The team travelled for a few hours by car to the first stop at the delightful Pensiune Silver owned by Christian brother Silviu Cuca, a little way out of Oradea, and from there to the Anthurium Recreational Centre to the first event of this short mission, in Oradea The Anthurium, a very good venue for large meetings, was quickly almost filled with young people, teens and twenties. Fane brought a challenging message to the young people who gave respectful attention , and thirteen people responded to the "tough" altar call ( you will probably lose your friends if you chose Christ ! ) It was thought that at least 60% of the crowd were from the church, so in terms of statistics, this represented about a 22% response, which is about what one might hope for from city youth.
Saturday 28th saw three events happening, and the team travelled from the hotel, about thirty minutes drive, to Oradea, a city of about a quarter of a million people and one of Romania’s most prosperous cities. It was founded in the 10th century by the Hungarian King Ladislaus and went through various rules including the Turks in the thirteenth century. At the end of World War 1 it was given to Romania and has remained Romanian since. World War 2 saw the deportation of 25,000 Jewish people to Nazi extermination camps.
The first of the three events, was a breakfast for Pensioners which was held in the basement of the church. Although making good financial sense to host it in the church, the actuality was that the attendance was quite well below potential because whilst there are a few hundred church members of this age, only thirty arrived, bringing one fiend each…………………it is our contention that if this was in a restaurant, and printed invitations had been given, that this number could have tripled. Notwithstanding, this was a pleasant event with music provided by Gabriel and Daniel on accordion and saxophone, and Fane again brought a very pertinent message to which it seemed every unsaved person responded. We don't know the hearts of course, only God does, but this nevertheless was very encouraging after the initial disappointment with numbers.
The most disappointing event was the Ladies Coffee Event - traditionally, this meeting is almost "the flagship" of the model, with ladies generally oversubscribing in numbers, and ladies extremely responsive to the gospel, but from the planned projection of 100 , only 20 arrived at the church, and maybe seventeen of these were believers. The reason for this event’s poor turn out was put down by Ioan Bogdan as many ladies wanting to bring their husbands to the Couples Event, and with the option of only one event per person being available, had opted out.
Again having the event in the church could have been a contributory factor, another more certain reason could have been that there was no lady co-ordination team appointed - in the case of this event, only one lady responded to the message.
But the Lord is faithful, and after Fane had had some time to pray and prepare at the Silver Pensiune whilst the planning meeting for 'Craciun Din Oradea 2009' was happening in the Tabor Church, the Couples Event was a "sell- out", oversubscribed from 150 to 190, and including some influential personalities - one of the two mayors present, apparently made a commitment along with 28 other people - the ratio of believers to unbelievers again was high, and for future events we must get it correct at a minimum of two unbelievers to one believer, preferably looking at three to one. We rejoice and give glory to God that 30% of the guests indicated on their response cards that they had prayed the prayer and had committed their lives to Christ.
Then came the climactic event of this delightful church evangelistic outreach,
the Lunch for Business People, at the Pensiune Silver. The attendance of sixty people to this event in a venue that was 40 kilometres outside of Oradea, was a great demonstration of the testimony of the owner whose life has been dramatically changed by Jesus Christ. Service was slow, but the food excellent and it seemed that no one was in a hurry to leave even when Fane spent more than an hour speaking to them. They were fascinated by his theme that the spiritual is of more significance than the physical and material, especially with the illustrations drawn from instances of happenings to communist leaders. The result was a terrific response from this the hardest affinity event there is, where twenty of the thirty guests ticked the "I have prayed the prayer" box on the response card.
