Serving Romania

Who We Are

Good morning Bethal Church, it is great to be here. Allow us to introduce ourselves this is my husband of 23 years TJ and my name is Sarah we have three beautiful young adult children who have grown up in Oshawa Ontrio. I gave my heart to the Lord as a six year old child at camp. I did not grow up going to church but knew that God was always with me. As a mother I wanted my children to know more about God than I did as so with the help of my mother we landed at a small church in south Ajax called Southside Worship Centre and have called it home ever since, about 20 years. It is in this small church that TJ and I have seen the church be a great support to it’s congragents, community and over time the world. It is this small church that taught me to have confidance in who God has created me to be, encouraging me to teach Sunday school when I did not think I could. After 17 years of mentorship, training and some Bible college I have been the Children’s Pastor at Southside for the past three years. God has showed himself powerfully in my life.

TJ - By the grace of God, He has revealed himself to me over our course of time at Southside and I came to accept Jesus Christ as my personal Lord and saviour in November of 2009. Since that day I continually look back and remember the love, patience, and acceptance I received in the years prior as God revealed himself to me. Through faithful believers I have come to appreciate first hand the very touch of God and gained an understanding of what Paul was getting at when he said to imitate him as he imitates Christ in 1 Cor 11:1. It is that same love that has allowed my relationship with Christ to contiue growing, led me into serving on the board, in children minsitry and outreach, has taken me on numerous short term missions trips, given me a heart for the Fatherless and ultimately brought me here today. It is this same love that God has called us to share with those in Romania and I want to personally thank you for alllowing us to be here today and share in His exciting journey ahead.

Our Calling

TJ - We will be partnering with Iacob family in Romania to open up Arms of Love rescue center. Jennifer Iacob is a Canadian missionary who went to Romania at the age of 18 where she has been serving faithfully for the past 20 years. During this time she met and married Raz Iacob who was born in Romania, they have three beautiful children. Together they have been serving the Lord in Romania, doing what they can for the community they live in and being leaders in the chuch they attend. Our journey to Romania began in 2017 when Jennifer came home for fundraising and to visit family. She and Raz were looking for help with their children as the schooling became too expensive and they now needed to home school. Jen and Raz were looking for a young adult to stay with them and our youngest daughter Elizabeth was interested. As we talked with Jennifer about what it would look like for Elizabeth to go for a year, Jennifer began to tell us of a new vision on her heart. As she began to describe the vision Sarah litterly jumped off of the couch, she was so excited for this new initiative, and soon the conversation went to the direction of Sarah and I going to help her. We did not jump as fast as Sarah did off the couch but took our time to pray and seek the advice of family, friends and God. We knew that God had been preparing us for a change in ministry and we had already had conversations with our pastor about the possibility of not being at Southside any more but going wherever God was calling us. At one point we thought it might be India, but it wasn’t. Fastforward and here we are having done our home work on what it means to leave family and friends behind to follow God on a journey of helping those who cannot help themselves, the orphaned.

Sarah - The importance of this mission is huge, the longer a baby is negelcted the more developmentle challenges they will have growing up, babies brains are litteraly changed as they grow, the way that their brains forms has crucial stages at which point it becomes hard wired and less likly that any damage done by lack of sitimuls or love will not be able to be undone.

