A Church for Tourists

By Andrew McChesney, Adventist Mission

The new pastor was shocked when he showed up at the Bucharest International Seventh-day Adventist Church, the only English-speaking church in Romania’s capital, and found only three people present. All three were Romanians.

Image © Pacific Press

Three weeks later, pastor Benjamin Stan learned that one of those three, a 21-year-old woman, was leaving. He wondered why God had led him to a dead church. “Why am I here?” he prayed. “Why did You give me this call?”

At that moment, two American tourists walked in the door. Benjamin realized that tourists need a place to worship. He kept praying.

A couple weeks later, he found a man dressed in a suit and tie waiting outside the church. The man lived with his family in Poland and worked in Romania. He belonged to another Christian church but, after studying the Bible, wanted a Sabbath-keeping church. Benjamin realized that there are foreigners who work in Romania but don’t speak Romanian. They need a place to worship.

After several months, Benjamin suggested holding Sabbath School and the divine worship service on Sabbath mornings. Until then, the church didn’t have any Sabbath School, and its hour-long worship service took place on Sabbath evenings. The two members opposed the proposal. They went to Romanian churches on Sabbath mornings and didn’t want to lose those friends. But Benjamin was insistent. “We do not come here to study English,” he said. “We come here to study the Bible. We need to be a church.”

Visiting other churches, Benjamin invited two teens and a man of about 30 to help organize the worship program. He advertised the new morning worship schedule on social media. That first Sabbath, 32 people showed up.

“You should have seen the expression on the faces of the two members when they arrived,” Benjamin recalled. “Their eyes were big. They were surprised when they saw so many people, especially young people, in the church.”

The Polish man was baptized several weeks later.

Today, Benjamin has no doubt that the church, started by pastor Adrian Bocaneanu in 2010, serves an important role in Bucharest. It has 26 members, and weekly attendance ranges from 30 to 50 people, including tourists, foreign workers, and international students.

What happened to those three people who attended the church on Benjamin’s first Sabbath? They are now very involved, including the young woman who left. She returned and is now a leader.

Connect with the Bucharest International Seventh-day Adventist Church at  “englishadventist” on Facebook.

Produced by the General Conference Office of Adventist Mission. Find more mission stories at adventistmission[dot]org

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Bawling Tattoo Artist

By Andrew McChesney, Adventist Mission

Dr. Hernando Díaz was assisting a patient at the Adventist Medical Center in Medellin, Colombia, when a shadowy figure at his office door startled him. It was a shaven-headed man covered with explicit tattoos. Tattoos formed a black-and-blue web over his head. Tattoos covered his arms and hands.

Image © Pacific Press

“It’s my turn to see you,” the man declared.

“Please wait for your turn,” Hernando said.

Several minutes later, the man entered the office and immediately broke into tears. The big burly bloke was bawling like a baby. Hernando looked at the man’s paperwork. It said he was HIV positive. “I don’t want to have HIV,” the man said, tears streaming down his tattooed cheeks.

“What happened?” Hernando asked. “What do you do?”

“I’m a tattoo artist, and the body is my canvass,” the man said.

“How did you contract HIV? Are you promiscuous or a homosexual?”

The man said he was neither and had contracted HIV through his work.

“But I don’t want HIV,” he said. “I don’t want to die.”

“There is Someone who can heal you,” Hernando said. “I know you may not believe in God, but He can help you.”

The man acknowledged being an atheist. But he was willing to reconsider.

“Do you want me to pray for you?” Hernando said. “Do you want to accept Jesus as your Savior?”

“Yes,” the man said, weeping.

Hernando led the man through the sinner’s prayer. When the man said Jesus’ name at the end, he fell to the floor.

Hernando sent the tattoo artist away for a second HIV test. The next week, the man returned with a happy grin on his face. “I don’t have HIV,” he said. “I want to give thanks to God and you because God has healed me.”

Follow-up testing had given him a clean bill of health. He considered his HIV-negative status to be a miracle from God.

Months later, Hernando and his wife, Monica, were shopping at a mall when they heard someone screaming, “Doctor! Doctor!” The tattoo artist ran over to Hernando and picked him off the ground in an enormous bear hug. He praised God for working a miracle in his life.

The tattoo artist is one of dozens of people led to Jesus by Hernando, a 60-year-old Seventh-day Adventist physician serving at the Adventist Medical Center on the campus of Colombia Adventist University in Medellin.

This quarter’s Thirteenth Sabbath Offering will help open a missionary training center at Colombia Adventist University.

Produced by the General Conference Office of Adventist Mission. Find more mission stories at adventistmission[dot]org

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Unexplainable Hospital Visit

By Andrew McChesney, Adventist Mission

Hernando Díaz stepped out of the hospital to rest in Medellin, Colombia. He had spent the past two hours with his young son, Samuel, as the boy’s blood was cleaned by a dialysis machine with an artificial kidney. His wife, Monica, was now sitting with the boy for the last two hours of hemodialysis.

Image © Pacific Press

Hernando collapsed onto a bench near a water fountain, and he turned on a sermon on his cellphone. Moments later, a stranger walked up and asked whether he could sit on the bench. Hernando nodded, listening to the sermon over the cell phone speaker. The stranger’s own cellphone rang.

“I’ve decided to kill myself,” the stranger angrily told the caller. “I haven’t been able to find work for two years, and I don’t want to live. Don’t call me.”

As he spoke, he seemed to forget Hernando on the bench. But when he hung up, he came back to reality. The sermon caught his attention.

“Is that a Christian preacher?” he asked.

“Yes, he is,” Hernando said. “I heard that you want to take your life.”

“Yes, that is what I want to do,” the man said. “I cannot bear it anymore.”

“I don’t think that it is a coincidence that you sat with me,” Hernando said. “You need help. Would you like help?”

“Yes, I would like help.”

“What do you do?”

“I’m an accountant, and I have a family that I can’t support.”

“If someone told you, “I can help you and supply your needs and give you hope for a better future,’ would you accept it?”

“Of course!”

Hernando spoke about Jesus, and the man gave his heart to Jesus on the spot. Hernando encouraged him to send out his resume with faith. The next day, Hernando sat on the same bench and saw the man looking for him.

“Guess what!” the man said. “Someone called with a job offer. I feel great!”

Hernando praised God and curiously asked who he had visited at the hospital the previous day. The man said he didn’t know anyone at the hospital. “Yesterday I felt an irresistible urge to come to the hospital,” he said. “I sat next to you because I didn’t know what to do.”

Hernando, a Seventh-day Adventist physician at the Adventist Medical Center on the campus of Colombia Adventist University in Medellin, has many similar stories. Over the past five years, more than 100 people have changed their minds about committing suicide after praying with him.

“They now are living normal lives,” he said.

This quarter’s Thirteenth Sabbath Offering will help open a missionary training center at Colombia Adventist University.

Produced by the General Conference Office of Adventist Mission.
Find more mission stories at adventistmission[dot]org

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