Romania 2006 Tour

Friday, June 23 9:20 PM

The Glory Gates Quartet boarded a British Airways 747 headed for Heathrow Airport in the UK with a connecting flight to Bucharest, Romania. Finally our Romania 2006 concert tour had arrived and we were all excited to get there and begin our 10 concerts in 12 days in the country we love and were called by God to serve! It would be an aggressive schedule, but the start of it was a little more grueling than we thought it would be.

Sunday, June 25 7:00 AM

We landed at the Bucharest airport on Saturday night, June 24th, at midnight, an hour late, and by the time we settled into our apartment and went to bed; it was 2:30 a.m. on Sunday morning. We just laid there and looked at the ceiling! Finally, we got up, got ready and left to go have breakfast at 7:00 a.m. and we were at the Good News Baptist church in Bucharest at 8:30 a.m., June 25th, to set up the sound system and PowerPoint and be ready for our concert at 10:00 a.m.! We have a PowerPoint for each concert venue that has all of our songs translated into Romanian and that we show on the wall or screen. With a packed church and an excited crowd, we sang one of the best concerts we have ever sung!! All on adrenalin and no sleep!! The response from the Romanians was tremendous and God was truly present during the entire service, as Pastor Vasil Talos rose from his seat after one of our later songs, "Blessed Assurance" and talked to the crowd about the blessed assurance that God promises all of us! It was a powerful time and an awesome start to an unbelievable 2 week concert tour!

After this concert, we rushed back to our apartment, changed clothes & packed for 2 days away from our Bucharest apartment. We, along with our Romanian "road manager", Cristi Tocaci, caught a train and went to Ploiesti, which is approximately one hour away. There, we were met by Mihai, the manager of the SOS Christian radio station and friends of GGQ from Dublin, Ireland, Anthony & Anita, who are supporters of our ministries and wanted to see us in concert. Anita is originally from Ploiesti and had all of her family at our concert that evening! We were driven to the radio station where they had a dorm on the 2nd floor. We got settled in and then went to the SOS church next door to set up the sound system and PowerPoint for their concert. We sang at 6:00 p.m. and the concert was on the radio and could be heard on the Internet, per my mass e-mail that I sent before we left. I know that some back home heard it! Rich gave a 20 minute message of the hope of Jesus Christ and how and why to become a believer! Again, we still had no sleep at all, but we pulled off another good concert, even though our voices were somewhat tired! There were many unsaved at this concert who clearly heard the gospel through our music!

We clearly understand that we are "seed planters" for churches. We come in and perform evangelistic concerts, but may not see the fruits of our efforts that evening. We lay a foundation and leave to let God work in people's lives. The church may see the fruits long after we leave, but we leave that up to God. That is His responsibility. We are only called to sow the seeds.

Monday, June 26

We slept at the SOS  radio station and on Monday, we took the train to Brasov where we met George' & Rebekah Magher, who are missionaries there. We stayed at there apartment and in the apartment on the floor above, where Rebekah's sister and brother-in-law lived and work with them in Brasov. This is a very beautiful city. The weather was just as beautiful and after dinner, we spent the evening on their steps singing acapella to them and their neighbors. It was a very nice evening together.

Tuesday, June 27

George' has a prison ministry and our reason for being there was to perform a concert in the prison auditorium. This was a little different venue for us, but we were truly looking forward to this, because there aren't too many Christians within a prison. This was our opportunity to really witness and project our love for God through our music. The words to our songs really tell the story of how and why to believe in Jesus Christ and the hope that there is in Him!

This prison concert went better than we thought it would. This was the first time in the history of the prison where both the men and women were together in the auditorium at the same time!! They actually behaved themselves quite well and they loved the concert! Again, we were "seed planting" for George's ministry.

We had brought 30 pairs of tennis type shoes, soccer vests and 5 soccer balls, along with cookies and juices for the concert. The administrators of the prison were going to determine who needed the shoes the most, but they were greatly appreciated.

After the concert, we went back to their apartment and changed clothes, re-packed, said our goodbyes and headed back to the train station to return to our apartment in Bucharest.

