on 4-month stays but were already decent enough in Romanian to order for themselves at the restaurant and get around Chisinau, thus I was impressed. One of them used to live in Moldova in the bad old days (pre 1998), has been living in Romania for several years, and married a Romanian. It always impresses me to find people who lay down permanent roots like that and seem genuinely happy.

Please check out the linked blogs and websites to learn about the awesome things God is doing in Eastern Europe. It's always great to hear about other ministries here in Moldova! Speaking of which, I hope to post an update very soon on the strides we're beginning to make on our website project.

Holiday Weekend (Justin)

2007-10-15T03:05:00.001-04:00

Saturday was the annual Wine Day, celebrating Moldova's chief export and national past time. All the Moldovan wine companies built neat pavilions in the central square for the public to sample their wine. Professional wine testers came to judge this year's vintage quality, and the President awarded some companies various awards based on quality and presentation.
I was quite impressed with the pageantry and the quality of the environment downtown. Traditional singers and dancers were on stage performing. In the park, there were dozens of mini restaurants set up selling kebab ("shashlik") and kiosks selling tons of pastries. There were also a lot of vendors selling all kinds of arts and crafts. I met up with some American friends and we enjoyed the fresh kebab and pastries. I learned I can eat way more kebab than 3 American girls combined (that may not actually be a good thing for me).

The setup was the same on Sunday for City Day, celebrating the establishment of Chisinau, but the crowds and atmosphere were much larger as the city shuts down to celebrate. Joni came with me after house church on Sunday and we did some souvenir shopping (as well as more kebab eating!). The weather got down to ZERO degrees Celsius and was very wet, so we didn't last long. These are some pictures I took on Saturday, as well as some I found on the official Moldovan Photography website.

Young and old alike engage in spontaneous traditional dancing here, gotta love it.

Notice brides and grooms are all dancing with wine glasses in their hands being amazingly careful not to spill them on their dresses."Wait a minute, that's not Moldova!" you're probably saying. You're right, it's the celebration of Kentucky beating #1 LSU 43-37 in 3OT on Saturday night. This was also a big part of my holiday weekend, as I stayed up listening to it until 3 am at which time my hollering woke up Joni and she also enjoyed the jubilation.
We topped Sunday night off by watching the latest episodes of The Office, playing a round of Phase 10, and eating delicious pizza with some missionary friends here. A very fun holiday weekend, indeed!

Article about Moldova

2007-10-12T06:30:00.001-04:00

I stumbled across this article in the Florida Baptist Witness yesterday.
"Moldova's churches hope in God, country."

The Moldova Baptist Union president has this quote:

Emigration likewise is the one of the biggest losses and challenges for churches, Ghiletchi says. Each month, a different leader or rising leader decides to emigrate.

"We baptize around 1,000 people every year, but we lose about 500 each year from our churches due to emigration," Ghiletchi says. "This issue greatly affects our churches, especially in the villages where there are no longer young people, just children and grandparents."

Baptists as well as other groups in Moldova are trying to find ways to provide opportunities and hope for the younger generation. Ghiletchi says he has stayed because he has hope in Moldova and God.

"If all the young leave, who will change the country?" Ghiletchi asks.

This article drives home the importance of the work of CAMED/Invest-Credit: Helping believers create jobs to keep the witness going and provide an economic base for Moldova to develop from. Every job that's created gives someone the opportunity to stay in Moldova, tithe to his/her church, and gives the potential for his/her company to grow to employ more people and witness to the community. Please email us if you're interested in how you can donate funds to create jobs for Moldovans.

Brief Medical Update (Justin)

2007-10-12T04:09:00.000-04:00

This morning, I picked up Joni's results of tests on several samples we carried to a clinic last weekend. The receptionist looked up her results on the computer printed out a piece of paper with various categories and places to check "present." There was nothing checked or written on the paper.

I asked "What am I supposed to do with this? There's nothing written on it."
The receptionist replied "So? Was there bacteria before?"
I replied "Yes, is there not now?"
Receptionist: "No, there's nothing now."
Me: "Okay... thanks."

So... we'll take that to mean that Joni is bacteria-free! I'm told that even in America it's pretty common for bacteria to show up in samples due to contamination in the lab. We're going to suppose that's what happened at the previous clinic. So, either it was a miracle due in large part to your prayers, or it was a false positive by the first lab's 2 tests. Either way, we're thankful!

The obstetrician was pleased with the news. So, the next step will be to do a blood test at the gastro clinic next week, then the obstetrician wants to see Joni again after we get the results.

What's up next for us?
Tomorrow brings the giant Wine Day festival. This is a huge Moldovan holiday, and we're not sure what to expect.
Sunday is City Day, where downtown will be mostly shut down and there will be craft vendors, food, concerts, dancing, fireworks, etc. Great times!

I hope to update you very soon on our website project here. I can say that work has gone slower than hoped and we hope to see it speeded up as soon as today. Enjoy your weekend!

A Day at the Office (Justin)

2007-10-10T04:07:00.000-04:00

A post about the Invest-Credit office is long overdue.

The office is in a newly renovated building and is modern-looking on the inside.

The walls inside the office are bare and boring, but that's typical for offices here. It's the people that give it life. It's usually pretty calm and quiet, but on days where many clients have to pay the office is full of people and quite busy. And, for whatever reason, today they wanted to smile for my pictures, which is quite unusual here. They're used to Americans expecting smiles in their pictures, I guess.

The day begins at 8:45 with an office devotional. Ghena plays guitar and we sing some praise songs in Romanian (which I don't speak), then we take prayer requests, and pray for each other. This picture is of the group just after the devotional, having an early-morning staff meeting in the conference room.

The Staff:
This is Roman; he's basically the client-relations guy. He has 2 cellphones and at least 1 office phone on his desk at all times. He's tall, fit, and I joke that he's the ladies man. He's taken various dancing lessons 3 days a week for the past year, and is quite the dancer. He helped me go shopping for a hip outfit for the office. Roman's heart language is Romanian, but his English isn't too bad. He's learning French and is hoping to emigrate to Canada soon. His mom has terminal brain cancer, and this is a great concern to everyone.

This is Victor, the "office manager" and Ghena's right-hand man. Joni says he looks like Kenny Byler. He's usually pretty serious, almost melancholy. He's a nice guy and speaks excellent English, although his heart language is Russian. He does a lot of the overview of the office finances, keeps the network running, and more.

This is Kolya (real name Nikolai), "operations manager." Kolya is the newest addition to the team, and is always smiling and happy to be here (he's trying hard not to smile in this pic). I don't know how his English is because we always communicate in Russian, which is his heart language.

This is Tatiana, sitting in her cashier's office. She takes the money from clients when they make payments and does some bookkeeping. She's ethnic Ukranian, which is her heart language and speaks no English.

This is Kelly, hard at work on a video project she's making. She's here with Hope International, one of several Western partners that Invest-Credit works with.

This is Sasha (real name Alexander), Invest-Credit's lawyer who just recently returned from his honeymoon (our post about his wedding). Sasha is a fun guy. He gives me interesting information about laws and business here in Moldova. He pretty much only operates in Russian, though he tries hard to speak English as well.

This is Ghena, the boss and CEO. I caught him at lunch (hot dogs and salad) looking uncharacteristically unprofessional, though he's a really friendly boss to have. He lives about 2 blocks away from us, so he often gives me a lift to work in the morning so I don't have to ride the minibus. He has some potentially-serious medical issues right now that also need prayer. While Ghena speaks both Romanian and Russian, he prefers to keep all language in the office Romanian. He and his wife Alina speak fluent English.

That photo was taken in the lunch room. In that little space you see at the table between Ghena and I, six to eight people sit at one time for lunch. It's kind of like eating your lunch in one of those sardine-can Chisinau minibuses.

And this is my workspace. I lug the laptop in my heavy backpack across town, annoying and decapitating people in the minibus. The headphones and notebook are for Russian studies. The water bottle was a gift from Joni's parents. After morning devotional, I plant myself here and scour all the local news websites for new data about Moldova's economy, which I record for anyone who wants it. I also look for templates and ideas for our website. Due to the nature of my project, I don't have to work 9 to 6 like the nationals here, and I usually go home after lunch.

Welp, hope you enjoyed seeing some of the office and my co-workers. They're all great people, and it's a blessing to work here!

A Word from the Lab Rat (Joni)

2007-10-07T15:13:00.000-04:00

I just wanted to post a little note on here, since it's been Justin who has been doing all the posting about my medical situation. I just wanted to say THANK YOU for your prayers and concern - please keep them coming! I'm feeling alright, but I don't know which of my symptoms are just from the pregnancy and which are from any other ailments I may have! I think my body is taking a while to adjust to the new medicine, but I don't think I'm having any harmful side effects from it. Still nauseous, but that's just the pregnancy, I'm sure!

So I don't really have anything to update you with, besides the fact that we've submitted all my samples to the lab and have to go back Friday for the results. Other than that, things have settled into a pretty normal routine. I have finished my language lessons, so my only occupation is keeping the house, trying to stay healthy, and attempting to show Justin gratitude for the amazing tender care he is taking of me throughout this ordeal. He seems to be pleased with the dinners I'm crafting for him, and I have to say I'm rather enjoying them myself! :)

So I just wanted to let you know that I'm still alive and kicking, and I'm unbelievably grateful for your prayers and support, and I wanted to publicly acknowledge how wonderful my husband has been in taking care of me. Please keep up your prayers for my health, the baby, and Justin's perseverance in caring for us. Please pray also that Justin will be encouraged by being able to get back to the office this week and making progress on his projects.

Know anything about Duphalac?

2007-10-05T03:28:00.000-04:00

Thanks for all your prayers! We arrived safely and mostly on time at our clinics today, and hopefully are a step closer to getting information.

So, Joni and I had to go to two clinics today. I hesitate to write the more humorous (albeit gross) stories about our adventures, even though I want to give an accurate picture of what we've done so far in Moldova. I suppose we should take pictures of these places for the blog, but we usually have other things on our mind. Hopefully, we'll look back on these days and laugh.

Clinic #1:
We had an English-speaking friend call the first clinic to get some information about it, and what we needed to do there. She told us to show up in the morning with Joni's liquid sample [I'm not typing the actual word here, you figure it out] in a jar. That's how most Moldovan clinics do this, you just use whatever you have handy at home, like a jar, and bring it in yourself. We showed up this morning with our jar and the lady looked at us with horror and promptly gave us a "sterile container" to put a sample in. She told us: "Come back tomorrow with the sample in the sterile container, only."

So, Joni and I stepped outside and decided it wasn't worth it to carry a jar of our sample in her purse all around town today, and also a waste to have gotten up so early to get across town by 8am.

I went back inside and asked: "Can she just make the sample here?"
Receptionist: "If you're ready to, I suppose so. The bathroom is downstairs."
So, Joni quickly disappeared and magically came back without our jar, but with the full "sterile container."
We're hoping it's not too contaminated. We actually have to go back again Saturday and Sunday to do the same thing over again. They need 3 days worth of tests, I guess. The clinic is new, nice, and modern.

