Casa Harului (House of Grace) - Location of the first conference in Romania

I flew into a snow-covered Warsaw on Thursday 26th January and Roy Scarsbrook picked me up from the airport. The trip had a relaxed start and I was only required to preach at Krasnik on Friday and Roy's home church of Radom on Sunday. It was a pleasure to see how the people of Radom had joined together to be a real family under God and also to see a few new faces.

Sunday afternoon, Roy and I took a taxi to the railway station with our bags to begin the long trip by rail to Romania. The first train took us from Radom to Krakow and was warm and not too crowded. Since the outside temperature was already several degrees below zero and likely to go down at night we were very glad of the warmth. We started chatting to a couple of Polish guys and I have generally found that where there is a language barrier the best topic of conversation in Central Europe is Eric Clapton. Last year I enjoyed a long confused conversation with a Slovakian Clapton fan. Our Polish companions turned out to be great experts on British rock and they were curious about these two middle-aged Englishmen travelling by train to go preaching. Roy had a Polish leaflet handy which summarises the Christian Gospel and he gave it to the two Poles before they left the train.

Our connection at Krakow worked and we were pleased to find that the compartment which would be our home for the next 22 hours was heated and clean. The train rattles through the night going through the mountainous ski resorts of southern Poland and through the Carpathian mountains of Slovakia. The border checks were friendlier and shorter this year and apart from having our tickets inspected every few hours we were able to stretch out on the seats and catch some sleep. Every so often, I would press my face against the glass and try to catch a glimpse of the snow-covered mountains high above us.

After the mountains of Slovakia come the flatlands of Hungary. The route through the great Hungarian plain is far from straight so we did not cross the border into Romania until mid day on Monday. We were picked up from Deva station along with four other conference attendees by Benjamin Medrea who is the conference organiser, driver, translator and is basically a bundle of unstoppable energy on two legs.

The conference had about 35 people; mainly pastors with a few wives and some co-workers. We ate hearty Romanian peasant food, enjoyed fruit tea, and prayed and sang together as well as getting on with the main purpose of the conference. Roy was working through the first eight chapters of the letter to the Romans from the New Testament while I presented a dozen Bible readings on the subject of Pastor, People and Preaching.

The second week was a repeat of the same conference with a similar number of people in the central Romanian town of Fagaras. The hospitality was superb and Roy and I both enjoyed having a few preaching engagements in the town as well. We had one pleasant night with the Pentecostal church in Avrig who had a sermon each from Roy and I (very patient these Romanians) and after an overnight stay we started the long journey home.

Everything was uneventful until a series of cartoon-like mishaps meant I missed my flight from Warsaw. No great problem, the Credit Card justified its existence and bought me a later flight home in a small LOT airlines plane.

Was the trip worth it? Yes, I think so.

Many of the Romanian pastors work part-time and they do not have access to many Bible study aids so we try to make sure that they get a big helping

Fagaras Castle and frozen moat

of biblical teaching with a practical emphasis. In any case, coming from the "secularised" West we can help them think through how best to serve their people in a very rapidly changing Europe.

As for Poland, the weakness of merely traditional religion to change lives is all too apparent. There is a great need for churches filled with the Holy Spirit and based on the apostolic teaching of the Bible. It is a pleasure to help Roy in his effort to build one such church in Radom.