On his legacy of service learning in RomaniaMemorial Service | Jan 2022
By Andrea (Scott) Popa
In January 1992 — 30 years ago this month and just 24 months after the revolution and political uprising against dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu — a clean-shaven college math professor by the name of Dr. Edward Mann took 7 college students, including me at age 19 and Melissa Greer (now Mann), on what would be an epic service learning trip to Nicorești and Sasca Mică, Romania.
This was not your typical study abroad experience to visit museums and cultural attractions, and dine on epicurean delights in world cities. This journey was much more like a great Tolkien adventure, an impossible quest to unknown worlds.
The idea for this trip was student-proposed, but we needed a faculty lead for the trip to be approved for academic credit. When asked if he would be interested in teaching the travel course, Prof Mann responded with an immediate, “Yes” - even before checking in at home!
So it was that, under the auspices of the Cambridge-based Free Romania Foundation, and approved for Cultural Anthropology credit through Eastern Nazarene College, we spent three weeks engaged in humanitarian service at two homes for “irrecuperable” children in rural villages.
The work in the children’s home — known as the “spital” (or hospital) — was difficult. Conditions were wretched, cold and dirty, with few supplies and minimally-trained personnel. The children were under-fed, under-stimulated, and suffered from a variety of serious physical disabilities and mental conditions that we were in no way equipped to handle. We struggled with the fact that our three-week stint was unlikely to produce necessary long-term changes to the system of care.
“Prof” as we called him was the perfect guide for our band of wayward pilgrims. With no prior experience in Eastern Europe, and no real knowledge of what we were walking into, he journeyed along with us.
Instead of trying to curate, interpret or sanitize the experience we were having, he recognized that this time in this place would be a catalyst for learning and growth, and that we would walk through moments of honesty like few others we would encounter in our college studies or our lives.
Prof held open the portal for us, allowing us to grapple with frustrations and feelings of inadequacy, and look our doubt squarely in the eyes. He created and held space for our own self-reflection.
He was a consummate educator. His eyes danced when we hit on moments of cosmic connection and clarity. With a raised eyebrow, cocked head, pointed finger and knowing look he would respond, “I understand” often followed by his own story or witty analogy.
Prof looked the part of a wise not-so-very old wizard. On one weekend trip to a local market, we all purchased those rabbit skin hats with the side flaps that were ubiquitous in Easten Europe in the early 90’s. Mine was white. Another was black. Prof’s, fittingly, was a large salt-and-pepper gray hat that, along with his tall stature and his Romania-grown beard, cemented his look as our own Gandalf the Grey.
On another Sunday during our trip, we traveled to an Orthodox monastery in the neighboring village of Buciumeni. The domed church ceiling was covered in colored icons depicting the life of Christ and the saints. The air was thick with the incense, waxed candles, and the must and smoke smell that permeated all things in rural Romania. We stayed into the afternoon, sharing a meal that included pork piftie (aspic), mamaliga (polenta), bread and wine.
On the monastery grounds, villagers in wool coats and rabbit-skinned hats had lined up their cars for a New Year's blessing. After the service, the priest blessed each car, along with each person and animal in sight - using basil sprigs to douse each object with holy water as he made the sign of the cross.
As someone who has now made my spiritual home in the Orthodox Church for the past 20+ years, I recognize this blessing of the waters as something that happens during Epiphany — the “winter pascha” — in early January each year.
The Feast of Epiphany, celebrates that lightbulb or “aha” moment when God is revealed to us in everyday things. In his humanity, Jesus did not become the Christ when he was baptized by John in the waters of the River Jordan but was revealed to us in his divine nature. So too, there is nothing magical that takes place for water to become holy, but it is our eyes that are opened to see God in all things around us as we participate in and acknowledge the sacred in the current space and the present moment.
While Prof mentored our growth, he also allowed himself to be changed by his time in Romania. In the years following he carried with him some of that epiphany spark. He read extensively from Romanian philosophers and theologians - including Father Dumitru Stăniloae, and appreciated the mystery, hospitality, and grace espoused by the Eastern church.
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Our epic three-week trip to Nicorești and Sasca Mică was the start of several future ventures and Prof Mann’s legacy of service continued in the years that followed.
Our group was the first Nazarene-affiliated group to travel to post-Communist Romania.
In the spring of 1992, Prof returned to Romania along with my father Jon Scott preparing for the Church of the Nazarene to open in Romania that August. Over the coming decade, over 800 volunteers would travel to Romania with Nazarene Compassionate Ministries to work in humanitarian and educational service in Bucharest, Sighisoara and other cities. Among the volunteers were Prof Mann’s brother Merritt and his nephew Doug Mann, who served there as a Nazarene missionary from 1998-2003.
In Fall 1993, in part due to Prof’s advocacy, Eastern Nazarene College ran a pilot semester which became the Romanian Studies Program. Under the leadership of ENC Professor Dorothy Tarrant, the RSP continued for 25 years, involving over 500 students from more than 21 different colleges. Prof Mann himself - in his beard and rabbit hat - led subsequent student trips in January 1993 and January 1995.
Back home in the shire in Quincy, MA, Prof and Carol championed the study program and service trips to Romania, encouraging reluctant travelers to take the leap and mentoring Romania program returnees, helping us process and debrief from what we had seen and experienced.
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As we gather today to celebrate the life and legacy of Prof Ed Mann, I would challenge you to say “yes” when an opportunity for great adventure comes your way. And I would urge you to open yourself to “aha” moments where the sacred is revealed to us — in the person before you, in your current situation, and in the present moment.
It is these moments of epiphany that would make Prof’s eyes sparkle as he remarked, “I understand,” followed, of course, by a tale of his own.