Joni points out:
"In the states, they put you on antibiotics immediately after they find some sort of bacteria. Here, they tested me 2 weeks ago and found bacteria, tested me 2 weeks later and found bacteria again, and now I have to do another 3 days of tests before we can even get any diagnosis."

Clinic #2:
Alas, we went on to the liver specialist, who was tucked away in an impossible-to-find place downtown.

Her English isn't good, so we did most of it in Russian. She decided that Joni's bilirubin isn't high enough to be dangerous, so we'll wait another 10 days and then do another blood test. She said the most important thing is for Joni not to over-exert herself. The baby might be born jaundiced baby if the bilirubin stays high.

She also prescribed Duphalac to her, to take twice a day for a month. Looks like Duphalac is a lactulose medicine prescribed for various gastrointestinal things, and is safe for pregnant women. Some studies have shown that it has positive effects in treating liver problems that cause high bilirubin. That's about all we know. One of my co-worker's wives was on Duphalac for another reason and said it's what she'd recommend too. This was also a humorous phone conversation in Russian in the middle of the office. I got some looks from some of people here: "Is he really saying that word right here in the middle of the office?!"

If anyone has any information on this drug, we'd appreciate it. So far, Joni isn't jaundice and I'm
pretty sure she doesn't have hepatitis or liver cirrhosis.
Thanks again for all of your prayers!

Medical Update (Thursday, Justin)

2007-10-04T09:51:00.000-04:00

I got the info we needed from the OB this morning. She has referred us to a doctor who specializes in liver/gastrointestinal cases. The in-house doctor for the U.S. Embassy says she's the best for what we need. She speaks some English, well enough to feel that we won't need a translator tomorrow. It'll be a fun bilingual event. I've been memorizing organ names today, fun times. We also have to go to yet another clinic for another test, but we're lacking some info on the where/when for that. So, pray for us as we gather info!

Our problems are actually pretty small in comparison to the other medical problems we're seeing among friends and co-workers here. Ghena (my boss) has been out all week with a mysterious throat ailment. He's unable to eat solid foods at all, and the doctors have many concerns. Please pray for healing for him.

One of my co-worker's mother has also just been diagnosed with terminal brain cancer, and it's been very hard on him and his family. She's not a believer, so pray for her as well.

The medical stuff has kept me from going to the office much. Our main project is behind schedule, and I am trying to find some ways to get it back on track. We're all sure that Satan is at work in all of the above. Wish I had happier news to blog about.

Thanks so much for your prayers and kind emails! We very much appreciate them!

Medical Update (Justin)

2007-10-03T06:40:00.001-04:00

We just heard back from the doctor and Joni's re-takes came back "bad." Her bilirubin is still "high" and they also found some bacteria in her other sample that concerns them.

The obstetrician wants to refer us to other doctors here in Chisinau. I will speak to her tomorrow to get the details. Hopefully, these doctors will be on the Embassy's list of English-speakers.

As a concerned husband and expectant father, I have a myriad of concerns:
1. We have no medical/pregnancy books here. Anyone with any medical/pregnancy expertise is invited to help us find information about the above problems. Are these serious concerns? Is this something normal that they're just calling "abnormal?"

2. My Russian isn't good enough to translate medical stuff word-for-word, which is needed. It's good enough to get us through the clinic and to understand what we're doing, but there's a whole other vocabulary there that I'm just now beginning to learn.
If these doctors don't speak English, then we'll have to find someone we can trust to use as a translator.

3. If these doctors are wanting some weird Soviet-style tests, then we'll have to make the decision about whether to continue with the medical stuff here. Medicine is the same as other professions in Moldova, which I've written about: People who are good at it tend to go to Europe or Russia to practice.

So, please pray for the health and safety of Joni and child, as well as wisdom for us and the doctors. Pray also for good translators as need be.

Jazz band at church! (Justin)

2007-10-01T05:00:00.001-04:00

We had a pretty restful weekend. Saturday, we had some of our coworkers over for dinner and Phase 10. We taught Ghena and Alina how to play, and they caught on very quickly.

Sunday was "Thanksgiving Day" ("День Благодарения") for several local churches. This is a holiday that all churches in Moldova celebrate, but some choose to do it at different times. It is sort of a celebration of the harvest, like we do in America.

Slavik's church, which I normally attend, was doing a joint service with another Baptist church and we went because Slavik promised an exciting service and some Romanian for Joni. Well, he was wrong about the Romanian, but the service was incredible! It was done differently than most services here in order to attract visitors.

You can see the decorations in the pictures, notice the elaborate grape bunches made with balloons. Many people brought fruit and vegetables, which were put up front as decorations. These were later distributed to 2 orphanages in town.

Coolest of all, they had a real jazz band performing much of the music! Piano, trumpet, bass guitar, 2 percussionists, a one-armed pan flutist(!), and a lounge-style singer. They were great! We took a short video of them, so you can watch it an get an idea of what it was like.

They sang a secular song about Fall, as well as some praise stuff. Even the old grandma-types were clapping along!

The churches' combined choirs dressed in traditional Moldovan dress and led some singing. There was also an "interpretive movement" sketch to the Jaci Velasquez song "Flower in the Rain." (This was actually the low point of the service for me-- there's no way you could understand the interpretive movements without understanding the English lyrics of the song, which few people there could, and it even had American Sign Language in it... why?). Very progressive for a Baptist church here!

The songs and sermons also featured PowerPoint animation that went along with the main points. These were hugely effective in holding peoples' attention, and looked really professional.

There was only 1 sermon, and it was a very thorough presentation of the Gospel, which several people raised their hands at the end indicating they wanted to receive.

Joni didn't understand much, but she had a great time. Probably the most fun church service we've been to in a really long time.

_____________________________________________

On a different note, many of you have asked about when Joni's blood test will be so you can be praying. It will be tomorrow (Tuesday) morning at 8:00 our time, which is 1:00am Eastern time. Please say a prayer for her before you go to bed tonight! We'll post once we know any results. Thanks!

And Baby Makes Three!

2007-09-27T13:40:00.000-04:00

Many of you should have already received this news over email, but for our readers who aren't on our newsletter list, we want to share with you our really big, unexpected, and exciting news! We're going to have a baby! Yes, that's right, come May, there will be a new addition to the Tapp household. I'm almost at 7 weeks now, and our due date is officially May 17.

We are still planning on staying in Moldova until Christmas as originally planned. Through the American Embassy, we found an English-speaking obstetrician, who we have seen 3 times already for various tests - blood test, urine sample, and yesterday we had our first sonogram! (For those of you unskilled at reading a sonogram, the black round thing in the middle is my uterus, and the white blob on the right side of it is the baby.) The sonographer told us that the baby is alive and looking right so far... He even showed us where its little heart is already beating! I am overwhelmed at the fact that there is a tiny heart beating inside of me!

We are not only thrilled to find such a nice, English-speaking doctor's office here, but we're also excited about how cheap the health care is! We've paid less than $15 total for all three doctor visits, and this morning's sonogram cost a grand total of $3. So in this world where the value of the dollar is dropping dramatically and killing our funds, at least SOMETHING is on our side financially! :)

I have been feeling ok - very tired and pretty nauseous. I'm ok with that, though, because the nausea tells me that my body is producing the right hormones to make the baby healthy! I feel very blessed to have this happen here, because I don't have large demands on my time, so I'm able to rest a lot and take naps every day. If we were in the States, I'm sure I'd have a job to go to where a daily nap just wouldn't be possible. So although this wasn't a planned event in our lives, we know it is God's perfect timing, and we are already finding things about it to be very thankful for. Justin also wanted me to mention that my sense of smell, which is usually not very keen at all, has become strangely heightened with pregnancy. Riding a minibus last week, the smell of a neighbor's chewing gum made me totally nauseous. And I haven't been able to buy fresh fish - I can't stand to walk up to the fish counter and smell it! I don't mind eating it once it's cooked, so I just have to buy frozen fish and cook it frozen. :)

So we are very excited, although still quite shocked, and we would covet your prayers for health, safety, and good decision-making! I'd also like to request prayer: A blood test that I had last week came back abnormal (high levels of bilirubin, a liver enzyme) and so they want to retest me next week. They said this test comes back wrong quite a bit, so there's no need for alarm unless it comes back abnormal a second time. I'd covet your prayers that it comes back normal this time and there's nothing to worry about!

A Great Weekend

2007-09-26T14:44:00.000-04:00

Last weekend, we took up an invitation from our new friends Chris and Nancy Russell to visit their home in Comrat, a small city in Gagauzia, which is an "autonomous region" in Southern Moldova (this Wikipedia page makes for a brief but fascinating read).

Gaugazia had some major draws for us (particularly Justin):
1. The Gauguz people speak the Gagauz language, which is Turkic-based and isn't too far from Azerbaijani.

2. The majority of the people speak in Russian most of the time. We heard no Romanian on the streets, in church, or in shops.

3. It wasn't Chisinau. This was our first real excursion to a different city, so we got to see how other people live.

The Russells were more than gracious hosts. Nancy cooked unbelievably large meals for us, the likes we haven't seen in a very long time. Their kids are away at boarding school in Germany, and in the States, so their house was unusually quiet and we hope we kept them company.

Some pics:Justin trying to pose like a local would. In a park built in memory of historic Gagauz people.
The main Orthodox church in town.

V.I. Lenin, eagerly protecting the main street that is still named after him. Gagauzia was pretty unhappy when the USSR broke up.

The highlight of the weekend for me (Justin) when Chris took me to a Baptist church in Comrat on Sunday. The elders greeted me warmly and promptly invited me to preach ("No, thanks!"). When they found out I spoke Azerbaijani, one of them engaged in conversation. He would tell me something in Gagauz, then when I didn't understand he would say again in Turkish, and then I would answer in an Azeri/Turkish blend. If we couldn't figure it out, we'd just do it in Russian.

They asked me to speak to the church about my time in Azerbaijan, so I did so briefly in Russian, with Chris providing both moral and technical support. Then, one of the older ladies on the front row asked me to speak about my family in Azerbaijani. I did so, but quickly got my languages confused. I said "Menim bashim chashib!" which is Azeri for "My head is confused!" and they all laughed, and I was glad that it translated well.

The church was really well-organized for a small (sort-of-rural-type) church. They had a Sunday school hour with a printed lesson plan and bulletin, complete with memory verse (quoted readily by many in the audience). Sunday School for the kids, and a youth choir. About 50 people altogether in the church, I'd guess.

That whole service was probably the most fun I've had here. That's the first time I've been asked to speak in Russian in front of a large group of people. Singing a hymn in Gauguz and busting out my Azeri was a huge blast, as it's been a long time since I've spoken it.

Maybe more importantly, I got to briefly mention to the church about my job with Invest-Credit. A man with a medium-sized business came up to me after the service to ask about obtaining a loan. Chris told me that he's an honest businessman who always pays his taxes and understands how harmful the Church's dependency on Western funds is (ie: the perfect client). The man's business also employs at least one local pastor.

I had one of my co-workers call him on Monday, and it looks like he needs a larger loan than Invest-Credit has loans to give. However, investigating this opportunity further and seeing if we might raise support for it with BPN looks like it might be a doable project. More on that in the future.

