Upon arriving in Taul, Moldova five years ago, Florin and Kati began to live their lives as witnesses for Christ as our sent missionaries. One initial idea for outreach was to show the Jesus film. At no small expense, posters were printed and posted. The backlash began immediately against these "Pocaiti" (Po-kah-yeets, a derogatory term for Christians). A professor from the local college tore the posters down. During this time the Secretary for the Communist party, a woman of fierce reputation, set about to organize a village-wide riot, aimed at driving the heretical evangelists out.

Eighteen years ago last February, I met Tom Sachs, a man who was to have a profound impact on my life. What impressed me most about Tom was how he used every opportunity to share Christ. In Guntersville, Alabama, Tom settled with his wife Milla, a true Southern Belle. Along with their two children, Cord and Tegan, Tom and Milla built a rich life together on the pristine banks of the Tennessee River.

Her crestfallen countenance telegraphed to the world a mother's anguish. Olga had already borne the weeping agony of a seeping heart wound for years when Jana, an across-the-hall neighbor, began to reach out to her. Olga and her husband are a fifty-something Russian couple who run a small-animal veterinary clinic in Donduseni, Moldova. They had two grown sons. Two, that is, until one son killed the other with a knife in a fit of rage. Horrified, numbed, and in shock, mom and dad buried one son and watched the other taken off to prison. Three years later, this modern day Cain was released.

We had only just arrived in Taul, Moldova for a four-day mission trip by an intrepid group from First Evan. Church in Memphis. Within minutes, it was brought to my attention that Andre, a fourteen-year-old local, had badly gashed his thigh with the business end of a rusty hoe.

The Lord has provided a great breakthrough for Valerica. Although, legally speaking, moving her to a loving home appeared to be a bureaucratic impossibility, Argentin and Jana managed to take her to Chisiniev, the capital, to a hospital for further analysis. Later she was moved to a new facility, a special clinic for handicapped children.

In late October I had again visited Moldova with Dan Onu who heads up our missions movement. While there, we met and shared Christ with Sasha a renowned forty-something soccer coach. For two months since returning, I had often prayed for his salvation and that of Antonia his wife and daughter Olia.

Recently, Dan Onu and I made yet another trip into The Republic of Moldova. Gene Recher and Barry Coffee, two lay businessmen from Alabama, traveled with us. Our first stop was in the village of Tirnova. We visited with some of the town folk who had been evangelized by the new Moldova church plant we helped start two years ago.

This summer's missions project to the city of Donduseni in Moldova involved more than two hundred young Romanian Christians from Iasi and the United States. Little Texas helped to fund this rather mammoth undertaking for the third straight year.