“As the Lord brought Esther to royal position for such a time as this, so we in the free world have the call to rescue Christians behind the Iron Curtain,” I concluded. Then I went to sit down at the back with my friends.

It was April 1985 and I was on a speaking trip in Switzerland. I had just given my testimony in a church, which met in an old stone building. There were long wooden benches and an aisle down the middle. The church had a balcony at the back. In the front, on the communion table was a vase of daffodils. There was singing with clapping of hands, accompanied by drums, guitars and a piano. The atmosphere in the meeting that evening was wonderful. I was amazed that so many people of all ages were there on a weeknight.

“Our pastor receives prophetic words for people,” my friend Linda explained.

“That’s why hundreds flock to hear him,” her husband Henry added.

I wanted to hear a word from the Lord myself, but not the one I was about to get…

The pastor was a tall man in his late forties. At the end of the meeting he gave several specific prophesies for people in the congregation. One of them seemed to be for me.

“The Lord shows me a young woman dressed in black,” he started. “He says that tomorrow morning you will receive bad news in the mail… Satan will try to destroy you through this news. But the Lord says to be strong and to remember the story of Job… The Lord will bring good out of it in the end… This is the sign that this prophetic word is from the Lord: you have a pain in your back on the right, but when you get home the pain will go… Here is a Scripture to encourage you: “We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him” (Romans 8:28).

I am wearing a black velvet dress, I thought. I also have a pain in my back as he described, and I didn’t tell anyone about it. Still, I hoped that this prophetic word was not for me.

After the service was over, I stood at the door with the pastor and shook hands with everyone. Then I went home with my Swiss friends. When we arrived at their apartment we had a cup of hot chocolate and I went to bed for the night. I drew the bedroom curtains to see the moon and stars through the window. I thanked the Lord for the day and lay down to sleep under the soft quilt. Then I realized that the pain in my back had gone…
The next morning my hosts prepared breakfast. We had coffee with boiled milk, the way I liked it. We ate freshly baked rolls with homemade raspberry jam. From the breakfast table, through the large window, I could see the sunrise. I looked at the swans on the nearby lake and enjoyed the beauty and calm.

At that moment the door bell rang. Linda got up and went to the door. It was the mail carrier.

“Genovieva,” she said, “there is a telegram for you from Romania.”

I quickly read it. It was from my brother, Teodor. It said in coded language, “Constantin was caught with Bibles. All the family is in trouble.” Constantin, or Costică as we called him, was another of my brothers in Romania.
I was devastated and cried for a long time. Linda and Henry tried to comfort me, but in vain. I went to my room and knelt down by my bed. The pain I felt was deep and would not go away. To be caught with Bibles in Romania was treated as a crime and Romanian prisons were like Nazi death camps.

I thought about all the years my family had been involved in the distribution of Bibles. The Lord had protected us for eighteen years in this work.

I asked the Lord to tell me what to do. Suddenly I knew… I had to go to Austria to talk to Stephen… We had arranged this shipment of Bibles together.
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In a residential district of Vienna, Stephen was at his office desk. He worked with a mission that smuggled Bibles into Eastern Europe. He took about ten trips a year into the different communist countries, including Romania.

Stephen was from England and his job at this time was to send out teams of young people into the East with Bibles. It was dangerous work, especially when vehicles got caught at the borders and confiscated. Although the mission operated from a free country, the whole team always had to be secretive, because there were communist spies around, even in Austria. Stephen kept the trip reports in order and the correspondence with other missions up to date.

The phone rang.

“Genovieva… is that you?” he said. “What?… caught with Bibles?… I’m sorry to hear that… Yes, come as soon as possible… I will arrange a place for you to stay… We will pray for them and publicize the situation…”
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The next day I set out for Austria. After a day’s drive, I arrived in Vienna. The mission office was a two- storey house in a quiet road. In the front was a cherry tree in blossom. I walked up the steps and rang the bell. Stephen opened the door and welcomed me. I followed him into the living room. We sat down in armchairs around a little table. Some of the young people were memorizing addresses for their next trip. They looked up as if they expected me.

“What exactly happened?” Stephen asked. He was in his early thirties, with dark hair and green eyes. “As far as we know all the Bibles and children’s books were safely distributed… It was a miracle how quickly all your children’s books went in…”

“Yes, that’s true,” I said. “It was the very last load of six hundred Bibles and some children’s books that was caught.”

It felt so good to be able to share my burden with Stephen and the team. One of the girls, Becky, brought a tray of coffee and cakes.

“How did you get out of Romania, Genovieva?” she asked.

“The Lord rescued me as He rescued Daniel from the lion’s den,” I said. “President Jimmy Carter intervened to get me out of Romania… Soon after I arrived in America in March 1980, I visited Washington DC. There a lady at the State Department showed me my name mentioned twice in reports by the Helsinki Commission for Human Rights. That is how I received the best visa to come to the United States—that of a political refugee.”

“How did you come to write the beautiful children’s books we took into Romania?” Stephen asked.

“When I arrived in the United States, one of the places that fascinated me the most was Christian bookstores. There was nothing like that in Romania. I gazed for hours at cards with beautiful pictures and Bible verses on them…”

“Christian bookstores are a blessing we take for granted in the West,” Trevor said. He was an American, responsible for one of the special vehicles used to smuggle Bibles.

