Author Archives: Keith

A couple of days ago I received a comment on my Moldova Journal # 7 blog from an American who is here in the city of Kishinev. Justin and his wife Joni are here for five months working with a Christian agency. They, “are working with the Christian Agency for Micro Enterprise Development (CAMED) in Moldova. This agency provides micro and larger loans to small and medium-sized enterprises there, as well as provides Biblically-principled training for aspiring entrepreneurs. The agency sponsoring us is Business Professional Network, an international group of Christian businesspeople who desire to help local economies grow through business development. “

I just got off the phone with Justin and it is too bad that we were not able to connect earlier because they have many of good things to say on their blog, The Tapps to Moldova! They have been here a month already and have learned a lot about the country and its culture. I will be keeping up with their blog while back in the US and encourage you to do the same. I pray that they are able to make a great impact for Christ in this country.

Here is a picture of some Jehovah’s Witnesses distributing Watchtower literature on a public sidewalk. They are everywhere in this country. I do not have the statistics available to me right now, but I do know that there is a greater ratio of JWs here in the country of Moldova than there are in the United States.

On Sunday I had the privilege of hearing one of my former students preach. Serghei Moraru is one of the pastors at Kishinev Bible Church and has numerous responsibilities both at the church and at Moldova Bible Seminary. He preached a good sermon on having vision and what kinds of things that God dreams for us.

Serghei is a friend of mine who is one of the pastors at Kishinev Bible Church and is also the dean of students at Moldova Bible Seminary. He was also one of my students four years ago. He called me Saturday morning to see if I wanted to go down town to do some shopping.

While we were walking down the sidewalk, we saw this woman begging. Usually people just stand on the street and beg, but this woman was going all out. Serghei explained to me that she was probably working for someone. It seems that beggars have defined territories and a hierarchy of sorts. One beggar often works for another. If a beggar is working in someone else’s territory, the one who “owns” the territory will either kick them out, let them work there for a percentage of their donations or let them work all day and then kick them out… after they have taken all of the money.

After class on Tuesday, I went to go visit Tania and Adela. Tania use to work for the Gospel of John missions and one of her responsibilities was to arrange for my airlines tickets. Adela is a former student of mine and has recently returned from her first trip to the US. Her first language is Romanian, but she also speaks Russian and English. On past trips I have used her as a translator because she speaks all three languages well. She use to have long, long dark hair (she’s the one of the left), but as you can see, she has cut it.

Tania and Adela use to live in a flat owned by the Gospel of John, but now Tania lives with her parents and Adela recently moved in because she just got back from the US. We visited for a few hours and then I had to get back for the evening meeting that I taught on Mormonism.