I was so happy because Bibles were so difficult to come by in those days. It was 1990, not long after communism fell in Romania.
Inside was a sticker where a boy had written his name and address. He came from the Netherlands and at a big youth rally, he and lots of other teenagers bought 15,000 Bibles that would be distributed to young people in Romania who had never owned a Bible before, like me. I wrote letters back and forth to that boy in the Netherlands for a long time.
By June 2017, I was working as a doctor in a hospital in Cluj, and married to a pastor, Marius.
I was at a Mission Without Borders conference where my husband was one of the speakers, and I happened to sit down next to Peter van der Bijl, from the Netherlands. As soon as I heard where he was from, I told him about my pen pal and my first Bible. We were both astonished to realise that Peter himself had helped organise that campaign in 1990 that led to my receiving the Bible.
As Peter said, 'We can sow the word of God; sometimes we hear about the results, and mostly we do not hear. And that is ok. But when you hear a story like this, about the results of a campaign 27 years ago, it makes you thankful and gives you extra energy to be active in bringing the good news of our Lord.'
Mihaela, whose church ran community projects in partnership with us in Romania for many years, and who is now, as a doctor, supporting the response to COVID-19
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