RECOLLECTIONS
OF A COUPLE CONTINENTAL DIRECTORS
 |
| Romania circa 1984 |
“AN ANGEL IN CLUJ”
By Mike
Harcrow and Greg Creasy
Assistant
Directors at the time
Cluj is a
wonderful, musical, Romanian city. Today,
it is where The Romanian Continental Singers office has its national
headquarters. They had 11 tours in 2017,
traveling and singing all over the world, sharing Christ in music as we have
always done. This story takes place on a
tour to Romania in 1984, 33 years ago.
This was our first time ever in Romania, the country was still under
communist control. The group was just arriving from Russia, and under the
direction of Jim Schmidt.
The tour had
a rough 14-hour train ride from Kiev to Bucharest, complete with a midnight
border crossing into Romania. Our
government-assigned tour guide, Iri, met us at the border and immediately
informed Jim that he knew who we were and what we intended to do, and that our
plans were adjusted in favor of a state-sponsored sightseeing tour. Through missionary contacts our office had
booked many church performances that had just been cancelled without the
churches knowing it. In a hasty
leadership meeting, we prayed and asked that God would provide a way to get us
to churches, so we could encourage the Romanian believers.
The bus trip
out of Bucharest the next day was spent with Jim and Iri arguing about the
itinerary. When we arrived in Cluj about
mid-afternoon, a very frustrated Jim pulled Greg and me (Mike) aside and
whispered the order that the two of us were to sneak out of the hotel and find
us a church for the tour to go to that evening.
Not certain
what to do, Greg and I simply asked the desk clerk to call us a taxi that would
take us to the nearest Christian church.
He made a call, then handed us a plate number and some written
instructions for the driver. The taxi
took us on a long drive across the city to a colorless, dusty residential
area. The driver stopped in front of a
building. There was a large sign above
the door and we made out that it said something about Seventh Day
Adventists. The building was dark and
the doors were locked. As we turned to
get back into the cab, we were greeted by an immaculately dressed man who said,
in accented but flawless English, “You are looking for the Christian Church”.
(It didn’t sound like a question.)
Greg and I
looked at each other, baffled, but we got back into the cab and he got in as
well. He spoke to the driver in Romanian
and within 5 minutes, we pulled up in front of what looked like just ordinary
houses. He spoke to the cabbie and the
driver turned off the engine to wait for us. He said to us, with a pleasant
smile, “follow me”, and he led us through a narrow passage between buildings,
through a spacious courtyard, and up a long, narrow flight of stairs. He knocked on the door and smiled at us
encouragingly. Soon the door was
cautiously opened by a woman who motioned for us to come in. Greg and I both expected that our well-
dressed helper would come in with us, but as we turned to let him go in first,
he was gone. He was not on the long
stairway, or in the courtyard below. He
had simply vanished.
Inside, Greg
and I met a pastor who, though ill at the time, had heard some weeks before
that we were coming from America to help the churches in Romania. He knew about the secret planning by The
Continental Singers office, and that all our contacts in Romania had been
thwarted just days before our arrival by messages from the USSR about all we
had done in Moscow and Kiev.
The pastor
and his wife encouraged us greatly, prayed with us and gave us new contact
information for churches on our new government itinerary, many of which we did
visit, secretly, later during our “rest hours”, between our imposed stops. Before we left, Greg thought to ask if either
the pastor or his wife had seen the man who was with us when we arrived. Their response was, “What man?”. “Who was
with you?”. “We saw no one.”
One thing I
(Greg) remember was that, after we sang at the Baptist church in Bucharest, we
showed the pastor our new itinerary. He told us that he would arrange for
church organizations to meet the day we were coming so we could sing along the way.
If there was already a church service under way, Iri would let us
sing. Still it saddened us to know there
were packed churches on the original itinerary that would be waiting for us and
we were not allowed to get there.
“Are not all angels ministering spirits, sent to serve those who will inherit salvation?” Hebrews 1:14
Our ministry in Romania is alive and vibrant today! Here is an
encouraging word from the current director of The Romanian Continental
Ministry, Joseph Catuna:
“Hi Cam, I
want to tell you of one of the beautiful experiences we had in the 20 years of
existence of The Romanian Continental Singers (Just that is amazing!) Not so
long ago, I was telling a Continental boy about a girl who wrote to me saying
that God changed her life and she became “born again” while listening to a
Continental song. This boy looked at me
for a few seconds and said, “I am in the same situation! A few years ago I listened to the Continental
song, ‘I Still Believe,’ and that was the moment God touched me and gained me
for Him.” I cried hearing his words. We
have many, many testimonies like this…
THANK YOU, GOD, FOR THE CONTINENTAL SINGERS.”
Iosif
Catuna, Continental Ministries, Romania
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