A Day at the Office (Justin)

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!

Project Update (Justin)

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!

Our Project (Justin)

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.

News and notes (Justin)

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)

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."