Romania Report (August 17-30)

In brief:
Just got back from Romania late Tuesday night August 30.  I'm exhausted, but in a good way.

I would appreciate your prayers over the next few days cause I’m fighting off a sore throat/fever/runny nose I picked up on the plane ride home. Otherwise I was in excellent health for the entire mission. I was on the dead run and very, very busy almost the whole time, but God was very gracious to protect and energize me.

The Hebrew word “tsalach” (Psalm 1:3, Is 55:11) is often translated as “success, accomplish or prosper “ and means, “to reach your goal, to accomplish what you set out to accomplish.” By this definition, the mission was a huge success.  Words (or at least my words) just cannot give a true sense of “how great (or valuable) it was”  - but I’ll try.

Purpose:
I had dual roles as the worship director and seminar instructor for the “Sozo Destiny of Nations” conference in Timisoara, Romania.

In a word, the event was awesome. This was our first attempt at expanding the Sozo vision of international reconciliation and leadership development beyond the “big festival” held annually in Baja, Hungary by taking it to the surrounding nations. This year’s first satellite conference in Romania was something of a scaled-down experiment. The objective was to impact a greater portion of Romania, for example, by making access much easier for them, since visa’s are difficult to obtain and travel is expensive between the nations of Eastern Europe (Hungary, Romania, Serbia/Bosnia/Croatia, and Bulgaria).  We emphasized Balkan reconciliation through our international staff of about 40 consisting of teams from each of these nations.

Worship A Highlight
As a staff we have many jobs to make the event run smoothly, but I observed that worship was one of the easiest things for us to do together. Every time I’ve been at Sozo the unmistakable presence of God in our multi-lingual worship times has been a highlight.  It is a “new sound” that has been creatively different every time we assemble and is a small representation of the heavenly worship described in Revelation 5:9 “every tribe and language and people and nation” glorifying God.   This unique aspect of Sozo was again a highlight and a confirmation that God was blessing the work beyond Baja.

Another aspect of the presence of the Lord is creativity (Gen 1:1). There were courses on songwriting, art and creativity, and I wrote and co-wrote couple of new songs in Romanian. I was also interviewed by the national Christian TV network “Alpha Omega” and demonstrated this aspect of Sozo with a song written that day called “Holy (Sfent)” (Sfent is Romanian for “holy”).

An additional highlight for myself and Sozo founder Randy Morgan was seeing the fruit of years of labor as these young leaders rose to the occasion and led worship with skill, excellence, and - no westerners! We were both crying Thursday night seeing the growth and development of those we’ve mentored in this emerging generation.

New Seminar: “Practical Theology of Worship”
I taught a new 12+ hour seminar on "Practical Theology of Worship" which was very well received. It’s a different approach for understanding God and what worship is all about, specifically designed for  "non-Westerners/non-Americans".  I’m synthesizing the course material from my masters degree program at the Institute for Worship Studies with other teachings from Steve Fry, Ray Hughes, Harold Best, RC Sproul and others. This seminar placed an emphasis on God’s original design for creation, his initiative in restoration, and our response of whole-life worship. I received several invitations to come back and teach this material in more depth in Romania and other countries.

After the conference
Saturday night after the conference I traveled 6+ hours to Ocna Mures to visit Nick Decean and his clan. They have a small church, a well known music ministry and are putting together a small recording studio. On Sunday I shared a couple of songs and taught in Nick’s church. Then I did some studio advising and showed them some technical stuff. Afterwards they did a concert at the (very non-Christian) city festival – “Aceasta E” (the Romanian translation of “A New Anointing”) was very enthusiastically received.

Monday I rode a mini-bus 6+ hours to Budpest and had some strategic meetings with friends of Sozo and the “Ez Az A Nap” Festival (the Hungarian translation of “A New Anointing”). Later I connected with our friend Jasmina, a leader at the YWAM Budapest base to discuss an invitation to teach at their school of worship in January.

Left the hotel in Budapest at 5am. Had a few hours layover in Amsterdam so I rode the train into the city and relaxed with an apple pie and coffee. That was about my only rest for the whole trip!

Pray About This
I, and the rest of the Sozo nation, would really appreciate your prayers as we seek God’s heart and, frankly, provision for advancing his kingdom work in this part of the world.

I’m scheduled to be in Germany for a week in May 2006 to teach at a YWAM school. This could be a strategic time to expand my trip and travel realtively inexpensively  to Serbia, Bulgaria and Romania to hold more in depth worship seminars.  So I’m seeking wisdom and the finances to do it, cause I could be over there most of May and it’s expensive to be over there ministering and not working over here.

Thank you for your prayers and support.

The Lord Be With You!

Comments

[andrew jones]

so glad it went well

tell RAndy i said hello - we enjoyed him and the Sozo team in Prague (2002)

[Paul Billington]

Glad your back Rob, have been missing your postings. Hope you get to feeling better.

Love ya bro.

[Sarah Johnson]

Hello,
I don't know if you remember me but I interviewed Randy Morgan for Alfa Omega. Right we are working on the subtitles for Randy's interview and He mentions a Worship team from the Ukraine that was with Sozo. However we cannot make out the name. If you by chance know that name it would be a great help if you could let me know.
Sarah

[Rachel Lee]

I love your music.I love both versions of this is the day.I was wondering how much money your cd ?Anyway I learned both versions of your song this is the day.I learned the first one by myself and the hungarian version from my friend who is moving to Budapest.And speaks both hungarian and english.Can you send me both versions of that song PLEASE?And also can you send me the lyrics and the price of your cd.Thank you.Have a God Blessed Day.Rachel Lee.PS email me any time at Angelfriendsbestfriends@yahoo.com.

[deletedTrain]

U never know, who u can meet in a -happly- deleted train :-)