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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.

These two pictures are of my students taking their first quiz. From left to right, they are, Pasha (Paul). He has been a believer for 11 years, is a missionary to Muslims and likes ice cream with jelly or caramel in it.

Olesya is the quietest student in the class. She has been a believer for seven years, is in the children’s ministry and likes vanilla ice cream.

Anna is probably one of my smartest students. She has been a believer for six years, is involved with the youth ministry at likes “fruity” ice cream.

Olga K. is the girlfriend of Yura who was in the very first class that Becky and I taught in the year 2000. She is easily the most vocal student in the class. Not in a bad way though. She is also involved in the youth ministry and likes chocolate ice cream.

Nina has been a believer for five years, is involved in the children’s ministry and likes vanilla ice cream with fruit mixed in it.

Olga T. has been a believer for five years, is involved in the children’s ministry and likes vanilla ice cream. Speaking of ice cream, here in Moldova it doesn’t come in cardboard boxes like in the States. It comes in these plastic tubes shaped like Jimmy Dean sausage tubes. They just squeeze it out into your bowl.

Our first year teaching here, I met a young boy named Genia. The English name would be Eugene. He was interested in the drums so after church, I showed him a few things on the drums. It seemed like all of the little kids liked to hang out near the drums. Now, seven years later, Genia is 18 years old and plays drums with the worship team. He is already a much better drummer than I am. That was cool to see.