On Monday morning, we were expecting our first bus experience to get home to Chisinau. We missed our intended bus, but luckily a guy with a large station wagon asked if we wanted to go with him for just 5 more lei a person. A girl about our age was also standing with us and said "I'll go if you're going," so we and a couple others hopped in the taxi and got a comfortable and fast ride back home. That was like the only money we spent the entire weekend, so we felt really blessed.

So, I hope to get back to Gagauzia sometime. I've often thought that one of the requirements for wherever we live long-term is that it has to be both Russian and Turkic speaking (like many of the post-Soviet republics). I guess we can add Comrat to that list of places where we'd consider living!

A Touch of Texas (Justin)

2007-09-25T03:13:00.000-04:00

Last week, Larry Martin, the IMB Strategy Coordinator for Moldovans, invited us to come meet with a team coming from Texas to work in Chisinau for a week.
The team was The Singing Men of South Texas, a group of Baptist music ministers who have formed a choir. There were about 30 in their group, including a few wives. While in the states they learned a few songs in Russian and Romanian, and sang them in churches and orphanages here in Chisinau, as well as did EV and construction! The normally conservative churches gave them hearty applause; people appreciate attempts to learn their languages. They've posted some pictures on their website.

I met and hung out with them for a couple hours on Friday as they were prayerwalking a neighborhood in our part of the city. While I didn't end up doing much myself, I enjoyed the fellowship and seeing how they brightened the day of many people they met. If I walk up to an old woman and hand her a Gospel tract I get a stern look. But, if you have a group of gray-haired Americans with their big smiles walking around, the people they hand tracts to just look tickled to accept whatever they give.
The Singing Men did a great job of canvassing the area. I was with Larry when he ran into some Jehovah's Witnesses and that, naturally, turned into a 20-minute conversation. There are a lot of JW's here, but that's another post.

Anyway, one of the people I met knew both Gary Rhodes (Joni's choir and praise team leader) and Chris Wommack (Joni's boss) pretty well, and it was fun to make the connection. There were several Baylor alum who wanted to talk to me about Waco and Bears Football and such.

It was just real nice to see a bit of Texas in Moldova. It's also very good to hear a Southern accent every now and again, as most of the English we hear here is with a Slavic accent. I quickly moved back into my "yes ma'am"s and "y'all"s when talking with the team.

Our Host Family (Joni)

2007-09-21T06:22:00.001-04:00

It's shameful that it has taken me this long to introduce you to this important family in our lives here in Moldova! My only excuse is that I had been wanting to get a picture with all 7 of them together, but that is entirely impossible. I've never seen all 7 of them together myself, much less assembled to take a picture. So I ended up settling for a picture with the 4 of them that we see most often, and you'll just have to imagine the other 3. :)

The above picture was taken at our house when we had a dinner with Dan & Beth before they went back to Holland. I provided the location, Tanya provided the food. I definitely got the good end of the deal. Front row from left: Anatoli, Nelly, Tanya, and Beth. Back row from left: Slavik, Dan with baby Rebecca, and Justin.

This family is the kindest, most generous and hospitable, most patient host family we could hope to have! They have hosted people in their home (or the apartment beside their home that we live in) non-stop for the past 5 years! They are Russian speakers, so Justin has a great time talking with them and practicing his language. They are really patient in helping him learn - they've never had anyone stay here that spoke as well as Justin, so they are excited to have people staying at their home that they can communicate with beyond sign language!

Anatoli and Tanya have five children: Slavik (23), Natasha (21), Ina (19), Sasha (17), and Nelly (7). Their four oldest children are all out of school and have various jobs, which is why it's hard to coordinate their schedules enough to get them all in one place at one time!

Slavik is the oldest, and his English is pretty good. He is SUCH a nice guy and so willing to help with anything! When I first met him, he had this crazed look in his eye that I wasn't so sure what it was about - but it didn't take long for me to see that was just the joy of the Lord shining out of him. He is great!

Natasha and Ina are both deeply involved in church work and ministries to children. They both also have boyfriends who are currently living in Moscow, so they spend a lot of their time pining for them. Natasha's relationship is more serious, and they plan to be married within the next year or two. Ina is the one in the family who has the best English - she translated for me at church once and did a great job.

Sasha is the computer expert in the family, and spends all hours of the day and night on his computer. He also works with his dad in the family business of renovating minibuses, and he does a great job at that.

Nelly is the baby of the family, and she just started first grade this year. She has a little trouble hearing out of one of her ears, and so she sometimes has a hard time understanding Justin's Russian. She also has a hard time understanding that I DO NOT speak Russian - she asks me all sorts of questions every time I see her, and just stands there expectantly waiting for me to answer. Sorry, Nelly, I don't speak Russian. :)

So we are very thankful for this family, and we are glad to have them as our friends here! Please join us in praising God for them, and also in praying that He will bless them immeasurably for their kindness to us!

Andy's Pizza (Justin)

2007-09-19T05:29:00.001-04:00

We've mentioned Andy's Pizza on here before, but a post in honor of the restaurant chain is long overdue!
You can learn a lot about Andy's from their website, which has an English translation. Recently, they introduced a "Mexican Menu," complete with Chili con Carne and Fajitas. Now, the burrito is more like Mexican Pizza (have you ever had a burrito with veal and eggplant?) but it's also quite tasty. (On the prices listed on the website, divide the Lei price by 11.6 and you have what it costs us in dollars today).

Andy's also serves an interesting breakfast, "gourmet coffee," excellent deserts and milkshakes, and of course, pizza (with your choice of thick or thin crust!).

Supposedly, Andy's was started by a Moldovan who worked for a pizza chain in the U.S. He apparently realized you can attract customers by providing quality service, playgrounds for kids, delivery, and catering especially to ex-pats. The result is that there are now 13 Andy's in Chisinau alone, and several more in other parts of the country. Here is the one that is a 5 minute walk from our house.
"Together with your family and friends you will have a wonderful time in our pizzeria picnicking among sunflowers, forest grass and children’s’ laugh. It is an ideal place for all your family, children and friends to have a rest because here, every customer will find all that he/she needs: a comfortable separate area in any hall, terrace to have supper in the open, and a playground for children."

Every Andy's has a playground for kids so parents love to go there. The food is relatively cheap, even by Moldovan standards. Many just go for desert. The service is fast, we always have our food within 30 minutes. Every item on the menu is written in English, and accompanied by a picture so you can see what it is. Every ingredient is translated into Russian and Romanian as well. So, many ex-pats and tourists practically live there.

I actually prefer their lunch menu because the selection is more national (borscht and usually something more Moldovan). We've never used the delivery service, but I'm told that they store your phone number (a la Papa Johns) and you can just tell them "my usual, please."

Imitation is the highest form of flattery. Other restaurants in town offer delivery, have similar playgrounds, and I imagine are simply trying to copy Andy's success. But none offer the same high-quality service or the great website. Andy's blows McDonalds way out of the water!

Lovely Day for a Wedding (Joni)

2007-09-17T12:29:00.000-04:00

Saturday was definitely a lovely day for a wedding! Sasha, the lawyer at our office, got married on Saturday, and we had the privilege to attend! They held the wedding at a camp about 45 minutes outside of Chisinau, so we got a ride from Ghena & Alina. Apparently traditional Moldovan wedding ceremonies are REALLY long, so Ghena & Alina decided to arrive late on purpose to not have to sit through several hours of ceremony. The wedding was supposed to start at 2 in the afternoon. We arrived at 3, and so we sat through a lovely 20 minutes and then it was over! (And from what we hear, this was a short one!) The couple are both believers, so it was moving the way they used Scripture and prayed together. Their parents also got up and prayed for them during the service, which was very special. So this was definitely not your normal Orthodox Moldovan wedding.It was neat to get to see all of our coworkers dressed up for the occasion and outside the office. Below is a picture of all our coworkers. From left to right: Kelly, Victor, Alina, Ghena, Sasha & his bride Nelly, Roman, me, and Justin.
Another thing that was different about this wedding was that since the couple are Baptists, there was no dancing at the reception, which is apparently a big no-no among European Baptists. So instead, there was a 4-hour long feast. And I mean a feast! Upon walking into the reception room, the tables were already loaded full to bursting with all sorts of delicacies - meat & cheeses, pickled vegetables, fried chicken, crab cakes, fish, fresh vegetables, fruits, bread, etc. So we ate and enjoyed ourselves. The only problem is that I didn't realize that was just the first course! I filled up on those thing, and THEN they brought out big plates of stuffed pork and potatoes! So we managed to get down some of that, and THEN they brought out plates of cakes and pastries! And THEN they brought out ice cream! It was unbelievable. Even more unbelievable is that we managed to eat it all. :)In between these courses, there would be breaks - you could go out and wander around the camp, which was lovely with trees and pretty scenery. There were also some musicians playing who kept us entertained. It was all in Russian, but Justin said they were singing all Christian love songs, which seemed appropriate to me. Occasionally someone would go to the microphone and say a few words to the bride and groom, who would stand up to hear what they had to say and acknowledge their kindness. Several children got up and quoted poetry.
It was definitely a fun evening and we at least got a glimpse into Moldovan Christian culture if not Moldovan tradition. Congratulations to Sasha and Nelly!

Rye Chili (Joni)

2007-09-14T13:40:00.000-04:00

WE'RE ONLINE!!!!! As I type this, I'm sitting in our living room! Praise God for a friend of a friend who works at our internet company and graciously came to our house and fixed our wireless router for us. So hopefully our blogging and emailing will be more consistent now that we can access the internet from home. Sadly, though, I do not have a picture to post for you as Justin promised. We're going to a wedding tomorrow, so I'll have a lot of pictures of that for you!

Instead of pictures, though, I'll post a little story for you, which is where I got the title of this post. The weather is turning colder here, and I decided to make some chili for dinner. However, at the grocery store, I just couldn't find cumin, which is a spice I like to add in my chili. I did find chili powder, so I decided to make it anyway. But then I was at a different grocery store today and found a spice called chimen in Romanian. Most of the other spices' names are similar to the English names (piper, oregan, rozmarin, tim, etc.), so I thought this must be cumin! I joyfully bought it and this evening put a large amount of it in my chili. I noticed when I added it that it smelled kind of strange, but I thought maybe it had just been a long time since I'd smelled cumin and I must've forgotten what it smelled like. However, when we sat down to eat it, Justin took a whiff and said "This chili smells... different." Then he took a taste of it and said "Did you put RYE in this chili?!" (Side note: We do NOT like rye bread, and that is a very popular bread here, so we always have to be on our guard when purchasing bread. So the fact that my chili tasted like rye to Justin was NOT a good thing.) I said "No, but I think that the cumin I put in it wasn't really cumin." So I pulled out my Romanian dictionary and looked up chimen, and lo and behold, it's caraway (a spice commonly found in rye bread)! Why in the world would all the other spices have similar names to the English, and this one is just there to trick me?! So I'll definitely leave the caraway out of my next batch of chili... Ah, adventures in Moldova!

Weekend Plans (Justin)

2007-09-14T03:44:00.000-04:00

For those of you lamenting the lack of posts by Joni this week, fear not! We're nearing the end of our long saga to have internet at home, and then she'll be able to upload pictures and stories and such.