Wednesday, June 28

We went to the Romanian Bible College where we met Marcela Popescu, the Director of our "Caring Place" children's ministry, to discuss our program for the kids that would take place on Monday, July 3rd. We also met with Ioan Ceuta, who is the president of the College and the Pastor of the Grace Church on the campus to discuss our concert at the church on July 5th. Keep in mind that whenever I say we are going anywhere, it is by walking, the subway, bus, tram or train. We do not use a car and wouldn't want to. You would not believe how bad the Romanian drivers are!! No other explanation is necessary, as the Romanians will be reading this on our website to! Just let me say that it was very entertaining from our apartment balcony! Hahahahaha!

On Wednesday night, we had a concert at a hall for 2 Evangelical Free churches. They were wonderful people and we had a great time with them celebrating God's grace and glory through our music. There were not very many non believers there, but they vowed to make sure that they invited more of the unsaved the next time we came; however, there were people there from churches at which we were not scheduled to sing. They approached us to perform concerts at their church during our next trip, vowing to invite and bring the unsaved!

Thursday, June 29

Exhaustion was starting to set in, as we still did not receive that much rest, but it was getting better. We were looking forward to a day off on Thursday. We did some sightseeing and rested our voices. The weekend was going to be tough with 4 concerts in 48 hours!! Whew!

Friday, June 30

We were picked up at our apartment by the pastor of the Bethany Baptist church, who drove us to the studios of the "Voice of the Gospel" radio station in Bucharest to record our first radio interview which was to be played on the air at a later date. The  interview was heard by a significant amount of people on Saturday morning and the churches for the Saturday and Sunday concerts were packed!

Later in the day, Kelly Stark, our missionary from Petrosani, and her 4 little kids, came to Bucharest to be with us for a few days. We wanted her to have some time away; a little vacation, and for her and the kids to spend some time with us. They were looking forward to coming to our concerts! Cosmin, Roxana, David & Sophia are beautiful kids and we had so much fun with them for the few days they were with us in Bucharest, plus, it was great to talk to Kelly face-to-face again after talking to her only on Yahoo Messenger and e-mail for a year.

Friday afternoon we made our way to the Crangasi area of Bucharest for our concert at the large Bethel Church. It was hotter than the dickens and no air conditioning! Bob & Rob almost passed out, but it was another great evening with our new Romanian friends! Pastor Florin Ianovici was so appreciative of us being there and helping him present the gospel to his community.

Saturday, July 1

We rested so that our voices would be ready for the next 3 concerts in 24 hours! We cruised around old Bucharest and shopped, then went back to the apartment to get ready for our evening concert. We arrived at the Bethany Baptist Church, which is the oldest church in Romania, although recently remodeled, at 4:30 p.m. to set up and do a sound check. This was a great night! Our concert was mostly upbeat and the church was packed and energized! The crowd was awesome! After, we found out that there were more people there that did not go to this church then those who did attend the church! There were even Romanian Orthodox people there! They saw our fliers and most heard our interview on the radio. They were saying that they loved the night and they want to start coming to that church! GGQ "Planting seeds" again!

Thank you Lord for this opportunity to serve you!!!

Sunday, July 2 (Morning)

We returned back to the Bethany Baptist Church that was supposed to be a time with Pastor Radu Oprea's church members, but again it was packed, as many of the people who were at the Saturday night concert returned. This was a wonderful service, as we sang most of our songs from our Good ol' Gospel Hymns CD and other more worshipful songs. Pastor Radu had communion midway into our concert, at which time we sang The Old Rugged Cross. and There Is A Fountain. You should have heard the entire congregation singing these songs with us, along with Mansion Over the Hilltop and Blessed Assurance. What a feeling it was to stand up there and sing these songs while the Romanians sang them at the top of their lungs in Romanian with tears in their eyes! God was truly present and working in their hearts. It was a wonderful, blessed time with these lovely people. It was interesting; there were other American Missionaries who attended these 2 concerts at this church, all because of our radio interview. They now want us to come to their churches the next time we are there for evangelistic concerts there.

Thank you Lord for this opportunity to serve you!!!

Well, all of our voices were miraculously doing well, except for after this Sunday morning concert, Rich's voice was starting to "leave the building" and he was drinking throat coat like it was water on a hot day! Unbelievably, Tim's voice was still intact, when normally, his goes first…..at least it did in 2004.

Sunday, July 2 (Evening)

We went to Pastor Razvan Mihailescu's River of Life Church in Bucharest. It's always good to see our good friend Razvan. Even though Rich's voice was far from strong, we picked songs that wouldn't bring him up to high and we did ok and had a wonderful concert. They really like our music there and the members brought people who didn't know the Lord. We pray that God worked in their lives so that they will return and have many questions, and ultimately accept Christ into their hearts. As usual, we will leave that up to God.

