In Denmark I found out the history of the Baptists from Moldova

Between November 12-15, 2018, I visited Denmark for the first time. Upon landing in Copenhagen, the capital of Denmark, I was pleasantly impressed with Năstica by the kindness of the people. Whenever we asked anyone something, he smiled at us and went to show us until we found what we needed. You don’t see this everywhere. We remembered how great the contrast was in London, when no one wanted to answer our questions, nor did they stop, and only foreigners helped us. A girl from Somalia offered to help us in the subway, because otherwise it was difficult to find your way. It was completely different here and people quickly showed us everything. On the plane that flew from Copenhagen to Aarhus, I sat next to a man named Kim, who said he was an atheist. However, he was attentive to everything I told him in the gospel and to our testimony.

In Aarhus we were met by Jens who is 72 years old and was a missionary for 8 years in Liberia in the jungle, with his wife and two children, and then another 10 years he was a missionary pastor in Jerusalem. He also worked there at the Danish embassy as an attaché for social issues, as he explained to us “to help the troubled Danes get out of their trouble and not go to prison there.” He is the friend of Kai Kjaer-Hansen, the scientist who invited us and who wrote the book about Joseph Rabinovich.

We found out from Jens that Denmark has less than 9 million inhabitants and a flat terrain. In summer the temperatures are around 30 degrees Celsius and last summer for 3 months it did not rain. The largest denomination in the country is the Lutheran Church, followed by the Catholic Church. The charismatic churches grow the fastest, because they have a lot of activity with young people and children, which is lacking in other churches. Jens also told us that the Danes have become very materialistic and, because they lack nothing, they are no longer interested in God.

Jens already had two bags in his car with the “Trusting and Toiling on Israel’s Behalf” newspaper collection, which was the publication of the Mildmay Mission to the Jews. They had a great and rich activity in Bessarabia and there are the reports of the missionaries, from 1898 to 1937, when they ended this mission in Bessarabia. He brought me all these magazines for two and a half days from morning till night, so that I could find information about Bessarabia and make a copy. How much it helps me that Kai has already done a thorough search and I just had to track down the ones he found and identify the information I needed. If he didn’t, I don’t think I could find everything in two days.

What a great help is the camera phone. I can’t even imagine how I could do this without my phone. There is a lot of information about Bessarabia. The first issues describe the activity of Iosif Rabinovici, the pioneer of the modern messianic movement started in Chisinau. Then, the problem of the house of prayer of the Messianic Jews in Chisinau, called the Somerville Hall, is addressed, because this hall has been unused for most of its existence. For a while it was also leased by the Baptist church in Chisinau. Then Leon Averbuch came here with his wife, Mary, and they worked extensively, working side by side with Baptist Christians until 1928. Magazines include reports from Bessarabia that I can’t wait to research.

I discussed with Kai Kiaer-Hansen the questions that interested me about the work of evangelization among the Jews of Chisinau and the effects of this work, because he studied this subject in depth. We had a good and interesting discussion.

On November 14, we went to the Mission House, where there are several missions. Lasse Iversen is president of the Scripture Union and had offered to hold a meeting to present inductive Bible study. Leaders of various Christian missions came to the meeting.

Nana and Linda are from an organization that works with students. Then comes Julia, who is still active in another organization that does a mission among students. Kai also came to the study. Next is Ellen, who is a theologian and leads a missionary work in Israel, and teaches in a Bible school in Denmark. After a short presentation, we completed the first lesson of the course “Building a Marriage That Really Works.” After that, I presented a little more of the work we do, with pictures, and then there was a time for questions and answers.

Lasse heads the Bible study department as part of the worldwide Lousanne evangelism movement. He said that they did an inductive Bible study at the conference in South Africa and that they are thinking of doing the same at the next conference that will take place in 2019 in Europe.

Helen brought me books with testimonies of the victims of the Holocaust who survived the concentration camps in Transnistria, and many are actually from Moldova. He showed me those books and said he would put me in touch with someone from Israel who has these testimonies and someone who is even a Russian pastor.

After seeing on Facebook the post about our stay in the city of Aarhus, the pastor of the Romanian church, Lavin Pancu, contacted me to meet us and we arranged for him to take us from the hotel to the airport. Jens also came to the hotel to pick up the magazines and take them to Kai.

Lavi was very happy to see us and couldn’t believe we met. He has been following our posts on the site, YouTube and the Internet for a long time. He returned to the Lord here in Denmark and, looking for answers to the questions he had from the Bible, came across the site http://www.moldovacrestina.md. He also told his friend, who had also returned to the Lord at that time, and they were amazed that they found short and clear answers to the Bible on every question. After the pastor’s departure, Lavi was entrusted with the management of the church in the region of Aarhus, where about 30 Romanian-speaking believers gather. There are five Romanian churches throughout Denmark, with a total of 200 believers. Hearing and reading on the site about the value and effect of inductive Bible study, Lavi ordered books from Moldova and began studying with his family and church the Epistle of James. Lavi received a great motivation to study the Bible inductively when he was visited by Sergiu. We had the opportunity to counsel him on how to conduct the Bible study and what materials to order to continue with the church. We also talked about the possibility of organizing a camp to teach the course “Building a Marriage That Really Works.”

In our delight, we headed to the airport and after an hour we noticed on the GPS that we were going to another airport than the one we needed. We went back and prayed to the Lord to work a miracle so that we could make it on the plane. And the Lord did the miracle, because we arrived 15 minutes before takeoff and especially for us the counter was reopened, so we could get on the plane.

We thank the Lord for the wonderful time we spent in Denmark and the opportunity to meet Kai Kjaer-Hansen, from whom we received very important documents and we managed to make the necessary copies of all these important documents. I scanned over 900 important pages. We are glad that we also had the opportunity to present the study of inductive Bible study to leaders of various works, and we now pray to translate the first book into Danish and prepare the leaders so that as many people as possible can benefit from the method and materials of inductive Bible study in their spiritual growth. Thank you also for the opportunity to meet with Pastor Lavi Pancu and the beautiful fellowship we had with him. Pray with us for the growth of the work in the Romanian churches and for the advancement of the gospel to all the nations of this country.

Translated by Didina Vicliuc