For me this is a mission where I hope that God will use me to help prevent these little ones from suffering the effects of abandoment. It is a feeling that no one should have to endure. I know because when I was six, in grade one my parents got devorcied I know that does not seem like a big thing these days but it is to every child who has to go through it. It is even worse when one of the parents does not come back for me that was my dad. It would be months before I say him again and even then he did not pay much attention to me or my brother. This was not my mothers doing, she did her absoult best to speak kindly about our father and encouraged us to love him even when he did not show up for visits. He was so not interested in us that his own mother talked to him about giving us a family with our mother and stepfather who loved and adored us. She convinced him to give us up for adoption to our stepfather. This was great news for me as my longing to have a father had caused a giant hole in my heart, it left me with the feeling that I was not wanted or worth wanting, I did not know the extent of the damage that I incured until it almost ruiened my marriage. It was through counseling we went to that I desoverd just how much I was pushing him away to keep myself protected. After 15 years of marriage I still could not allow TJ to stare into my eyes, to see who I really was, I always felt like he could walk out of my life at any moment and that feeling caused me to not form proper attachments to him, or many others. I kept people at a safe distance careful not to let anyone know just how I felt. I was a master at hiding my feeling to the point where people told me I was cold and It was through counseling that I was challenged to open up and learn how to let people in. For me I was never without both parents but the damage was still huge, I believe I was able to overcome it becaus of God and all that he provided for me such as a new dad when I was nine. For me after being adopted by my stepfather life was good so good that as a teenager I forgot that I was adopted and that lasted well into my 30’s, until God showed me that the love of an adopted parent is equal to that of a biological parent and that love is just a sample of how much God loves us.

These children should never have to feel the effect of being abandonded but they do and it has lasting conquences.

Why we are Needed

Romania is a country in Eastern Europe. It is a country that has a long history of battles interspersed with periods of peace. Their last battle ended in 1989 with the fall of comunism. A lot happened in this country during the dark years of communism too much to list and as I have been praying for this country God has shown me a parallel with that of Israel comming out of slavery from Egypt. Israel spent months following God to the promised land, trusting him for food, water and saftey. God provided all that they needed and yet when they spied out the land they lost courage, they wanted to go back to Egypt to what they knew instead of the unknown battle ahead of them. God frustrated by their lack of faith in Him sentenced that generation to death’ wondering around in circles in the desert. It took 40 years for the old generation to die and the new generation to come into the understanding of how God would care for them, 40 years to loose the attitude of slaves and become their own nation.

Romania has only been out of comunism for 30 years, they are still trying to figure out who they are and dare I say it mostly, without God’s help. Yes Romania claims to be a Christian country, their main church being Eastern Orthodox, a church that is rich in history and litigury and ritual but far from the relationship Jesus showed us we could have with the Father. Less than 1% of the Romanian population dawn the doors of a church that number is even lower for evangelical church goers. It is no wonder that this nation is plagued with the effects of communism, corruption and abuse, and child abndoment, these issues that came from comunism still shame this country.

Wood -Learning to do something new takes time and often comes with trial and error. We own a small property in Flinton, it was my grandparents and my greatgrandfathers before that many of the buildings are old and have problems. Recently the wood shed fell down and the last of our wood supply was dwindling, with covid and being able to work from home we thought we might spend more time in this area instead of the city. This ment that we would need to purchase wood and store it properly. Being the city slickers that we are, we thought we would have time to build a new wood shed but that did not happen and so we waited until October to purchase wood and figured we would just put a tarp over it to keep it dry. Sounds right, doesn’t it? What we did not know about storing wood under a tarp was how much of the wood should be covered and so we assumed the more the marrier ; soon our new wood pile was creating a lot of mould, not a good thing. So we learn some more about how to properly tarp a wood pile, just covering the top.

Romania has made mastakes along the way to healing and God has called TJ and I to help them along the way.

The child abandoment crisis that comunism left Romania with was huge. The dictatorship thought the best way to grow the country was to keep women pregant and make abortion illegal, and keep the population uneducated about birth control and make it too expensive to afford. Mix this with keeping the general public poor and people simply could not afford to keep the children they were giving birth to, this has been what the population was taught and trying to change it has been slow. The officials in charge of these children are overwhelmed and need our prayers, and our help.

How God has asked us to Help

It is well documented that when wanting or needing to change the attitude of a culture the easiest way is by teaching the new generation. Adults are set in their ways and much slower at learning to change, but change is all that children do as they grow and learn. So we are going to help the next generation of Romanian children.

