Baptism Today (Joni)

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!

Jazz band at church! (Justin)

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.

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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!

A Great Weekend

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 follow-up about church (Justin)

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)

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.

What the Church Looks Like (Justin)

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!