One day I was looking at a map of Romania, my home country, and beginning with my village, I began to count: twenty, thirty, forty villages where there was not even one single Seventh-day Adventist Christian—not even one looking forward to Christ’s second coming.

I put the map on my bed, and opening it to a page of nearby villages, I knelt before it, asking in prayer that “the Lord of harvest” would “send forth laborers into His harvest.” Matthew 9:38 and Luke 10:2.

In those days during the dark years of communism, a Bible cost nearly a month’s wages, and there was a great lack of religious books and Bibles. I began to go out, with Bible in hand, and stopping at the street corners where people gathered, I told them about the second coming of Jesus Christ.

In the winter when the snow was very deep, I walked through the fields, eight to twenty miles, to reach villages where the people knew little or nothing about the Bible. We held church services in homes in the evenings. So many people came that they filled two rooms, and we often stayed till midnight.

The preaching of the Gospel in homes was forbidden during those times, but God watches over His Word, and nothing bad happened to me.

Although our country had been thriving in an atheistic regime, and all learned in school that God does not exist, we did not give up claiming the promise found in Matthew 24:14, that it might be accomplished in Romania, as well as in Big Brother, the Soviet Union: “This gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come.”

In 1990 religious freedom came to my country. Now books could openly be printed, and evangelistic meetings began to take place in villages and cities. At this time I began printing books and pamphlets by the thousands, distributing them throughout Romania. Many times I walked for miles on foot to villages to hand out these precious, silent messengers. I was amazed as I saw how God moved upon the hearts of young people to be involved with literature distribution.

Roxana and the Choir

One Sabbath I was visiting the church in Cervenia (Cher veen a), where a brother and I began planning how we could reach people with the Gospel message. Since the next Sunday was the beginning of the Orthodox Passover, we crowded 22 people, the entire youth choir, into a jeep and two cars. Stopping beside a beautiful lake near a village, the choir assembled and began singing. In a short time 30 people came from the village to listen.

Roxana, a six year old girl, recited from memory the whole book of Jonah, leaving the listeners with tears in their eyes. The choir sang some more songs, and then I spoke about the resurrection and ascension of our Lord, as well as the promise of His soon second coming. Then Roxana recited, from memory, Psalms 23 and 119:1-12, leaving our listeners in amazement.

We went to the outskirts of the next village and repeated our program. Over 100 people came out to listen, and others stopped their cars along the roadside to listen to the singing, preaching of the Gospel, and especially to little Roxana. We realized that the Lord had shown us how to reach many people with the truth.

We soon began having meetings in various villages around the country. We invited four lay evangelists to come with us, and over a period of six weeks, using six cars for transportation, we took the youth choir to 39 villages, the main choir to 18, and the children’s choir to 16 villages!

Roxana went to more than 100 villages, amazing people and causing them to turn their thoughts toward Jesus Christ. We also began having Ionut, a seven year old boy, travel with Roxana. Ionut had more than 30 verses memorized, as well as all the books of the Bible in correct order. Due to these little ones, the enemies of the Bible were silenced. Yes, “Out of the mouth of babes and infants, You have ordained strength.” Psalms 8:2

The Sacrifice of Mirela

Mirela was a seventh grader who sang in the chil-dren’s choir. Her father noticed that Mirela gathered Bibles, New Testaments, Gospels and other books, such as A Day to Remember, God in History, and The Marked Bible.

“Where did you get those books?” Mirela’s father asked.

“I bought them,” she replied.

“Where did you get the money?” he asked.

Mirela answered, “From the money you gave to me to buy pretzels and cookies.”

After that, Mirela was given books and Bibles for distribution by her father, as well as by me.

During the summer she had to go for treatment to Slanic, a spa. From the first day she arrived there, Mirela taught the girls in her room songs, Bible verses and poems. In the evening, the children usually gathered in the club hall to watch TV for an hour. Mirela had an idea that was inspired from above. She went to see the director of the spa and told him that she was preparing a music program, complete with poetry, with the girls from her room. She was wondering if everyone might like to come and watch it at the club hall?

Word got out, and all the girls who had come to the spa for treatment came to Mirela the next day, to learn songs, poems, and Bible verses, so they, too, could be included in the program.

For the next two weeks the TV was silent while the girls practiced their program. Mirela also offered Bibles to all the doctors and nurses at the spa. She gave away New Testaments, Gospel of John booklets, and other books to the girls who came and went at the spa. She did all of this on her own initiative, under the urging of the Holy Spirit.

Elementary Colporteurs

One day while I was visiting Bucharest, the capital of our country, I looked at the crowd of 4,000 students at Elementary School #156. A thought came to my mind, “These students can be the best literature evangelists in the country! If things are done right, they could bring books home to their families.”

Bucharest has 200 elementary schools (grades 1 through 8). Just outside of Bucharest are another 117 schools which belong to the capital school administration, as well. What an opportunity awaited us if we moved prayerfully and wisely!
I visited Elementary School #156. The lady principal told me, “We have 40 classrooms with just 5th through 8th grades. I will personally accompany you to the best classes to meet with the students.” I was amazed!
An idea came to me—an incentive program should be introduced! I found three students in each class who had the best grades, and then those students were awarded a Bible and three others books: God in History, A Day to Remember, and The Marked Bible. For the group of students who had the second and third best grades, I gave each a New Testament with the Psalms, and one other book. The rest of the students received the Gospel of John, Luke or another book. I knew that these students would take the books home and the whole family would benefit.

