December 10, 2007

Outstretched Hands of Romania

Brad Hayes is the Director of Outstretched Hands of Romania, a mission in Calarasi, a town of about 80,000 people in the southeastern part of that nation. Their motto is, "Raising an army of children and poor to bring the gospel to the unreached parts of Romania."

Brad and his family have been living in Romania for six years. He enjoyed life here in Wisconsin but he came to the point in the year 2000 where he asked himself if he could do only one thing, what would it be? Would he stay here as pastor of his church or uproot his family and move to Romania to work with the children that he'd fallen in love with?

Brad eventually made the decision to move to Romania, taking with him his wife and five children.

When Brad made the move in 2001 he began to see the importance of developing pastors into leaders and spend time with pastors and their wives; to make an investment in their lives, not to bring a program or philosophy of ministry, but help them to raise their children and help them to disciple people in their churches.

In 2001, Romania closed down the adoption process, moving the children from orphanages into foster care. Nonetheless, there are still a lot of children who need the Lord.

Outreach efforts to the children include Children's Week where they set up a 500 seat tent in a village soccer field while other teams will do work projects. The Children's Week activities last for 3 days and Brad estimates attendance ranges from 200-350 children each day.

Other areas of discussion included a church plant project; a day school; the effect of short term missions trips in determining the Lord's will for your life; and the Christimas Bag Project. This is a project where for $7 you can make it a merry Christmas for a child that might not otherwise receive a box from the Samaritan's Purse Shoebox Project.