Well, now we have 2 days off!!! Time to rest our voices for our last concert on Wednesday night!

Monday, July 4

There was no rest after a very tough, but exciting 4 concert weekend! This was our big morning with our "Caring Place" kids! What an exciting time we had with these kids. It was good to see them again. GGQ sang several of our upbeat songs, we played games and then we taught them Christian kids songs, such as "This Little Light of mine", "Down in My Heart", "Jesus Loves me", "Do Lord"; etc. After each song, we raffled off a prize. On Saturday, Marcela and Mihai went out and bought some prizes, plus, used things that we brought too. The main prize was a bicycle!!! The little boy who won that was so happy and it was cool to see the huge smile on his face. His mom happened to be there with him and they were both ecstatic!!

Tim told the parable out of Mathew about the farmer who hired people and paid them the same for performing varying hours of work. The kids actually understood it, but only after Cristi re-explained it!! Hahahaha!

It was hard to say good bye to these little twinks, but we had a great 2 hours with them!

This night, we went to dinner with the Pastor and his wife of the Bethany Baptist Church at a wonderful Romanian restaurant called Perla. Pastor Radu is the one who is going to market GGQ in Bucharest for future major crusade events! He's a wonderful man of God who preaches only from the word of God. If it's in there, he'll preach it! If not, he doesn't preach it!

Tuesday, July 4

July 4th! Happy birthday America!! We were supposed to sing the National Anthem and God Bless America at the U.S. Embassy 4th of July party; however, they decided to have a military band do these songs instead. We were pretty disappointed, but we understood. Instead, we went on a tour through the "Casa Poporului", meaning "Palace of the People", which is now called "Palatul Parlamentului", or "Palace of the Parliament". It is a huge, pretentious building approximately 350,000 meters square and reputed to be the largest building in Europe! The Romanians are not too fond of this building, because it represents everything about the ruthless dictator, Nicolae Ceucescu. He used all of the country's money for himself and nothing for the people! But, it was an unbelievable sight, inside and out! We only saw 1/10th of the inside of the building, but it was enough and awesome!

Wednesday, July 5

Rich went to the airport to see his friends, Anthony & Anita, off and back to Dublin, Ireland. When he returned to our apartment, we all went shopping in Old Bucharest.

That evening we saw Rich's voice make a come back! Our concert was at the Grace Pentecostal Church in Bucharest. Pastor Ceuta was gone to America, but Pastor Iosef Fabian was there and he is such a good friend. In fact, he came to California to visit his son, daughter-in-law and granddaughter and visited at Rich's house one evening. We had a wonderful time with these people and Rob gave a 20 minute message. Pastor Iosef took us out to dinner afterwards for a time of sharing, laughing and looking back on what we have done in the week and a half in Romania. It was a wonderful Romanian meal! We love Romanian food!!

Thursday, July 6

We spent our last day in a little mountain town called Sinia. It was Cristi's idea and a wonderful way to wind down as we rode the train there for a couple of hours. What a beautiful city and what a beautiful country! One day, this will be a tourist country for sure. Once they can get into the European Union and get better economically and the money to clean up their beautiful country. It will take time, maybe a generation, but it will happen!

Friday, July 7

Thursday night, we packed and got to bed early. We woke up at 4:00 a.m. You should have seen us dragging all of our heavy suitcases down the streets of Piata Unirii to get to bus # 783 at 5:00 a.m., which is the express bus to the airport! Instead of spending $35.00 for a van to get us there, the bus cost $1.50 each!!! Good stewardship of GGQ money??? You bet! Our plane left at 8:55 a.m. and we arrived safely at the Los Angeles, CA airport at 7:15 p.m. that night.

Afterthoughts

In retrospect, the trip was very successful! God was present and our concerts were well received with a variety of people in attendance, from congregation members, missionaries, neighbors, Christians, non-Christians, even of the Orthodox faith. The radio interview helped our cause considerably and now we have excellent exposure. Pastors are now talking about doing a major weekend Crusade in the late Fall or in the Spring, whereby there will be more of a marketing campaign to the unbelievers to exhort them to attend. We are there to help the churches and to share the gospel of Jesus Christ to the unbelievers. Our next trip should even be much better as we continue to expose GGQ and how we glorify god through our music!