My first trip to Romania was in August of 1990. Ron Kuhns had been there in April and knew what to expect. Brother Ron had told me that Bibles were in short supply. So I found a Mennonite group in Ephrata, PA who had hardback, Romanian New Testaments for $5. Since my parents lived near Ephrata, I made plans to travel there and to buy some New Testaments. As folk at my church heard of our plans they would give me ten or twenty dollars and say, “Buy some New Testaments for me.” By the time of our trip, I was able to buy 500 Romanian New Testaments! We flew into Frankfort, Germany, rented a car, and drove through Germany, Austria, Hungary, and into Romania. At the end of our first day of construction on a village church, we cleaned up at our hotel and went out to begin to distribute our 500 New Testaments. Wrong! We handed them out in less than five minutes! We were mobbed by people trying to get a copy of that secret forbidden Book. One couple followed us back to our hotel five blocks just to get the last New Testament that I had left on the nightstand in the hotel room. On the flight back home, Brother Ron said, “Someone has to do something about getting Scriptures in to Romania.” I agreed and said, “Yes, someone has to do something about getting Bibles in to Romania.” We looked at each other for a moment, and that was it.
