SWAT REPORT # 23
A PICTURESQUE TRIP TO THE VILLAGE
First look at the attached photo.
Here is part of our church on Sunday night…they are a nice group of folk…some
live in blocks (communist-built, concrete high rise condos) in Brasov…maybe sometime
I will give you a tour of those. 
The folks just on the right
side of my wife in the photo are gypsies from Racos…
In reports past I have shown you the
unbelievably poor conditions in Racos village. This time I want to give you a
picturesque ride into one of those villages. This is a brief stretch of good
road… but look ahead… there is a flood.
You have all seen potholes but
few of you have ever seen Romanian sinkholes. Amazing how photography makes most
things look better than they really are. I could have jammed your computer with lots
more scenery shots but the grass, hills, cows, sheep and telephone polls look just like
Pennsylvania, West Virginia, New York, Ohio, and sometimes Idaho.
The shadow of and Orthodox church falls across nearly every dwelling in the village. The priests must be married, bearded, and long black robed. The church stands for nothing but tradition, teaches as little as possible, dominates everything it can, makes any necessary compromises with the changing winds of politics, marries and buries those with money, and uses the money to build more beautiful churches. If they removed the back wall of the church and extended the graveyard inside, it wouldn’t change much. There is usually a Pentecostal alternative in the village. If it is of any size, there will be a Kingdom Hall and maybe even a 7th Day society.
We swing right and go into the
village. There are lots of folk milling about. Some sitting on board benches
in front of their houses…kids playing soccer in the dirt
street…boyfriend/girlfriend getting to know one another better…bunicas (grammas)
visiting at gates, bicycles and a few cars…and, hey slow down…there is the ever
present gypsy, horse-drawn wagon which has appeared in previous photos. It is a
stoic life filled with little materialism (this is changing fast as EU pushes east), lots
of idle time, hard work if you can find it, simple food, cold in winter, hot and dry in
summer, lots of poverty and plenty of all the basic sins. The ministry here is
good. The folk have little else to do but come to the services. Our services
are very novel to them since we exhibit genuineness and teach truth from the Bible.
Folks who have nothing to lose usually are interested in any gain. We are careful
to take advantage of that. As a result we have had several folk saved in the
villages (some are in the first photo). But transportation and money is a real
problem. If you are into bus ministry you could really load up here. We are a
hard hours drive from Racos and two hours by train…and the train is not all that
cheap. We need to start a church in Racos and that is one of the reasons the Chuck
Zander family is coming. We need to find a building and start meeting. We have
no doubt it would be filled in no time. There are more of these villages than you
can imagine within an hour of Brasov and if the Lord tarries we want them all for the
Lord. But, patience…it takes time, money, manpower and everything
else…after all we have only been here for 7 months. Come see it all for
yourself.
We are holding evening meetings this
week…
offering a seminar in English, yet it is translated in Romanian, on “What the Bible
says about God.” Pastor Logan is doing a very professional job presenting this
subject to the college age students we targeted. He has a power point presentation
that would be interesting viewing for the UN. We had 11 visitors come last
night…this is the fruit of 2,000 fliers passed with tracts in the past two
weeks. Pray we can make contact with this over educated yet,
intellectually-challenged, society. We will have another type of meeting later in
the summer targeting Romanian-speaking people only.
Lots going on… hope you enjoy keep
informed via the SWAT REPORTS… forward these on to friends, Pastor and church family
members
Pray the Lord will supply a very needed
van for this ministry.
Contact us anytime…by dialing
011-40-268-477-243
Serving with you but on the eastern
front.
Gerald Sutek and the SWAT TEAM for CHRIST