This weekend, we're going to the wedding of one of the employees here. It will be a long afternoon of ceremony, dancing, eating, and sitting around. Good news (for me) is that most of it will be in Russian.

Speaking of Russian, here's a NY Times article about how the growing Russian middle class has led to a boom in copying American middle class sitcoms like Married With Children and The Nanny. I watched some of the Married with Children clone while sitting in my office at Baylor. It's an exact copy.

Our meetings with Moldovans and American missionaries this week have been fun and educational! We're learning a lot about Moldovan life, and the wedding will hopefully add to that knowledge.

How to Preach with a Translator (Justin)

2007-09-12T05:07:00.000-04:00

I've heard a lot of translated sermons both in the States and Eastern Europe. It's probably one of the toughest, tedious, and most frustrating things a pastor has to do. I've never preached through translation so maybe I lack credibility to talk about this.

That said, I've sat through several good ones and several poor ones. The best and the worst of which I've experienced in the past month here. So, I've decided to compose some guidelines in the hope that someone going overseas will read them and deliver a high-quality sermon.

Why it matters: If it's not quality, it doesn't reflect badly on the preacher but rather on his national translator. He/she has to live with shame, while the preacher gets to leave the country, often oblivious to the fact that he embarrassed the translator!

I asked my father-in-law (very experienced at this)for his insights and he gave me a list of 14 points, some of which I'll include with my points.

1. Write out your entire sermon beforehand. I don't care if you don't normally do this, you need to if it's going to be translated. Word-for-word.

2. Have someone edit your sermon to take out any wordiness and American idioms. Just like you'd have someone edit a paper you turned in for Seminary or grad school. Ex: Don't say "go out of," say "leave." Don't say "under the table," say "illegal," etc. Try also to eliminate "churchy" words.

3. Print out your edited copy and give it to your translator at least a day before you preach. Let him/her become familiar with it, look up words, and ask questions about it. There may be some necessary "churchy" words that he/she needs help understanding.

4. Have a Bible in the local language ready for all quoted passages. Don't expect your translator to translate a verse from English exactly as it's written in the congregants' Bibles. (You would think this is a no-brainer, but all too often...)

5. Keep your printed copy in front of you as you preach. Read from it with passion. Try not to look down or read or as you speak; you have plenty of time to prepare your next sentence or 2 while your translator is talking, and can look up at the congregation as you speak as if you're not reading.

6. Don't ad-lib. The last thing a translator wants to hear is "oh, by the way..." Nothing ruins a well-translated sermon more than a poorly-translated tangent.

7. Don't include jokes without going over them beforehand with your translator. He/she can likely think of a similar joke, or can modify it to make it more understandable to the locals. Literally-translated jokes almost never make sense.

8. Don't quote from old hymns, anecdotes, or anything King James and expect the translator to make it understandable. Russian Baptists have many of the same (or similar) hymns that we do. If you want to quote from it, ask someone to show your translator the equivalent hymn in the Russian hymnal and let them read it.
Last week, I saw an American pastor try to make the connection "I know you know the lyrics to an old hymn.... 'sin had left its crimson stain...'" His translator didn't know what "crimson" was, and may not have understood "stain. " The American pastor eventually had to say this passage 3 times and eventually broke it down to "ugly red spot." It took literally 5 minutes and his point was completely lost in translation and in the frustration of having it translated.
*Warning!* If your translator has to ask you to clarify something during the sermon, then you've likely already lost the congregation. Get out while you can!

9. Be humble. Give a greeting from your home church, and be sure to tell the congregation how much you appreciate their hospitality.

10. Avoid telling stories from your own church unless you make your point absolutely clear. 99% of the congregants have never been to America, have no idea what American culture is really like, and cannot relate to your average congregant's life in the slightest. You go out on a limb when you say: "A man in my church is a stock broker, and understands that life is often uncertain," for example. There's a million better ways to generalize that in a way they understand (work and income are quite uncertain outside of America, too. What does having a stock broker have to do with that, and does that really matter to your sermon?).

11. Talk about what Christ is doing in your life, personally. That will help them relate to you as a fellow brother and not just a foreigner.

The first 7 points are ABSOLUTELY necessary! It doesn't matter if you never do these things for preaching at your own church. You're NOT at your own church, some things are NOT universal, and you need to be FLEXIBLE when working in another culture. Do all of the above, and you can ensure having your sermon effectively delivered. They ought to teach this stuff in seminary.

On 9/11 (Justin)

2007-09-12T04:56:00.001-04:00

Yesterday was 9/11, and I didn't think much about it. I know a lot of people are sad and remembering, as we should be. However, without 9/11 we probably wouldn't be in Moldova. I would never have prayed for a place called Dagestan, and I wouldn't have ever thought about going to Azerbaijan. Those were good things that came out of something horrible. I don't know how 9/11 changed your life, but that's how it altered mine.

On Making Friends (Justin)

2007-09-11T03:09:00.000-04:00

I want to briefly draw your attention to the website of Access Partners, a company started by a friend of mine that helps get Kingdom-minded businesses started in "closed" countries, primarily in Central Asia. They do interesting work, but I particularly like their statement about "Ongoing Missions Responsibilities:"

From the time of Paul to today, cross-cultural missions has required much effort and time. There are no short-cuts. All cross-cultural missionaries have the following baseline responsibilities:

Language: Speaking in the native language of a people group so the Gospel is clearly understood.
Culture: Respecting others' customs and values so discipleship is effectively addressed.
Church Planting: Encouraging local believers to meet together in a community to display God's glory.

I work from this same framework every day. We're working hard at #1, learning about #2 so we can figure out how microcredit can help do #3. Honestly, I think most people involved in "business as missions" have no concept of the importance of these 3 principles combined. "There are no shortcuts," Amen!

Our contacts here have been pretty limited, so Joni and I are branching out. Due to the wonders of Facebook, we're starting to connect with other folks in Moldova who aren't connected to the work we're doing. Some of them believers, some of them people who went to school in the U.S. (and thus speak English). Our goal is to start meeting with folks this week and learn more about Moldova from their perspective. Maybe this will lead to finding some aspiring entrepreneurs who might make good clients?

We're also meeting with professional American missionaries here to learn about what efforts at church planting, particularly CPMs, are taking place.

So, please pray for us as we try to make new friends and and engage the culture to learn more about it!

What do you do when 1/4 of your country is gone? (Justin)

2007-09-10T04:09:00.000-04:00

Since we don't yet have internet at home (though much drama and trauma trying to get it there), we miss out on IM and online chats with family and friends who we've not spoken to since we've been here. We also often miss out on weekend news. So, Monday is kind of like Christmas when I get to come to the office and see what I missed (namely football scores and seeing that my beloved Hendrick Motorsports dominated the Nextel Cup race on Sunday).

But, the weekend also gives me a chance to walk around downtown and see the sites. One thing that escapes attention as you're walking around beautiful, cultural Chisinau is that there aren't as many people as there "should" be.
20-25% of the population of Moldova live abroad. That's about one in 4! I used to think it was ridiculous that 10% of Mexico lives in the U.S., but Moldova's numbers take the cake. 47% of Moldovans report having a family member abroad. 800,000 Moldovans are currently waiting for Romanian passports so they can get into the EU.

Imagine if 1/4 of the cars you see in your town were gone. Imagine with each car went someone with a proven skill. 1/4 of the plumbers, electricians, mechanics, etc. Your town would be much smaller and good help would be harder to find.

As I've discussed before, that 25% of of the population abroad sends a lot of money home ($475 million from Jan. to June). That is primarily what drives the economic prosperity and growth I see around me in Chisinau, and accounts for over 27% of Moldova's GDP. Only Togo relies on remittances more than Moldova.

Who is migrating? Mostly skilled workers, and reports indicate that more people are migrating from Chisinau than from the villages (villagers migrate to Chisinau first, then abroad). The government reports that the average wage in Moldova is about $160/month. This is above the $2.15/day poverty line that the World Bank uses, but is still the lowest in Europe.

The ILO estimates that a Moldovan can make, on average, $800/month in Europe (and reports the average wage in Moldova is actually around $120/month). Pretty big gap, so it's no wonder people leave.

It's estimated that 1 in 9 Moldovan children will grow up without at least 1 parent (though given the above information I think that number is too small). This causes all kinds of obvious social problems.

But, practically, this means that if you want to find a skilled laborer for anything you're going to have a tough time. Joni's language teacher is having her apartment re-done because it was done so poorly and incompetently the first time. Everyone tells you that you can't trust who you hire because no one knows if they're a quality worker or not. You never know what you're going to get! "If they were quality, they would be working in Europe and not in Moldova."

Obviously, microcredit offers quality workers a chance to start businesses, hire skilled workers, and develop a workforce in Moldova.

But, our internet site project also offers some hope. We hope to eventually offer an evaluation system (kind of like E-Bay does) for customers to rate the services of the people who post advertisements. This will allow good workers to distinguish themselves and grow their businesses. Competition means improvement all around. We're excited about that possibility.

Please continue to pray for the site's development. We have a target date of the end of October for it to be up and running. Pray for Vasile, the chief architect, to have time and ability to work on it. There's much work to be done!

Mileşti Mici (Joni)

2007-09-07T13:15:00.000-04:00

Sorry for the lack of posts recently! We're having difficulties getting internet hooked up at home, and we haven't been to the office in a couple of days because we've been around town working on our work permits. The good news is, though, that WE HAVE THEM!!!! We went and picked them up on Wednesday afternoon. This, however, is not the last step in the process. This morning we dropped the brand new permits off at a different office to get something else. We're not even sure what it is we're getting this time, but they told us to come pick them up on September 22. So we will! Praise the Lord, though, that we passed this MAJOR hurdle of getting permission to live here for our full intended term, and please keep praying that He will bring the process to completion.

On to the title of this post: Alcohol is a large part of Moldovan society. There is even a Chisinau brand of beer that is manufactured and bottled right here in the city. However, Moldova is known all over Europe for its good wine. When we discovered that one of its finest vineyards is just a few minutes outside of Chisinau, we had to go visit and find out how they do it! So we, together with the Staffords and Kelly, booked a tour.The name of the place is Mileşti Mici (pronounced mee-lesh-tee meech). It's about 15 minutes outside of Chisinau, and we managed to get a tour that included transportation. So a van picked us up at 9:30 am, we arrived at Mileşti Mici at about 9:50, and our tour started at 10. The coolest thing about this wine-making facility is that it is all underground! They have miles of tunnels in which they make, mix, store, age, and bottle wine. Our tour guide (a 19-year-old Moldovan girl who spoke excellent English) said that about 70% of the wine they make is red, 20% is white, and the other 10% is sweet and sparkling wines.When they first make the wine, they store it in giant barrels and let it age for varying amounts of time. Then, they bottle it and store it in their miles and miles of storage. (They are, in fact, in the Guiness Book of World Records as being the largest underground wine-making facility in the world, and also having the largest collection of wine stored!) When it has aged according to their desire, they put it up for sale. It sounds simple, but there was a lot that goes into the process!One of the things we found most interesting about Mileşti Mici was a tidbit from its history. Apparently, in 1985, the Soviets outlawed the manufacture or consumption of alcohol (Our guide said that was because too many of them were spending their days drunk instead of working!), so they came in and destroyed the whole facility, including their massive reserves of wine. However, they had a secret room hidden behind a moveable wall (the middle section in the picture below), in which they hid as much as they could. So now there is only a small amount left of any of their wine from before 1985, and that stuff is really only for collectors now. All of the wine they sell now was made in 1986 or after, because they repealed the law less than one year later!So we had an excellent time seeing this unique part of Moldovan culture and history.

