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Missionary Ion Tomeci serves with Sorin Prodan as an elder in the Providence Church of Brasov.  His primary ministry with HeartCry is evangelistic outreach among the university students.  Ion, and his devoted wife, Ani, are given to investing their lives in people.  He shares his perspective on his ministry in Brasov this month: 

If a church is waiting for the people to come to its meetings and to seek God, that church will end up closing down. The Lord sent us to go and preach the Gospel and to make disciples from all nations, teaching them the Word of the Lord. This is not easy, because people today love coziness. Still, we know that the power of the Gospel is the same today and our Lord is the Master yesterday, today and forever.

We live in a big and prosperous city, but there are many villages in Romania, where nobody is ministering to the people. Ani and I are involved in summer projects through which we minister to the poor communities in Romania, working with children and adults.

The purpose of our evangelistic projects is helping the country churches and ministering to the people living in those villages. We reached over 1,000 adults and about 250 children. I would like to share with you about some of them:

One man I spoke with thinks like most of the people in our society: he believes that sin is not so serious. What will you do when you stand before God? ‘I will do what all the others do, he replied.’ Lord, please help him see Your reality!

In Satul Nou, a man believed he was OK because he attended the Orthodox church and tried to do what he was expected to. What a great deception to believe that you can be saved by attending certain religious meetings!

An old lady couldn’t hear very well anymore. I tried to explain to her the grace of our Lord, but it was difficult. You must receive the Gospel when you’re young. The time comes when we can’t see or hear and it gets difficult to do anything.

The discussion with two ladies, mother and daughter, was both a pain and a joy. The daughter was 30 years old and born disabled. They are Rroma and have had a hard life. The mother cried and told me about her life and the challenges she is facing. They are attending a small Baptist church in their village. I spoke to them from Luke 16, about Lazarus’ life and the glorious end of his life, when the angels’ took him into the bosom of Abraham. We prayed and felt comforted by the Word of God, which gives us hope beyond this life.

People waited patiently to receive our little medical and spiritual help. There are many old people in the Romanian villages that have been abandoned by their children who are working abroad. They have a small income and their life is quite difficult. Still, in spite of their hard lives, these people listen to the Gospel message and some of them receive it joyfully. The people who live in the cities are mean and proud and are not so eager to listen to the Gospel.

We had a good children’s ministry. I believe that it can help us reach new people with the Gospel. The children don’t have prejudices, but the adults have hardened hearts.

I’ve met Alex several months as we were doing street evangelism in Brasov. I had been praying for fruit in our ministry. When we first met, I shared the Gospel with him. Then we realized we were neighbors and kept visiting each other. Alex is a fine young man; he is respectful and has many abilities. He speaks several languages, as he has lived in several countries with his family. His parents divorced when he was a child. His mother is a Romanian and his father a Romanian Jew. He grew up in Portugal as his parents were musicians. Alex has strong anti-Semitic feelings because of his father who is a radical Zionist. He agrees with the principles of the Gospel, but he doesn’t understand them in the right way. He came to Romania in 2011 in order to go to medical school, but he got in touch with a group of people that took him to Brazil, where he met some “healers”. I meet with Alex on a regular basis and hope that the Lord will reveal the truth to him. Please pray for Alex. It’s hard for me to see that he is so close to coming to Christ, but at the same time he is far away and lost. He has a girlfriend and if he decides to get married he would like Ani and I to counsel them. I told him he needed to study the Word of God if he didn’t want to repeat his parents’ mistakes. I want so much to see him get saved. He doesn’t understand the risk and implications of the lack of  Gospel truth in his life.

Thank you for helping us take the Gospel to our generation!