Arms of Love will take in abandonded babies as soon as possible after abandoment. We will provide for all of their needs, love and attention until an adoptive family can be found. This should take about a year to a year and a half. This sounds simple but things in Romania don’t work the same way as they do here, bribes are expected, everyone is behind on paper work and if it does not get done today that is what tomorrow is for. Things generaly just take two the three times longer in Romania as compared to Canada.

A case in point - Jennifer having such a heart to stop the emotional damage that occurs from being abandoned at such a young age sought to take in a child, even while caring for her own baby. This was a challenging time for her as this new little one needed so much care, he was prone to screaming even at 4 days old because of being left alone so much in the hospital, his brain already damaged and rewired, his screaming caused a hurneia to develop which would need surgery. In Canada we want to be with our children when they are in the hospital but we can leave our children there if we have too. Not in Romania, the parent or guardian has to stay with the child, cleanlyness standards are much lower there so risk of getting sick from the hospital is big. Jennifer had to leave her three children for weeks as baby B had surgery (more than one) and worried about what she might bring home with her to her family. At a year and a half she felt the Baby B was ready for adoption and sought out his case worker to determine how far along they were in the process. To her superise, she learned that his file had not even been started, his case worker litterly had no paper work on him, just the head knowledge of he was in a home somewhere.

Advocating for these children will take up a lot of our time. As Jennifer and Raz have already been through this process with baby B. Most foster families use these children as a government pay cheque, doing the least they can to benifit themselves the most, these foster parents would not seek adoption for these children, how would they live?

Our model is to open a home that can house up to six babies, meet their needs and advocate for thier adoption. If this model proves to be successful we will then train others to duplacate this model in other cities within Romania.

Romania is working hard to close down thier orphanages and will no longer place babies in them, however there are not enough foster homes for all, and some are being kept in the hospital to suffer the effect of neglect and abandnment or bounced around from home to home as only a small number of foster families will take new borns and so as these babies get older they are moved to another home to make room for the newest baby to enter the foster system. Either way these babies are suffering from neglect, and abandoment issues, unable to build bonds with other people and care givers. The past generation of Romanian children have spoken up about how they grew up suffering from delayed milestones such as sitting up and crawling, eating solid food, stunted growth, being kept in a crib, tied into cribs so they could not get out and how they generally do not trust other humans to treat them properly. Most of these abandoned children are now adults who say that they will never marry or have kids, the world is just too crule of a place.

This is not what God intended, God is a God of love, comfort, compassion. He orginized the family unit to provide love harmony and relationship, it might seem be too late for the prior generation, but it is not too late for the next one.

TJ -

In Matthew 28:18-20, the Great Commission, we are all commisioned by Christ to join in His mission. For some that may mean leaving their home country and going to another land. For others it may mean reaching out to their neighbours, co-workers or local communities. For all it means listening to the leading of the Holy Spirit, partnering with waht Christ it doing and being in relationship with one another as we are collectively in relationship with Christ.

As it states in 1 Cor 12:12 (ESV) “For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the memebers of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ”. As we prepare to Go to Romania, we know that we are not asked to go alone. Our Lord goes before us and invites His body of believers to partner with him as God shows this country that He cares about them and loves them one abandoned child at a time.

Would you consider partnering with God in mission?

First and formost we ask for partners in prayer, for through our paryers we remain in relationship and unity with Christ and one another.

Secondly, we can leave for Romania when two things happen, the boarder to Europe open up again and we have sustainable giving to support the mission financially. The best way for this to happen is with monthly sponsors, one time donations are good and will get us there but we would need enough to support a two year term in the bank before we could leave. With monthly sponsors we can leave when we have three months of the budget in the bank with the assurance of continual support for the months ahead. Whether it be monthly or one time we are greatful for the graciousenes and generiousity of people like your selves , who are willing to partner with God as he leads.

We have pray cards avaialbe for those they would like one. On it you will find our email address if you have any questions, words of encouragement or would like to let us know you are prayng for us. You will also find the website where you can go to donate online, where options for one time and monthly giving are both availlable. If those would like more time to pray or know of anyone that might be interested please feel free to take one as well. God Bless you.