Moldova – Three Nazarene churches in Romania and three in Bulgaria sent out their first international Work & Witness team this August. The team spent 10 days assisting local missionaries Sergei and Irina Talalay in conducting children’s camps in Moldova, a country that the denomination officially entered in 2009.
“A lot of people in Moldova speak Romanian, so it was logical for us to do something,” said Roberta Bustin, a Mission Corps missionary who pastors the Nazarene church in Sighișoara, Romania. “This really was a start for our people, for them to kind of get the feel for what Work & Witness is and be more involved in the whole thing.”As part of the fledgling work in Moldova, the Talalays felt led to begin ministry to children and to start addiction rehabilitation for adults. The mission team agreed to help them launch these outreaches.
The 20-person team – made up of six Bulgarians, six Romanians, five missionary kids, missionaries in Bulgaria Jay and Teanna Sunberg and Bustin – were tasked with hosting a week-long vacation Bible school. Many of the team’s participants were teenagers, and the team spoke in Russian, Romanian, Bulgarian and English.
Bustin said the mission trip was a success in large part because of how well the Talalays planned and organized the projects before the team arrived. “I think that was a real advantage. We weren’t going in with things we wanted to do; we were doing what they wanted to have done.”
Sergei and Irina had distributed invitations to families in their area, asking parents to call ahead and register their children. Thirty-eight children reserved places. The Romanian-Bulgarian mission team divided the children into groups – two groups spoke Romanian and two groups spoke Russian. They led the children in singing, Bible stories, crafts and games, an English lesson and a meal.
Although the team was only with the children for the week, in that short amount of time they witnessed changes in the children’s behavior. On the first day, some refused to sit still, listen to the lessons or respect one another. By the end of the week, they sat quietly and listened, worked at learning songs and Scripture verses and treated each other more considerately, Bustin said.
The week of activities provided a core group of children for the Talalays to continue working with in a Kids’ Club ministry that began at summer’s end.
“They met all their goals and are running like crazy now in doing follow- up and working the folks they gathered during that time,” said Robert Skinner, missionary advisor to Moldova. “There are concrete results of new people in church and kids coming several times a week to Kids’ Clubs and other ministry ventures.”
The members of the visiting team also benefited from the experience. Some enjoyed giving of themselves to missions after receiving the investments of others for many years, Teanna said.
One woman from Romania said she learned how
to improve ministries for children. Upon returning to her church, she made suggestions to the children’s workers about more closely integrating games and crafts with Scriptural lessons and memorization.“Seeing these three countries working together was quite inspiring,” Bustin said. “Even though we didn’t speak the same languages [and] things were different, seeing how we all worked together … that was quite encouraging to see this inter-district activity.”
By Gina Pottenger, Eurasia Region Communications
Published in Where Worlds Meet, Year 7, Issue 8, November 2010 and NCN News
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