Next, I visited Elementary School #39. I was told that the principal there was quite mean, but after visiting with him, he seemed very kind, and personally led me to the classrooms to distribute books. Then he asked the teachers to accompany us to the other classes. In every room, we gave a short presentation on the Bible and faith in God before we gave out books.

I began taking two young Adventist men with me. We parked a Jeep, full of books, in the school yard, and in two days we had given away 3,000 books to the students, who took them home as “volunteer literature evangelists!”

I traveled to several villages in Romania, each time praying for those villages, and in every one of them I was welcomed at the schools—where I gave books to every student and gave each teacher a copy of The Great Controversy. Yes, “All that my eyes desired, God provided.” We gave away books in more than 150 schools in the towns and villages of Romania

The Bucharest Challenge

Until this point, in Bucharest we had only given away books in 5 of the 200 schools; and in the area outside of Bucharest, in 6 of 117 schools. An interesting episode regarding the work in the schools happened when the former president of the Romanian Union of Seventh-day Adventists, elder Nelu Dumi-trescu, told me that instead of giving books away in other cities and villages, I should concentrate on this work in the schools of Bucharest.

“Elder Dumitrescu,” I told him, “in Bucharest there are 200 schools, and I do not have the finances or time to go to all of them. But if Elder Faluveghi (a teacher at the SDA Missionary School, and present at this meeting) could give me some students, we could distribute these books on a much larger scale.”

Elder Faluveghi answered, “You will have those students at your convenience, beginning right now.”

The Union gave the missionary students 5,000 New Testaments, 800 Bibles, 2,000 The Sufferings of Christ, 5,000 Stories for Children, and I added 500 New Testaments, 2,000 The True Day of Rest, 2,000 The Life of Christ, and a few hundred God in History.

We divided 100 students into groups of two or four. The next two days they went to give away their books, and they were welcomed in most schools. The missionary students were excited and their faces were bright with the light of joy when they told me how quickly the students liked the books, and invited them to come again with more.

Because the supply of books was insufficient, and there weren’t many different titles, the students ran out of books after just two visits. But the experience of those two days proved what could have been done with enough books to cover all 200 schools in Bucharest!

News Gets Around!

In the town of Jilava I gave books away at the main school. The next day when I went to the second school, I realized that the news of our visit had arrived before us. In the first classroom we entered, the students jumped up and cheered, saying, “We knew you would come! We were just wondering when you would show up.”

“How did you know I would come?” I asked.

“We heard that you gave away books at the main school, and we knew you would come to us as well,” was the reply.

I wonder what would have happened if we had just passed over this school?

Next I was working at Radauti (in the far northern part of Romania), where one Sabbath a sister asked when I would be going to distribute books in the village of Nana. I was amazed, since Nana is located in southern Romania. This sister told me that the principal in the Nana school was her brother-in-law, and he had told her about our ministry of giving students books. The news of our work was really getting around!

At one school the principal had the students gather in the school yard, in an orderly manner with their teachers, to listen to a presentation from the Bible. Then we gave books to all the students and teachers. In one loud voice, they shouted, “Come again and bring more books!”

For two weeks, in the city of Piatra Neamt, I went door to door and gave books to more than 800 families. I had only 16 refusals. One man told me, “You are lucky you’re an old man, otherwise I would beat you up.”

In this same city I went to Elementary School #4 and gave books to 3,000 students in just two days. The principal’s office looked like a missionary storeroom, filled with Bibles, New Testaments and Psalms, the Gospels, The Bible Told to Children, The Bible with Pictures, The New Testament with Pictures, and other literature everywhere.

The principal saw me sweating from the workout I was getting carrying all those books. When I came back to his office to pick up more, he told me, “Mister Feresteanu, you surely have a spot reserved in heaven!”

“You do, too.” I told him. He looked at me, amazed, so I quoted the verses in John 3:16, 1 Timothy 2:3-4, and 2 Peter 2:9. I also told him about the French writer, Jean-Paul Sartre, who refused the Nobel Prize for literature, and how that amazed a lot of people. I told him that the angels are amazed when we, mortal human beings, refuse the Prize of Heaven and eternal life.

Editor’s Note: Elder Feresteanu has distributed nearly 1,000,000 books in Romania, Ukraine, and Russia. His travel and dedication have earned him the title “The Apostle of Romania.” Laymen Ministries is currently sponsoring Elder Feresteanu. If you would like to receive a free video interview on his work, call our office at 1-800-245-1844. Request the Vasile Feresteanu Interview.

Vasile Feresteanu, known as
“The Apostle to Romania,” evangelizes through literature distribution in Romania and Russia

Children of all ages have become literature evangelists through the school programs introduced by Vasile Feresteanu, where students are awarded Bibles and books for their participation and skill in school work. The books then make their way into the homes of the children’s families.