Moldovan Independence Day (Joni)

2007-09-03T06:32:00.000-04:00

Last Monday, Moldova celebrated it's 16th Independence Day - August 27, 2007. It was quite a celebration, and living in the capital city, we were able to go downtown and be a part of the festivities. Downtown was PACKED with people, and the later it got the more people were there. This picture was taken looking down the main street early in the evening. On the right in the distance is the red canopy covering the main stage. On the left is The Holy Arch, that stands in front of Chisinau's main cathedral. The booths and tables were set up along that side of the street behind the arch. The Moldovans are PROUD of their independence! They even closed a block of the main street later in the evening to allow the crowds to fill the street.
When we first arrived, at about 6:30 p.m., there was a large stage set up in the main square, and there were local musicians performing traditional music. We spent about an hour strolling the booths and tables that were set up along the main street. We ate pastries, ice cream, and even found some barbecue Lay's potato chips! (Now that's a reason to celebrate right there!)

Then we went back to the stage to watch the national dance troupe called "Joc!" These dancers were amazing! There were about 12 men and 12 women performing various traditional Moldovan dances. They literally danced for an hour. They would finish one dance, go backstage to change costumes while a singer sang one song, then they'd come back out for another 10-15 minute dance. Man, they were great! My camera isn't great at capturing night-time photos (It certainly couldn't be the photographer's fault!), so these pictures are kind of fuzzy. Hopefully you'll be able to at least get the idea.
The crowd was so festive and fun - they even broke out into spontaneous dancing throughout the evening!One interesting thing about this crowd, though, was that nobody was drinking any kind of alcohol, and they weren't selling it at the booths either. Our only guess is that they must've been stopping people from bringing it in in order to keep a family-friendly atmosphere. It was so nice to be a part of a group that was in such high spirits, and nobody was drunk!

Then at 9:00, there came the fireworks show! It was seriously one of the best fireworks displays I've ever seen in my life! Part of my enjoyment may just have been because the crowd was so into it. They enjoyed it way more than any American crowd I've been a part of before. After the fireworks, more singers started, but we decided to go ahead home to try to avoid the going-home traffic. It was definitely a fun time, and we felt like we experienced a part of true Moldova that day.

Your Daily Dose of Romanian (Joni)

2007-09-01T05:45:00.000-04:00

We don't have internet hooked up at home yet, so I won't be able to post more pictures until Monday. In the meantime, however, some of you were wanting to know how my language study is coming, so I'll tell you about that. IT'S GOING GREAT!!!!!! Romanian is very similar to French, and there are a lot of words that are the same as English. So although I've only had 11 classes, I'm able to get around pretty well. I can go to the fruit & vegetable market by myself and come home with all the things I wanted in the amounts I wanted! I can ride on a minibus and get off at the right place. So my practical language is definitely coming along. The grammar, though, is somewhat difficult and confusing for some things, so I thought I'd give you an example by giving you your Romanian word for the day:

copiii

Yes, that word had THREE i's at the end of it. It means "the children." The word for "child" is copil. To pluralize it and make it "some children," you take off the l and add another i, copii. To make it definite, instead of adding the word "the" at the beginning, you instead add ANOTHER i to the end, making it copiii. It's pronounced ko-pee-ee. Niiiiice. :)

A follow-up about church (Justin)

2007-08-30T04:17:00.000-04:00

As you saw in the previous post, many of the churches here are big and nice. The pictures didn't do it justice, if I had to compare it to a church I'd compare it to First Baptist in whatever small town you might live in Kentucky (it looked very much like the one in Princeton). Very nice stage, expensive modern sound system, security system, baptismal, nice pews and carpet. This in a country where the average salary is $180 month, unemployment might be 10-20%, and most people in the church are quite old and live on small government pensions.
So, how can the poorest country in Europe afford such nice churches?

I posed this question to Ghena after church. We had a great conversation and I got to hear some of his vision for Invest-Credit and how it relates to building the Church.

Joni alluded to the answer when she mentioned the Americans that were here. The churches of Eastern Europe are almost completely dependent on Western donations. The entire Baptist Union of countries like Moldova spend a great deal of resources raising funds. "Our congregation can't afford to pay us a salary," the pastors say. The suffer from the same free-riding effects that big American churches do, where 90% of the people just sit in a pew and don't do or give anything. Those that do give don't have much income.

There are several different tangents where I can go with this. For now, I'll just ask a question:
What are the effects of getting your funding from an outside source who doesn't speak your language or even see what you do except for maybe 10 days out of the year?

Well, in my previous experiences in Russia I learned a few answers to this question:
1. Resources of leadership are devoted to raising funds rather than to the Great Commission.
2. Lack of accountability to the local church means pastors don't care as much about the needs of the church.
3. Lack of true accountability to the distant and rarely-seen donor means that the money might be spent in ways the donor didn't approve of (an invitation for corruption).
4. Like the churches we saw, the Western money goes to things that the Western donor understands: sound systems, paved parking lots, and church decorations. If you judge a church solely by how it looks (which is how the local Orthodox do it), then these are very healthy churches.

So, I talked to Ghena about these things and he agrees that dependency on outside sources is what keeps many churches from growing. He says that only a few "charismatic" (Pentecostal) churches here are completely self-sufficient. They're healthy and reproducing quickly.

Ghena's vision for Invest-Credit is to help Christians create jobs and earn money that they can then tithe to their churches. As the income base of the church grows, the church can become much less dependent on the West. Pastors can again become accountable to their congregation, and devote their time and energy to pastoring rather than fund-raising.

So, that's what we're learning about here. My current question for all you mission-minded folks is: How can microfinance help foster a church planting movement?

Romanian Church (Joni)

2007-08-29T08:02:00.000-04:00

I have so many pictures to share with you all of the many things we have done in the past few days! But I don't want to overwhelm you all at once, so I'll split it into several posts over the next couple of days. I'll do them in chronological order, so first I'll tell you about the church we visited Sunday morning. We went to our first Romanian-speaking church with our boss and his wife, Ghena and Alina. This is also the church Kelly goes to, and Valentina from our office attends here too. So there was a pretty big representation from CAMED this week at Jesus Savior Church in Chisinau!

This is the biggest church we've been to so far - it was a huge building and the place was packed! We sat up in the balcony, so we had a full view of all that was going on both on stage and in the audience. It was so neat!

Ghena kindly agreed to translate the sermons for us. (Note that I said "sermonS." In all the churches we've been to so far, there have been more than one sermon - some of them even had three! The worship services all last at least 2 hours. Much different from American churches that are tied to the clock!) So we sang a lot of songs in Romanian, the choir performed some lovely pieces, and Ghena translated the first short sermon. Then we sang some more and it came time for the second sermon. Ghena prepared to translate for us again, but then we noticed that two men stood up at the pulpit - one of them to translate for the other! Then, the preacher began to speak - IN ENGLISH! He was a visiting pastor from Indiana, and so we got to hear a sermon in American English! Very cool and it blessed us immensely. Another good thing about it for me was that it actually helped my language some, because I heard a sentence in English, then got to hear it translated into Romanian. I was excited about how many words I could pick out in the Romanian, even though he was speaking very fast.

So it was a neat experience for us to be attending church with friends and to get to hear a sermon in English! We'll definitely visit there again.

Project Update (Justin)

2007-08-28T06:25:00.001-04:00

Happy Moldovan Independence Day, everyone! As a "maintenance update," on the right you'll see Moldovan Links. Those are links to Moldovan English-language news sources that I check every day. You can also see that it's been around 105-110 degrees here the past few days. I also added a link to Dan and Beth Stafford's blog. Dan was the original BPN intern in Moldova. They're attempting to pursue business-as-missions full-time here in Moldova while currently living/working in Holland.

So, the past week has seen some progress on the aforementioned website project. The domain name is registered, the server has just been configured to what we need, and we've got a programmer who has volunteered to be the point man. He's going to play around with some software and our design specifications and let us know by Sept. 1 how much time he thinks it will take. So, praise God, we've got a Christian programmer working on it and a few more who are interested in the project.

Just last week, Ghenna talked to someone needing to hire several unskilled laborers, and greatly wanting to hire Christians. However, there was no way to connect him to believers except by word-of-mouth.

Keep in mind, many of these churches don't even have a "Barter Board" hanging up in their church foyer, and it's seen as inappropriate to announce job openings and such from the pulpit. But, everyone is eagerly anticipating a website like to link people together. Pretty much everyone I've talked to about it has said "You know, I've always wished for a website like this, but just never knew how to get it started. "

One day soon, I'll post an update with our programmer and with what else I'm busy with here. Joni will also post some fun pictures of our weekend adventures. We're making progress all-around!

Home Sweet Home

2007-08-24T07:28:00.000-04:00

Here is a slideshow tour of our new home! The pictures are in order moving from the front to the back of our house. If you put your mouse over the slideshow, you'll see controls at the bottom left that will allow you to stop and show and look at the pictures one at a time. You can also click on the slideshow to go to the photobucket page where the pictures are if you'd rather see the larger originals. Enjoy!

The Promised Photos

2007-08-22T08:30:00.000-04:00

Here are the pictures I promised! First of all, this is Justin and I with our anniversary dinner. We are in our dining room at home, the flowers Justin bought me are on the left, and you can even see my infamous pot roast on our plates! Happy two years, my dear!

And this one is a tube of ice cream like I was describing. This is actually a kilogram (2.2 pounds), and it cost $2.25. What a yummy deal!

And this is just a random picture of Justin with a wax figure of Leonardo da Vinci. (You can see that Justin was taking meeting this great man very seriously...) Sunday afternoon we went downtown because we had heard that there were some wax figures that had been brought in from St. Petersburg on display at the Museum of History and Ethnography. I'm a little creeped out by wax figures, but it was just $1 each to get in, and this display was pretty cool. It was a pretty random collection of figures, including several Russian czars, Rasputin, Stalin, Adolf Hitler, Yuri Gagarin (the first man in space), Ghengis Kahn, King Tut, and Shrek, among others. We would've had to pay another $1 to take photos, so we just took the picture of da Vinci, who they had standing outside. It was definitely a fun experience and well worth the $2.

Two Wonderful Years (Joni)

2007-08-21T08:21:00.000-04:00

My sweet husband of two years bought me some lovely flowers yesterday for our anniversary. I cooked him dinner (I attempted to make my first pot roast in the oven... Not so good. Thankfully, he is understanding and kind and ate it anyway - just another reason I'm glad I married him!), and then we went out for dessert. We're learning that ice cream is our dessert of choice here in Moldova. We've been out twice now for other desserts - they sell cakey-type confections that look really good, but just don't taste quite right. For example, one of the things we tried last night had prunes in it! Um, ok. The other place we went, we're pretty certain that the confections we bought had been sitting in the display case for at least 3 years... The other thing that has us convinced that buying ice cream from the store and just eating it at home is the way to go is that the ice cream is SO GOOD here! You can buy Moldovan-made ice cream in these plastic tubes for just about $1.50 a liter. The ice cream here is nothing like the ice cream in the States - here it's really light and fluffy, almost like frozen whipped cream! My favorite so far is the chocolate chip!

