BondServant
News
May 2003
A Newsletter by the Anton
Osoinach Family...
Hopes
for Others
Arad, România
osoinach@xnet.ro
Life in
Romania is full of memorable moments.
In April we had a meeting with missionaries from the area and Emmy
Grace captured the most
memorable moment like this: “I
had a funny thing happen to me. We were at a little gathering 
of
missionaries and I went to use the potty. Once I finished up all
my needs, I tried the doorknob, but it wouldn’t open. So I tried
some more times. I guess I decided I was stuck. I yelled for
people to come help me. I took the key out and looked through the
little keyhole. I knocked on the door and tried it seven times.
All of this brought no success. Finally, Heidi heard my calls and
she ran and got Dad and he helped me out.”
For Emmy Grace and our family, her time waiting in the bathroom
will always be a happy, funny memory.
We see
many people in the old folks homes who also sit and wait. They
wait for a son or daughter who never comes to see them. The old
folks are afraid to leave because they have waited so long for
someone to come that now they are certain that if they leave the
home even for an hour, that is when someone will come.
This
week as I was going through one of the wards, I saw a woman named
Ani. She was lying in bed with her eyes and mouth open and she did
not look good. She did not appear to be breathing. I reached out
and put my fingers on her neck for a pulse, but there was none and
she was not even the least bit warm.
Sadly,
I have become accustomed to finding people dead or going to a room
to find that someone I was bringing something to had died the day
before or in the last few days. Not all are old. Ani was in her
60s. The day before, a 40-year old man died in the Tamand home.
Their lives were hard; so many of the people have lived very sad
lives.
I
don’t even know if Ani had ever spoken to me. She just followed
me around the ward with her eyes. As I worked with five other
ladies in the room that day, I asked each when Ani had died. They
either did not know or thought it was after breakfast. For them
this was not a memorable moment—just another event of the day.
Many
people die here with the changing of the seasons. Maybe death
happens this way everywhere, but it was new to me. When we moved
here in May of 2001 things seemed fairly static, but as fall came
many (13) of the people I was getting to know died. One, one week;
a few, the next. I had never known so many people who died in such
a short period of time.
But
back to Ani and her room…As I worked my way around the room
speaking to different people, I asked where they thought Ani was
now. That is the question to which so many want the answer: what
happens after death?
Most
have a fear of death because it is the unknown. But for some there
is a Hope.
I
talk to people about the Hope they can have and the path that
their feet have walked throughout their lives. Where will that
path lead? Does it lead to Cer
(heaven) through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus or
does it lead to Iad (hell)?
There
was a little lady in the home in Pecica who always seemed so happy
singing and laughing. One day I asked her to tell me about her
life. She seemed perplexed by the question.
“Tell
me about some memorable moments in your life.”
Still no
understanding…
“Tell
me a happy memory from your childhood.”
“What??
I had a terrible childhood; it was always cold and I had to work
all the time.”
“Well,
tell me something about when you married.”
“Oh
my husband was terrible; he always drank and never worked and we
never had children.”
“But
you seem so happy?”
“Because
I read in my Bible that I can go some place better when I die if I
believe in Jesus.”
She read
the Bible and believed.
That
is why we are in Romania. Whether we are talking to people in
nursing homes or Heidi and Benjamin are in the Bible clubs
in Kickish or at the train station or Emmy Grace is reading her
Bible with the people she reads with each week, we are here to let
people know there is a Hope. The Hope is for a new life here and
now of serving a risen Savior as well as for eternal life in
heaven after death.
That
was the message I had to give to those ladies in that room with
dead Ani lying a few feet away. “There is a Hope. God has not
forgotten you and He sees your needs. He cares for you today. He
gave His Son for you so that you may have a Hope—now and
forever.”
“Jesus
saith unto him,
Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed:
blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.”
John
20:29
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