Eugen is a 26 year old young man, that chose to run away from home when he was only 18, and found refuge in a Christian Monastery, in Moldavia. For 3 years he served there and made progresses very quickly ending up by being called a priest. Every day he performed a 'divine service', without ever feeling any closeness towards God. In fact in all these years he never read the Bible. He never had a personal relationship with Jesus, neither was he concerned with this, because nobody ever encouraged him to do so. After these 3 years he ended up disappointed, because of those around him that were supposed to serve God and they were not living what they were preaching. After living this experience things started to go really bad for Eugen because his father didn't receive him back home and disinherited him. He ended up living on the streets, earning his living from selling drugs and doing all sorts of illegal stuff. I don't want to emphasize how bad things got for this young man but rather to tell you what God did in his life in 2 years, starting with an encounter Eugen had with a young Evangelist from our Church, Cristi Istrate. Cristi found Eugen on the street and invited him to a Church meeting. Eugen answered 'no, you have no idea who I am. I am an evil man ...' Cristi told him 'you are exactly the person Jesus is looking for'. He ended up going to that meeting and then Cristi spent a lot of time with him leading him to The Lord. Eugen didn't honor his decision but God didn't give up on him. For 2 years Cristi kept in touch with Eugen and has been a constant support for him. Two months ago, after wondering around the entire country, Eugen came back to Cluj, where he started to look for Cristi. He was ready to let go to his past and change everything. He started attending Church services every Sunday, constantly being discipeled by Cristi, that spent many, many hours trying to build up the Kingdom of heaven in Eugen. His heart became really sensitive to the things of God and he understood that he must fulfill what the Scripture is commanding and so he asked to be baptized. Sunday afternoon, together with all the Church and people from the village, we were honored to perform his baptism. After 2 days, Eugen said that now he feels really reconciled with God. His desire is to stay in Cluj (because he's from another city) find a job here and start a normal life, serving The Lord. He is aware that God will use all his past to reach other young people that are struggling and he already started to tell people around him abut the miracles that God did in his life.
Jesus said that we should go into all the world and make disciples, baptize them and equip them so that they may start bringing fruits of their own. This is our desire, to form disciples not to indoctrinate people and converting them to a religion.
We want to thank all those that have been close to us and supported us in everything we do. I want to thank the people from 'Way of Faith' Church that pray for this vision and believe for this vision. I want to thank my Pastors, Matt and Denise Elliott, for all their trust and faithfulness towards us. We all build the Church of Christ and His Kingdom, that will be revealed soon, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.
Servants of Jesus:
Pastor Călugăr Rareş şi Nicoleta