I'll post a picture of the ice cream tubes soon, as well as a picture of our anniversary dinner! I just forgot to bring my camera cord to the office with me today, and we don't have internet access at home yet. Check back tomorrow, and hopefully I'll have some pictures posted for you!

Happy Anniversary!

2007-08-20T02:44:00.000-04:00

Joni and I got married 2 years ago today. Has it really only been 2 years? I think back to how stressed, nervous, and hot I was two years ago (August outdoor wedding in KY).
If someone had told me then: "Justin, two years from now you'll have completed your Masters and will be working in Moldova," I'd have said: "Sign me up!"
God is good. I'm thankful all has turned out like it has. We both like being here with each other, and she's the best partner anyone could have here.

I love you, babe!
Here's an old one of us from February, 2005. This was before we even got engaged.

Two Weeks! (Joni)

2007-08-16T13:30:00.001-04:00

We've been in Moldova exactly two weeks! I say it feels like it's been much longer than that, but Justin says he thinks it feels like two weeks. But look at all that we've done in two weeks:

- Met a bunch of new friends
- Started working at a new place
- Learned how to navigate a public transportation system
- Learned our way around Chisinau, including where to buy all the things we need
- Eaten at Andy's Pizza at least 10 times in 14 days... :) (I'll post about Andy's soon!)
- Started learning a new language (Joni) or gotten better at the language we already knew (Justin)

Also, last night we moved into our new home! There's still a little work that needs to be done in it, but they got it to where it's liveable, so we moved in last night!!!!! IT IS BEAUTIFUL!!!!!!! I'll post a photo tour on here soon, but we are just thrilled with it! It's very spacious and lovely - much nicer than anyplace we've lived since we got married! We have a full-size refrigerator with freezer, a washing machine, and even our own water heater! All these are somewhat rare in Moldova. In the next day or two, we'll be getting internet at home, and I hear a rumor that before winter, we'll even get a clothes dryer. I don't know ANYBODY that has one of those. So this place is amazing.

I even managed to cook dinner tonight for the first time in over a month! That felt really nice. It was just pasta with meat sauce and sauteed zucchini, but we weren't eating out at a restaurant! Yeah!

In other news, my language study is going SO WELL! Thanks for praying! Please keep it up! We are moving SO FAST, but unbelievably I feel like I'm keeping up so far. I'm doing all my homework, and I carry my flash cards with me everywhere to pull them out and practice when I have a free moment. Thankfully, I don't have anything else to do yet but study language. It's a lot harder for the others in my class because they're either working or trying to take care of a baby or both PLUS trying to learn language. Please continue to pray for all of us.

Our Project (Justin)

2007-08-15T05:21:00.001-04:00

Some of you know that we were brought here to specifically work on one project. We've now been given our marching orders.

The Moldovan Christian community is large with many churches all over the country. However, there is a lack of communication between believers and churches, no one seems to know what the other ones are doing. CAMED wants to change that (refreshing idea, eh?). Our job is to facilitate the creation of a website that will act as a sort of bulletin board system for the Christian community, particularly those in business.

The idea is simple: Suppose you want to find a plumber for your apartment, but you would prefer an honest Christian, and don't know who you can trust. You can call around and ask friends at church, but it would be faster just to go to a Christian website and see if there are any listed (like a "Shepherd's Guide" in the US). You see the plumbers's profile, and if anyone has used his services before and commented. Christians connecting with other Christians.

Suppose you're a Christian student wanting to rent a room in Chisinau but you'd like to find a Christian host family. This site will allow room seekers and renters to connect with each other.

The site will also be a place for churches to advertise events, post sermons, prayer requests, etc. so the whole community knows what everyone is doing.

I have very little web design or programming experience, so I won't be doing any of that. My task here is simply to help design the template, and to find local Christian programmers willing to help build such a site (for free). We've already lined up a company in Waco that has volunteered to host the site.

I had a great conversation today with a local programmer who thinks we can find some open-source modules using Joomla to do exactly what we need.

So, please pray for our project. Pray that we'll find willing Christian programmers familiar with PHP to help. Pray that the site will facilitate communication between believers here.

More News from Joni!

2007-08-13T13:42:00.000-04:00

I just wanted to post a quick addendum to Justin's post because I need some special prayers for the next three weeks - I'm starting language school! Dan & Beth (see their picture in Justin's post) are going to be in Moldova for the next three weeks, and in that time, they want to take an intensive crash course in Romanian. Kelly (she's also in the picture) has been studying with a different teacher for the past two months, but she's discouraged at her lack of progress. So, for the next three weeks, the four of us are going to be totally immersing ourselves in Romanian! We have found a professional teacher named Adriana who is giving us a reasonable rate for a group class. We will meet at Dan & Beth's apartment every weekday from 11:30 to 1:30 - that's TWO HOURS a DAY! EVERY DAY for THREE WEEKS!!! Yikes! That sounds perfect for actually becoming competent in the language fast. But I think it will be an adventure and very exhausting. So please be in prayer for all of us as we take this crash course and try to learn how to communicate well!

News and notes (Justin)

2007-08-13T09:41:00.000-04:00

We had a good weekend. Saturday, we visited the Museum of Natural History and Ethnography in Chisinau. No pictures from there because you had to pay for flash photography. It was a big museum filled with stuffed animals, fossils, a giant mastadon skeleton, ancient crafts, and history of Moldova. Fun and interesting.
Sunday we did church with our host family's parents. A very big Baptist church. Tatiana, our host family mother has several brothers and sisters there, her brother and father are pastors.

Sunday night was a special occasion. Our boss, Ghenna, arrived from a conference in Peru, so we're finally acquainted with him! Dan and Beth Stafford also arrived from Holland with their baby, Rebekah. Dan works for BPN in some capacity and we look forward to getting to know them over the next 3 weeks. The Staffords treated us all to dinner at a nice place downtown to celebrate Ghenna and Alina's 6th wedding anniversary. In the picture it's Beth, Rebekah, Dan and myself on the left. Kelly, Alina, and Ghenna on the right. It was fun.

Problems: One macroeconomic problem we currently have is that the dollar continues to plunge against the Leu. The official exchange rate has fallen to 12 Leu/ Dollar, and shows no signs of stopping. When we first got here it was about 12.12, and it was 12.48 when we first started raising funds. On the street we get much less than the official rate, of course, 11.75 is the highest I saw today.

To put that in terms of cost, we raised funds expecting $8000 to be enough at an exchange rate of 12.48. At the current rate of 11.75, we need 5.8% more, or about $468, and this number goes up daily as the dollar falls. In total, we have raised $9,090, so we're VERY thankful to have some cushion. That's a praise.

Hopefully our living quarters will be finished in the next couple days, so we can give our host family their daughters' room back!

More soon on our official project assignment and developments with that. The ball officially got rolling for us today!

Our first assignment (Justin)

2007-08-10T10:21:00.000-04:00

On Thursday, we were given our first work assignment. We went with Kelly and Roman (employee of Invest-Credit) to interview a client who was wanting to take out another loan. Invest-Credit is the official name CAMED in Moldova, who we're working for. Interns for Invest-Credit write up "case studies," which are profiles of clients and their businesses to give donors an idea of how the ministry affects people's faith as well as their businesses.

I was told "So, you'll ask this guy questions in Russian and then you can write the case study." Given a list of questions and some help from Roman on the tough ones, I began to learn about the business of Vladimir, a local cobbler.

Dream fulfilled: "Go converse with this guy in Russian about how his business affects his life, church, and community."
Sure thing! I think I did pretty well, by God's grace of course (Phil. 4:13).

Vladimir started making shoes around 2002, about the same time he started attending a local church. He got radically saved and left his life of sin while realizing that a relationship with Christ and honest work was the way to go in life. With no other professional training and few funds, Vladimir and a friend began learning how to make shoes just as Vladimir was beginning to study Scripture. Working in his at-home workshop, Vladimir learned about styles and sizes and trying new methods. After about a month, Vladimir began to sell his shoes at the central outdoor market. However, this was difficult because a customer's size has to match exactly what you've already made and brought to the market.

Vladimir realized that there was a market in his own neighborhood for his shoes. He began to take custom orders from people, realizing that people with special needs and requests couldn't find what they needed at the local bazaar. As he became more experienced, he branched out into new styles.

He is currently active in the local church as an usher. He tithes faithfully and gives money to missionaries and others who need it. God provided him a believing wife about a year ago, and his mother also lives with him. His business helps feed his family (his wife sells cosmetics, like Avon).1 year ago, "Vova" (as friends call him) took out a $400 loan from Invest-Credit, which he'd heard about at church. This helped him buy enough material for 4 pairs of shoes, and allowed him to make extra profit during a lean time of his business, which sees seasonal fluctuations. He paid off the loan in the course of a year, and is now eligible for an $800 loan.

Vladimir hopes to expand his business to include purses, wallets, and Bible covers (which he showed us prototypes of, quite nice). He also hopes to earn more money to start a ministry to needy children and hungry people. As he expands his business, he'll hopefully be able to bring on employees and create income for more people.
"My friends that I was once in sin with see my life now and want what I have. They come to church with me, and one even accepted Christ. Microcredit is important because it helps grow my business to feed my family and support my church."

Public Transportation (Joni)

2007-08-09T06:45:00.000-04:00

Alright, everybody! Hold on to your hats! I'm going to try to give you all a feel for the public transportation system here in Chisinau. There are 4 different methods for travel here in town, each has a different cost and each has its benefits and drawbacks. First of all, there are taxis.
Our only experience with a taxi was taking one home from the airport upon arrival in Chisinau. You flag one down (They're not all yellow, but they all do have the yellow sign on top.), negotiate with the driver how much he'll charge you for taking you to your destination (usually around 25 lei, which is just over US$2), and then hold on while he gets you there as fast as he can go. Going to the outskirts of town, like the airport, is more expensive, and he also charged more for us since we had so much luggage. You can also call the taxi service and arrange for them to pick you up at home at a certain time. Most Moldovans don't use taxis unless they're going a particularly far or difficult distance, simply because they're so much more expensive than the other methods listed below.

Next we have city buses.
I can't say much about these because we've never ridden in one. I think they're basically the same as the trolley buses below, but just a little nicer and a little more expensive. (I think they're 2 lei, which is about 17 cents.)

The two methods that we use consistently are in the picture below:
On the left is a minibus and on the right is a trolley bus.

Trolley buses only cost 1 lei (8 cents!), and that's definitely all the ride is worth! They're pretty old and rundown. They run on overhead electric lines (You can see the two poles sticking off the top of the trolley bus in the picture.) so sometimes they can derail which cuts off the power, so the driver has to get out and get them back on the lines so we can keep going! That has only happened to us once so far. Trolley buses do have designated stops, so you just have to make sure to get off at the right one. If you miss it, though, you can just get off at the next one and walk back. Stops are about 1/2 mile apart, 1/4 mile apart downtown.

