Ghiorghi and Christina Cazacu with their six adopted children, Nicoletta, Daniel, Timotei, David, Lia and Diana

Our hosts in Romania are my dear old friends, Ghiorghi and Christina Cazacu, native Romanians who immigrated to the United States in 1990, found the Lord in 1992, and whom the Lord sent back to Romania as missionaries in 2000. They have a fruitful and multi-faceted ministry, not of the least of which is raising six beautiful children whom they have adopted since they returned to Romania.

Today, after we drove across the border from Romania to Moldova, we stopped to visit four Christian widows whom Ghiorghi frequently serves. Several have been believers for six decades, having remained faithful under the persecution of Christians during the communist era. We delivered food to them in their little houses, assessed some pressing needs, and heard some inspiring testimonies.

Ghiorghi encouraging 80-year old widow Vera Pavlov, who lives in a two-room house that at one time served as meeting place for an underground church. Vera can only walk with great difficulty now, and so we took steps to get her a wheelchair and firewood to heat her house this winter, courtesy of contributions to Heaven’s Family’s Widows Fund.

Widow Anna Alexandra Estrata, singing a hymn to us. Behind her is a bottle of cooking oil which we brought for her, among other food items. She told us that, although her government pension is only 35 dollars a month, God always provides for her needs. Before we arrived, unknown to us, she had just run out of cooking oil.

As we continued toward Moldova’s capital, Chisinau, we stopped at Cornesti Children’s Tuberculosis Sanitarium, a place I’ve visited four times during previous trips. There are currently 94 children—from very poor families—staying there for anywhere from three to six months as they recover from TB. The hospital is an old concrete building that on its front columns still bears the communist emblem of a hammer and sickle.

We brought the children a rare treat—box loads of bananas and oranges. In past years, Heaven’s Family has helped with new shoes and clothing (and we will help with more before the year is over). Cornesti is a state-run institution, but it is very underfunded. There is no running water or functional well. (Moldova is Eastern Europe’s poorest nation, and almost half of its elected parliament members are communist party members.) Because Ghiorghi and Christina have served the children there for years, they have gained lots of favor from the staff to freely preach the gospel.

A cute little TB patient at Cornesti

Eating the oranges we brought

As they sun was setting today, we met with a small group of pastors and evangelists, all from a very poor village that they have reached with the gospel, to evaluate a potential agricultural project that will help them become self-sufficient, serve the poor, and keep their own children from having to move to other countries to find work. Work-related emigration of its young people is robbing this nation of its sons and daughters and fueling the sex trafficking industry, as Moldova struggles to overcome a legacy of decades of godless communism. — David

HF Staff Member David Warnock entertains some Cornesti kids with his orange-juggling skills