Studies in Pitesti

It is Thursday night and we are in the apartment after a long day outside. It is raining now, the first rain we have seen since we came to Romania more than a week ago. The weather in Constanta was very pleasant and even here in Pitesti we have had sunny days... until now. But, this rain is welcome and we hope it will cool things down a little and take away some of the dust.

For the last two days we have had studies at Florena Predescu's apartment. Tuesday the studies ran for more than five hours without a break, but who wants to complain? Not me. We began with two separate studies going in two different rooms. I had a class with some older people, while Ben and Liviu studied with a young man who was a theology student. They did not know he was a theology student during the study, but only found out today (the day after). Anyway, after hours of study we wound things up and returned to our apartment for the evening.

Today (Wednesday) we began our day in the center of town looking for a computer repair shop. My laptop would not start since we came to Pitesti, but it turned out to be a big nothing. After taking out the ram memory and putting it back again, things are working perfectly. After that we went to Florena's apartment and had more studies. They lasted until early evening and were longer than the day before. Our students were varied, but we had one man who had come from the day before - and one lady with whom I had studied almost two years before. Our lessons covered a wide variety of topics.

One thing we are working on tonight is brochure to hand out in the streets. Next month Romania will have national and local elections and the streets are full of young people handing out flyers for the candidates. The theme for our flyer will center around what it means to "vote" for God / Jesus. With this we hope to capitalize on the election frenzy and direct people's attention back to a more important subject. If I can get our flyer ready tonight, we will try to print some tomorrow.

I will try to keep this blog updated as things happen. This weekend we will return to Bucuresti for worship, but our plan is to be back in Pitesti next Monday to continue our efforts here until we have to leave.

One final note... I am impressed with the way that Ben is picking up the language again after being gone for 9 years. He is communicating well enough to be understood and is absolutely fearless in his efforts to communicate. He has been a big help to me in so many ways. I hope this trip will encourage him to make more trips to Romania in the future for the purpose of preaching the gospel.

in Him,
alan