Minibuses are basically just 10-12 passenger vans outfitted so that the aisle runs along the passenger side and there is a bar to hold onto for those that are standing. Yes, I say standing. This is because although there are 10 or 12 seats on the minibus, there is no limit to how many people they will pack inside. If all the seats are full when you get on, you stand in the aisle. It's actually pretty hilarious when you've got 25 people inside one of these things, 15 of whom are standing in the aisle, and someone in the back needs to get off! You hear a lot of "Excuse me, please!" and people just squeeze by! Minibuses cost 3 lei, which is 25 cents. The only entrance to the minibus is the front passenger door next to the driver. When you get in, you hand him your money and tell him how many people you're paying for. Then he'll hand you your change. We've also seen where someone will get on and grab a seat first, then just pass their money up to the front via the other passengers. They're very honest about passing the money up and then passing back the change! It's when you want to get off that you have the real adventure because minibuses have designated routes, but no designated stops. So you have to just recognize where you are and ask the driver to stop and let you off! If you miss it, you could end up back where you started before you know where you are!

The advantage to minibuses is that they're MUCH faster than the trolley since they don't make all the stops. We'll be taking the minibus to work each morning since we live on the complete opposite end of town from the office. It might take us up to an hour on the trolley, but only about 25 minutes in the minibus. We also like trolleys, though, for when we're not in a hurry because there's so much more space on them, and all the windows allow you to look out and recognize where you are. Sometimes it's hard on a minibus to even get a view out the window, much less be able to look hard enough to figure out where you are.

All this is pretty daunting until you figure out the system, and our key to getting it figured out was finding a good map. Here's a small portion of our map (Click to enlarge):
Bus routes are pink, trolley bus routes are blue, and minibus routes are purple. Each route has a number, so you just have to make sure you get on a vehicle marked with the number of where you want to go. For example, we have to get on the 115 minibus to get to the office and the 22 trolley to go downtown. Each vehicle has the number of its route posted on the front and both sides of the vehicle. So to catch a trolley, you go to the nearest stop and then wait for the right number to come by. Generally it only takes a 5 minute wait for the next trolley on your route to come by, depending on how busy the street you're on is and how popular the route is. The trolley to take us from home to downtown comes really often because it's a popular route.

To catch a minibus, you just stand anywhere on the street that the minibus will go down. (Make sure you're on the correct side of the street, though!) When you see it coming you stick out your arm to flag it down. It will stop, you'll get on and pay the driver, and hopefully you'll be able to grab a seat! Then, you just keep track of where you are (I keep my map out and follow the route we're on if I'm not familiar with the roads and landmarks!). When you're getting close to your stop, make your way up to the front and let the driver know you want to get off.

So that's it. Simple, right?! :) Now just imagine all these things on the road together at once, together with passenger cars, a million pedestrians, and a few brave bicyclers! Yeah, it's madness!

I got an email from my sister this morning saying that last night when she was saying prayers with my 2-1/2 year old nephew, she asked him what he wanted to pray for. He said "Uncle Justin and Aunt Joni." When she asked him what he wanted to pray for us, he said "That they're safe." Besides being a really sweet story, I'm thankful that the Lord is prompting people (even little children!) to pray for our safety, considering the way transportation is on these roads! Especially come winter when the roads get slick, we'll be really thankful for your prayers for our safety!

Third Time was a Charm (Joni)

2007-08-08T09:08:00.000-04:00

After three days and a total of about 6 1/2 hours waiting in lines at the clinic, we FINALLY have our medical approval for work permits in Moldova! So we won't have to go back to the clinic, but this is still not the end of the road for us. Now we'll have to go to other offices and wait in lines there to get all the paperwork submitted. Please keep praying that God comes through mightily in providing this permit for us. I think it will still be a couple weeks before we know for sure whether or not we get the permits.

On an entirely unrelated note, I wanted to give you all a few pictures to let you know what our life looks like here.

This is Justin standing in front of our house! At the moment, we are living on the third floor of the building behind him - that balcony with the flower boxes is off our bedroom. It's nice to be able to sit out on the balcony and look out onto the street. The weather has been really nice until yesterday when it started raining - and it's still pouring now!

The building on the right side of this picture will be our new house once it's completed. You can see on the right that there is a step underneath a window. That used to be a porch for a door connecting the house to the courtyard. Now they've walled that off and made it a window, so the only entrance to the house is from the street. That gives anybody staying in the house a little more privacy, and also the family doesn't have to be disturbed by our coming and going. I haven't been in the house yet, but Justin has seen it and he says it's going to be great! A bedroom, living room, kitchen, and bathroom - all we need! They're working hard to get everything in the house completed this week, and they're hoping we'll be able to move in Sunday.

Finally, I just wanted to post a picture of a fine eating establishment here:
Yes, we have 3 McDonald's in Chisinau! This is the main location on downtown's main street. We ate at one of the different branches on Sunday after church, and I was surprised with how popular it was with the Moldovans! The place was packed! The prices are about the same as they are in America, but that's kind of expensive for food in Moldova. We probably won't eat there much, but it was tasty!

So those are a couple of pictures for you to get an idea of what it looks like here. Check back tomorrow for my long post about transportation!

Update on the Medical Tests (Joni)

2007-08-06T05:40:00.001-04:00

After having an extremely difficult time finding the correct medical clinic this morning (I'm still working on that post about public transportation, which will help you understand why we didn't know where to get off the bus!), we finally did make it and meet up with Valentina, who was supposed to be helping us through all the hoops. From what Kelly had told us, we knew that getting medical approval included seeing somewhere between 8 and 10 specialists who signed off on various aspects of our health, and seeing most of them included a very long wait outside their office door. We got there later than intended, around 9:00, and so the lines were longer than we'd hoped.

Upon our arrival, Valentina said that she had to get back to work, so she was just going to get us started at the first door and then leave us to figure out the rest on our own! This, of course, meant that Justin would have to be using his Russian skills to talk about medical things, and he was NOT excited about that. However, we didn't have much choice and so he bravely agreed to do the best he could.

We waited with Valentina outside the first door for at least 30 minutes, just to get into the first secretary who gave us our paperwork and told us the next 2 doors to go to. The first two stops were the two I had most been dreading - having blood drawn! I have been known to pass out when having blood drawn before, so I was a little afraid that this may turn into an ordeal. However, I was feeling pretty calm, and we waited for another 30 minutes outside that door before we finally got in. The phlebotomist seemed very friendly and Justin answered all of her questions in Russian. She took our blood and we were fine. Praise the Lord!

Our next stop was to go upstairs to another room where she would just do a finger prick to take more blood. There was no line at that door, and we arrived in there at 10:05. She did our finger pricks and that was fine (although it HURT!), but she said she also needed to take a urine sample before we could do our next stop, but they stopped accepting urine samples at 10:00. Sooooo... We had to leave and we'll need to go back early tomorrow. However, Kelly told us that the first two stops are the only blood they'll take, so we got the two we had been dreading out of the way today.

Tomorrow, apparently most of the stops will just be answering questions and getting physical exams, which we feel fine with. Valentina will also be available to stay with us tomorrow, so she'll be able to help Justin understand the Russian. So altogether it was a successful morning, although we didn't get as much accomplished as hoped. Please pray for us tomorrow, that we can get all the rest of the stops finished and get this medical part of our permit completed!

What the Church Looks Like (Justin)

2007-08-05T07:45:00.001-04:00

Today, Joni and I attended a church service with Slavik, our host family's oldest son (23). Slavik is a real nice guy and speaks a little English. The funny thing about our family is that all of the children go to different churches in town, all of which are separate from their parents' church.

Moldovan believers saw their share of persecution under communism. The guest house that is being converted into our living space used to be a Baptist house church during Communist days. Anatoly told us of how he remembers being a boy and his dad pastoring the church when the neighbors would call the police on them.

The cathedral in the picture is a Romanian Orthodox church built in 1832 in the center of town. The top of the tall steeple you see was reportedly blown up by the Communists in 1962 because the cross was higher than the tallest Communist Secretary's office, which was not allowed.
It appears that the church is now flourishing here. Slavik tells us there are 50+ churches like the one we attended this morning (that's A LOT for a city of 800,000 on this side of the world). The service was progressive by Russian Baptist standards. One of the preachers used a powerpoint presentation, and we sang several American praise songs translated to Russian, with no hymns. Lots of young people, including young men, which I found quite encouraging.

Our host family told us that the Moldovan Baptists have sent over 800 missionaries to various countries over the last 10 years. I've met a few in my travels, personally, and heard of several others doing great work in Central Asia. Their churches have small groups meeting during the week, and also do evangelistic activities like hosting basketball leagues, teaching English, etc. Slavik wants to go to a missionary training school here then head out on the field for a while. 2 of his sisters are active in organizing Sunday schools in villages as well as church camps for kids this summer. Pretty cool stuff, I'm impressed so far.

I'd heard about big Moldovan churches and met several missionaries. It's clear God has blessed these people and equipped them for ministries.

*Request*- Joni and I go to a medical "clinic" tomorrow and will undergo several hours of "tests" to begin our application for work permits. This includes everything from blood work to psychological exams! Please pray for us; even I am quite nervous about tomorrow!

Our First Day (Joni)

2007-08-03T10:04:00.000-04:00

I have SO MUCH to tell you all about after our adventures our first night and day in Moldova! I'll try to keep each post short and just post often instead of overwhelming you with all of it all at once. I have pictures, but I'm not sure where the cord to my camera is packed. As Justin mentioned previously, we have about a week until we move into our home here, so I won't be unpacking the trunks until then. So I'm sorry, but you'll have to wait another week or so for pictures! In the meantime, though, I can still tell you about it!

We arrived at the airport on time, and although we had to battle the crowd, we managed to get our luggage and make it through customs without much hassle. For the first time of MANY so far in the last day, we were SO GLAD that Justin speaks Russian! We would never be able to do this without that. Valentina, the secretary at the office where we'll be working, was at the airport to pick us up, and she rode with us in the taxi to our new home. There we met Anatoli and Tanya, the couple who is so kindly opening their home to us. They have five children ranging in age from 23 to 7, all of whom live at home. Two of them are away to summer camp right now, but the other three are here. They are a wonderful and kind family, and they're working very hard to get our home ready for us to move into! I'm sure you'll hear much more about them in the days and weeks to come.

Valentina showed us the nearest grocery store, just a walk around the corner, and we picked up some staples - water, bread, meat, cheese, cereal, milk... Well, we thought it was milk. However, when we got home and I poured it to get a drink, it turned out to be plain unsweetened yogurt! In a carton like milk! Oh well, we learned a lesson about that - Read the carton and make SURE it says milk ("lapte" in Romanian) before buying!

We managed to stay awake until about 9:30 p.m. before we crashed and fell asleep. As Justin said before, our room is up on the third floor. They do have air conditioning in the house, but they don't run it very often. Our room has a balcony with a screen door, so we were just able to keep that door open and a nice breeze kept us cool all night long. The crazy thing about leaving the door open, though, is that we can hear the sounds of the city all night long. What might that sound like? Not traffic or music... No, the night sounds of Chisinau are barking dogs and crowing roosters! We were woken up early in the morning when the roosters started crowing, and we had a pretty rough time getting back to sleep. However, we managed to do it and slept hard til the alarm clock went off at 8:15. So we got a normal night's sleep, and I think that did wonders for our jet lag!

