For friends and family who will be interested, this is a brief video showing the different ministries we were involved in during our mission trip to Moldova. For a more complete update, click here.

My heart is so full that it’s heavy.

On Monday night, I arrived back in the United States after leading a small mission team to the Republic of Moldova for eleven days. Moldova is a former Soviet country nestled in between Romania and Ukraine. Once a part of Romania, Moldova is a country caught between two worlds – Russia to the East and Europe to the West.

Assuming that the culture would resemble that of Romania, I thought I would be the “pro” on this mission trip, the one that could steer the team into places of effective ministry. But this trip surprised me.

I didn’t experience culture shock. I didn’t have any difficulty speaking Romanian. But the good things that are happening in this country moved me deeply.

The evangelical church in Moldova does not have a history as long or rich as that of Romania. I quickly realized that my five years of mission work in Romania had been devoted to strengthening an already-established church. In Moldova, I found myself on the front lines of church planting, watching a large number of young people “on fire” for Christ, young people who were passionately seeking to make disciples.

In a small village where 90% of the population is Jehovah’s Witness, I realized that our entourage of college students was bigger than the crowd that showed up for our evangelistic service. But no hint of disappointment shown on the faces of these students.

As our car rattled over the notoriously-uneven Moldovan roads, a nineteen-year-old college student pointed out a local village without an evangelical church. This summer, he and his friend bought two tents and headed out to that village to do door-to-door evangelism and Bible study for two weeks. They camped out as missionaries. Six people trusted Christ. A new church is being born.

Rarely have I seen such fervor and devotion. After three nights of low turnouts at our evangelistic services, the college students were as excited as ever. And when I got the chance to lead a Moldovan lady to Christ on the last night, they turned to me and said, “See? It was all worth it!”

Another element of this trip that surprised me was the hunger of new Christians for Bible teaching. I have always enjoyed teaching in Eastern Europe, and even now, the aspect of Romanian ministry that I miss most is the opportunity to preach in Romanian every week in Romanian village churches.

But the Moldovan experience was different. The church that held our Bible conference occupies a building that is still in construction. In many ways, “in construction” is a good metaphor for all Moldovan evangelical ministry. 

Since the church is not quite as established and is still in its infancy stages, most Bible teaching comes from inductive Bible study books. There is not yet a large number of strong preacher/teachers. So our leader’s conference on Saturday was packed full of people who seemed to be starving for good Bible teaching.

And here is why my heart is so full it’s heavy. Doing ministry in the United States might actually be harder than in Moldova. We are so easily satisfied by our wealth and entertainment that our senses have been dulled. I was greatly encouraged to see such desire for Bible Study, and yet greatly discouraged to think about how hard it is to find that desire in many of our churches in the U.S.

I plan on reflecting more about this trip to Moldova in the future. I do thank those of you who prayed for our team. God blessed us in many ways, and I look forward to seeing what he will do next.

(Click here to see a brief mission video of our trip to Moldova.)

(Readers of this blog who speak either Romanian or Russian might like to listen to Session 1 of last Saturday’s conference: Being the Church for the World. I am delivering the message in Romanian, and a Moldovan pastor is translating it into Russian. Click here for the mp3.)

written by Trevin Wax  © 2008 Kingdom People blog