A HEART FOR ROMANIA

by Stephen Poulard

Paul and Julie Wakefield first visited Romania in September 1990. "As we stayed there and saw the needs, we knew this was where we wanted to be: it was hard to come back home again".

Paul and Julie have been married for seventeen years and live with their children, Andrew and Rebecca, in Ruddington, a village to the South of Nottingham. In 1988, at the age of thirty and some six months after his wife, Paul became a Christian as a result of going to Julie's baptism.

"I was dragged along - it was the fourth time I had ever been to church." The call to full-time work came soon after; "I heard the great commission, I wanted to spend my time telling people about Jesus"

The opportunity to go to Romania came about as a result of helping at a week-long children's camp in Peterborough. A friend there had an invitation from a Romanian pastor in Alba Iulia to go and train Sunday School teachers from the Baptist church. A team of six spent two weeks in Romania, and saw the openings for evangelism and the need for more training.

Paul started making three or four trips a year to Romania, running training seminars, taking classes in schools and transporting supplies, including pens, crayons and paper. "Taking in aid is a good way of building trust, and opens the door for school's work. Once you're accepted, there is more freedom to preach the gospel than here in Britain."

Paul was still working as a postman. He began approaching different missionary organisations with an aim to moving to Romania, though without a great deal of success; "Most of them were looking for people who had been to Bible college".

In 1993 he went to a seminar on children's work led by Korky Davey of OAC Bristol. "When I spoke to Korky afterwards, he challenged me to test our call to Romania. He visited us twice in Ruddington and told us about the Bristol School of Evangelism."

In September, the Post Office agreed to give Paul a year's leave of absence, and from October until May 1994 he attended the BSE course. "Spending from Tuesday morning to Saturday afternoon away from the family was hard, but I needed to go away so that I could put the work in." Leaving his job altogether, Paul then applied to become an evangelist with OAC, and was accepted onto staff in February this year.

As the severity of winter in Eastern Europe makes travel impossible, Paul spends this time speaking in churches and schools about Romania, as well as being involved in evangelism in the Nottingham area. The rest of the year is largely given over to planning and making trips to Romania, and this year sees the biggest programme yet.

This Easter, the whole family travelled out with four others to put on a programme of evangelism in orphanages schools and churches using sketchboard, puppets, music and drama. They also took a much-needed photocopier for the Baptist Sunday School association. From July to September a further two months of training and evangelism involving both Paul and Julie will be taking place.

As Andrew and Rebecca are still at school, the move to Romania is some years off. But Paul and Julie have no doubts about their destination, and look forward to being able to spend all their time helping the church in this needy country.