This morning, Alina (our boss's wife - they live just around the corner from us) met us at our house and helped us navigate the public transportation to get to the office. It is about 25 minutes by minibus to get to the office where we'll be working, because it is completely across town. It's actually pretty simple to navigate the public transportation as long as you know which bus to get on and where to get off of it! I'll do another post about the transportation soon, so check back! We think we've already caught on pretty well - we managed a solo ride home this afternoon and we didn't get lost! Once again, we're extremely grateful for Justin's Russian skills!!!

At the office, we met Kelly, who is another American intern working in our office. Her blog is linked in the column on the right. We had lunch with her at Andy's Pizza (I'll blog about that another day, too!), and then went sightseeing around town with her. She's only been here 2 months, so she hasn't done much sightseeing either! It was great, though, to have another American in the office to help us get things figured out. I think she's going to be a good friend.

So altogether, it has been an EXTREMELY successful first day - we love it! Pray for us as we continue to get things figured out and as we go through the ordeal of getting our work permits next week. From what I hear, there are some pretty unpleasant medical tests involved, and we'll be starting those Monday, so please pray for our courage and communication, patience and safety! Check back again soon!!!!

Arrived!

2007-08-02T14:21:00.000-04:00

Hey everyone,

Just to let you know that we made it on schedule with ALL of our luggage! Chisinau is a great and interesting-looking place. We’re living with a very nice host family, in their upstairs “apartment” while they finish renovating a guest house nextdoor. More on that later.

The flights went well. I (Justin) am still feeling a bit ill, but I made it. We’re here, and are quite thankful for everything going so well and the wonderful family hosting us!

Thanks for your prayers! We'll post updates with pictures soon!

Leaving on a jet plane (Justin)

2007-08-01T15:47:00.000-04:00

Hey everyone, we're about 15 minutes away from leaving for the airport. We had to dump about 80 pounds worth of our initial stuff to make sure we're below the weight limit. Guess we had a lot of stuff. :-\

We're both feeling better, thanks for praying. I'm still a little queasy, let's see how I do on the plane. :-P

Schedule is Cincinnati to Rome, then sprint through the airport to make our connection to Istanbul, then arrive in Chisinau just after 6:00pm (Aug. 2) Chisinau time (GMT + 2, or EST + 7).

This weekend we received more donations. I don't have the exact amount, but I think we are right at our $8500 goal! That's a huge praise, and great confirmation.

We don't know what tomorrow will bring, but we know that He does. Adios, America!

One Day Out (Justin)

2007-07-31T13:17:00.001-04:00

Today we were supposed to go to Six Flags with family to relax and celebrate our last day here. Instead, Joni and I got really sick last night with a stomach bug that's been going around. So, please pray that it passes quickly! We fly out tomorrow (Wednesday) evening around 6pm.

However, while at home I found the following blog post ,written by Moldovans, that illustrates the costs of mass immigration from Moldova on Moldova itself. The post states that remittances from Moldovans abroad account for 27% of Moldova's GDP. The share of money spent from abroad has increased from 8% in 1999 to 27% in 2006.

This increase in consumption using foreign money is helping drive the bad inflation that we see in the country. Moldovans working in the country are receiving wages that don't change often, whereas those receiving remittances from their cousins working in Germany, for example, are able to buy more and more goods, which drives up prices and hurts Moldovans who don't leave for Germany.

The author, however, proposes a solution that historically has proven weak: the government can intervene by providing more grants and scholarships to keep educated people from leaving.
1. These grants will pale in comparison to what an educated person can earn abroad.
2. The increase in government spending will further widen the deficit, and in turn the external debt of the country to pay for them (unless accompanied by an increase in taxes, which would have obvious consequences).

I'm glad to be working on what I feel is the solution: bottom-up microenterprise development. The best thing the government could do is liberalize laws to allow businesses to start faster, with less red tape. They could find some ways (more legal and moral than anything) to encourage international agencies to enter and start helping entrepreneurs create jobs on their own.

Quote of the Day (Justin)

2007-07-30T11:44:00.000-04:00

Joni's dad works in the electronics department of Wal-Mart. Last night, a woman who was visiting from Moscow came by and they chatted about life in the former USSR (Joni's parents lived in Poland for years). The woman said "I hate Moscow. Everyone there is a crook and a criminal." John told her that we were going to Moldova. She said "Oh, there are even more crooks and criminals there!"

Many of the "crooks and criminals" live in an area called Transnistria, which we will be unlikely to visit, but makes for an interesting read. The goal of our work is to create jobs so that the law-abiding, educated populace with strong work ethic won't have to leave the country in order to make a living. That is very essential to keeping social structures in place for law and order.

We're 2 days away, and trying to get our suitcases under the weight limit (we shed 43 pounds of stuff yesterday!). We'll hopefully be able to give a funding update tomorrow.

Prayer requests: Pray for us to make our very tight connection (55 minutes) in Rome. That would mean our flight leaving on time from Cincinnati, and ease of transition through the airport in Rome. (This is so we don't have to spend the night in Rome and pay whatever that would cost).
Pray also that we would remember to tie up all the loose ends we need to tie up here!

Thanks so much!

$2 well-spent!

2007-07-26T17:24:00.000-04:00

Earlier this week Joni and I visited Mckay Books in Knoxville, East TN's version of Half Price Books. We always hit the used book stores to look for foreign-language stuff, and we'd been stalking a Romanian-English dictionary for her. To our amazement, there on the shelf was a little Travel Guide to Chisinau for just $2!

The travel guide has all the history of the city, maps, tourist attractions, information about restaurants, customs, etc. Basically everything we needed to learn more ourselves, and to show our families. I'd post a picture but can't find it listed anywhere online. Divine appointment on a bookshelf!

From the book, we've learned that Chisinau has 3 McDonald's. That makes it pretty civilized in my opinion.

Progress: Several very big answers to prayer! Looks like all the disputes with the travel company and internet company have been resolved favorably. We've also gotten a large amount of our donated funds transferred to our account. So, we bought our travel insurance today.

Looks like the Moldovan folks have found a suitable place for us to live: the guest house of a Christian family that is used to hosting foreigners.
So, we'll be able to do some of our own thing, and yet be interacting with a large family there as they try to include us on their things. I'm pretty happy with the setup.

Hope things are well with you all!

I'm Here Too! (Joni)

2007-07-24T13:31:00.000-04:00

I just wanted to put a little post on here, seeing as this blog is supposed to be from Justin AND Joni, but I haven't posted anything on here yet! Please rest assured that I DO plan to post on this blog quite often. I intend to be the color commentary of this blog, posting stories and pictures, while Justin provides the facts and information. Since we're not in Moldova yet, the only trip-related stories I could tell you would be about my not-so-pleasant 3 hours on the phone with Travelocity trying to get our plane tickets! But that is over, we have our tickets in hand, and I won't bore you with that story. But look forward to my tales in the months to come! Our departure is just a week from tomorrow! Pray for us!

More Travel, Praise, and More Frustrations (Justin)

2007-07-21T09:11:00.000-04:00

Update: As of yesterday we are at $8,150! That's just $350 away from our goal of $8,500! Praise God, it's hard to believe! Since we'll actually be needing more than that, it'll be great to go over the $8,500 mark and know that we're going to not run out of funds while there.
Thanks to all who have given!

Praise God for the confirmation and for great friends and supporters. I hope to live up to what we've already attained (Philippians 3:16).

We've spent a week in Cincinnati and are now just outside Oak Ridge, TN visiting more family.

Frustrations: The well-known online travel company we booked our flights with have accidentally charged us additional fees. After a couple days on the phone with them, they agreed to reverse the charges. However, there is no sign of this on our bank account yet.

Similarly, the internet service we used in Waco was supposed to reverse charges for their last bill for us. Instead, they've decided to charge us again, even though we have canceled. These hits on our bank account make it difficult for us to close it or minimize it like we'd hoped. These things will be hard to deal with from Moldova, so I'm praying the hits quit coming.

Pray that I have patience and quit losing sleep over these issues. Hope everyone is doing well!

Fundraising Update (Justin)

2007-07-14T09:57:00.000-04:00

Hey friends,
I got word this morning that we have $6,340 of the $8,500 that we're needing. So, we're 74.6% of the way! Thanks to everyone who has so generously donated!

If you have not donated yet and would like to do so, the info is on the side of your screen (i'll reprint it for those who are using Google Reader):

The mailing address is:
Business Professional Network
P.O. Box 230399
Portland OR 97281

Be sure to attach a note or letter to the check designating that the donation is for "Justin and Joni Tapp to Moldova."

You can also help us by praying for us! We'll update this blog with requests regularly. Thanks so much for your support!

On the road (Justin)

2007-07-13T10:19:00.001-04:00

Hey everyone, just wanted to give an update on where we're at and what we're doing. We had a few days without internet and cellphone in rural Kentucky so today is the first time we've been able to get online for a while.

We made it to Kentucky just fine, everything was still in tact! Thanks to the Callahans for helping us tie everything down, and to the Striplings for giving us a place to sleep the night before we left Waco!

We spent a couple days at my parents' house, and now we're in Chicago visiting with Joni's immediate and extended family for the weekend. Sharing a hotel room with her parents this weekend.

Update: We finally have our plane tickets! After a several-day ordeal including several not-so-pleasant phone conversations with online ticket sellers we finally got our flights! Cost a bit over $2,000 for each of us, but we got the best deal we could.
We'll be leaving Cincinatti on August 1, and arriving in Chisinau, Moldova on August 2. We'll leave Chisinau on December 23 and arrive back in Cincy on Christmas Eve.

Please pray for our funding to come through. Last week, we were officially about 25% of the way through, with pledges of over 50% of our funding still yet to be deposited.

Welcome! (Justin)

2007-07-06T17:17:00.000-04:00

Welcome to our new blog home! We hope to keep you updated on our journey. Check out the info to the right of your screen about what we're doing.

Tomorrow, we pack up a U-Haul to leave Waco. The past few days have been filled with selling, donating, throwing away, and saying goodbyes.

Important info to pray for: Our visas and work permits. Joni and I both will not know the status of our work permits until we arrive in Moldova and go to the government ourselves. A typical visa is 3 months, but we will require 6 month visas for our work. Please pray that these come through! God is good!

What I've learned today: You really have to shop around to find a bank that offers a low percentage rate on international ATM transactions. Most of the large banks charge a flat fee (from $1.50-$4.00) plus 2-3% on the exchange conversion to make a foreign ATM withdrawal. This is critical, because we will be reliant on ATMs (and can only withdraw $200 at a time) and the fees pile up quickly. We don't want our donated funds just to go to banking fees! I think we finally found a bank today that offers a decent rate (Extraco).
I also learned it may be relatively easy for me to open a Eurodollar account in Chisinau.

We've been getting solid donor support so far, which is very encouraging. We're just over the halfway mark. Thanks to everyone who is supporting us! We feel very honored and humbled!