This weekend, East European Bible College is full of life as leaders from seventeen churches across Romania and Ukraine gather for our third annual Praxis Conference. Each one has come ready to grow, connect, and return home better equipped to serve.
My phone showed me a photo from 2014 this week—and I couldn’t stop thinking about the stories behind it.
It’s just a simple group picture, but every person in it represents a piece of what God has been building over the years.
Allyssa was the only girl in the group back then. Since that day, she met Razvan, got married, and now they’re raising three kids while serving…
Years ago, we set out to do something simple in Romania.
We wanted to train Roma men from small villages to lead churches in their own communities. The goal was straightforward: equip local leaders so the church could grow from within.
But we quickly ran into a challenge.
Can I tell you about someone I met in a small Romanian village?
Her name was Domnica. Whenever our volunteers gathered with the kids, she was almost always nearby. Not in the middle of things—just quietly watching from the edges. You could tell life hadn’t been easy for her. Poverty had left its marks. But she always had this warm, steady smile.
One day we decided to stop and talk with her...
As we celebrate thirty years of Remember the Children in Romania, I’ve been thinking about how this journey has shaped both the ministry — and me.
My earliest memories there are not easy ones. They’re marked by the lingering weight of communism, by hardship, and by the quiet tragedy so many children endured. For many Romanians, those scars are still close to the surface.
What I remember most clearly, though, are the children on the streets — and sometimes beneath them, living in the sewers.
One of them was a boy named Florin.
In 2014, RtC founder Andy Baker was in Romania with a mission team. One of the team members, Katrina, brought water purification devices for the Roma villages in Santandrei. Some of the residents were getting worms because they were drinking contaminated water, therefore the devices seemed like a great way to bless the communities.
This week, I met with one of our Romanian church leaders, Adi Galiger over Zoom. He is the pastor of Impact Church Oradea, which is celebrating their 10th anniversary in June. This church has spent the last 10 years serving the people in Romania spiritually and physically—they’re a huge blessing to their community.
Can you believe it? There’s a new church in our ministry in Tanzania! Our house parent and teacher, Dionis Buhanda, started a church on October 25, 2020. It’s located in Mololo, the community where the RtC orphan homes are located. Tanzania had extremely low cases of COVID-19, therefore the church was able to open because of minimal restrictions. It’s been thriving and growing, and is a huge encouragement!