“My favorite art in Christian bookstores was Precious Moments with innocent faces of children… I thought how nice it would be to make Bible storybooks for Romania with this art. I prayed that the Lord would help me… I remember how I asked the manager of a bookstore, ‘Who is this artist? How can I buy his art for Romania?’ He laughed, ‘You want to buy Samuel Butcher’s art?! This is big business in the States and you don’t have money!’ I asked in another bookstore and received the same response.

“But I did not give up. In another bookstore I asked an assistant, a girl with a hunch back. ‘I can give you the phone number of the company,’ she said. ‘I order from their catalogues all the time.’ She gave me the phone number and with a prayer in my heart I dialed the number.

“‘Hello,’ I said, ‘I want to speak to Samuel Butcher.’

“‘You speak with Sam,’ a voice said.

“‘My name is Genovieva,’ I said. ‘I’m so glad you answered the phone… I was exiled from Romania by the communist regime because I taught children about God. I taught them Bible stories and songs… My life was in danger and I lived in hiding in a church for seven years… The children in Romania don’t have anything beautiful to look at. Everything is dull and grey… I would like to do books with beautiful pictures. I like your drawings so much! How much would it cost to buy your art?’

“‘I had a sad childhood myself,’ he said. ‘My parents separated and I went on the wrong path… One night when I was in a bar, someone came and told me about the love of Jesus for me. I gave my life to Him on the spot. Then I put my gift of art on the altar and asked Him to use it… This is when I started to draw this style… I want all the children of the world to know the Lord through my art.’

“I could hear that Sam was very touched. ‘I will send you a letter to give you permission to use anything I produce for free distribution in Romania,’ he said. ‘I also want to help pay for the production of the books.’”
The young people at the mission house listened intently to my account.

“That’s incredible, Genovieva!” said Trevor. “Praise the Lord!”

“When did you write the books?” Stephen asked.

“I produced six titles for children in three years: ‘Căci un Copil ni S-a născut’ (For unto us a Child is Born), ‘Hristos a înviat’ (Christ is Risen), ‘Isus e minunat’ (Jesus is Wonderful), ‘Isus mi-a schimbat viaţa’ (Jesus Changed my Life), ‘În seara de Crăciun şi-n alte seri’ (On Christmas Eve and Other Evenings) and ‘Pentru mine’ (For me). As soon as I finished each book, Sam sent me the pictures ready for the printer. He paid thousands of dollars for the color separations. On almost every page was a beautiful picture.”

“How did you get the money to pay for the printing?” Diane, the girls’ leader asked as she poured me another cup of coffee.

“In the United States I spoke in many churches and groups about the persecution of Christians in communist Romania. The Lord gave me great favor wherever I went and people gave enough money for me to have 175,000 books printed. The Christians who worked at the printer’s knew that these books had to be smuggled in. They made a circle around the pallets of books and prayed that they would get safely to the children… The books contained Bible stories and songs that I had composed while hiding in my church in Iaşi… I had them printed on good quality paper.

“My brother Teodor was the one who arranged the musical notes for the songs. He also recorded the Sion Children’s Choir that I started in Romania. Each book had a cassette with about twenty-five songs from the book…”

“I was the one who smuggled the reel-to-reel tapes and the sheets of music out of Romania,” Stephen remembered.

“What a blessing that was!” I said. “I then went to a company and had 5,000 copies of each cassette made to go with the books… After I printed the books I met Richard Wurmbrand in a church in Ohio,” I continued.

“Wasn’t he the one who spent fourteen years in prison in Romania for his faith?” asked Becky.

“Yes, that’s right,” I replied. “He asked me, ‘How will you get that many books into Romania? Missions now consider Romania a closed country… The vehicles with special compartments used to smuggle Bibles were caught at the borders.’

“But it was as if his words went in one ear and out the other. I refused to be discouraged. After all, it was the Lord who had helped me produce these books. I heard the Holy Spirit say, Is anything too difficult for the Lord, Genovieva?”

Stephen nodded and smiled. He and the team knew what it meant to live by faith and to trust the Lord. At that point the team members surrounded me, laid their hands on me and prayed for my family in Romania. What a comfort that was!
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One evening a few days later, Stephen invited me to a restaurant. As we were waiting to be served, I asked him, “How did you get involved in Eastern Europe?”

“I became interested after I read ‘God’s Smuggler’ by Brother Andrew,” he replied. “I was fifteen at the time. My parents taught me and my three sisters to support missions. They gave us collection boxes for different countries… I received a box for Lebanon, but one of my sisters received a box for the Slavic Gospel Association. This mission worked behind the Iron Curtain and helped the persecuted Church… I suddenly envied her. Maybe I can exchange my box for hers, I thought. She agreed and I was very happy.”

The waiter came and took our orders. Soon he brought vegetable soup and Austrian rolls and lit the candle on the table. We thanked the Lord and began to eat.

“Five years later, in 1973 when I was a student,” Stephen continued, “I arranged to go on a summer vacation trip to Turkey with Paul and Dave, whom you met. I knew that we would have to drive through Eastern Europe, so I contacted the local representative of the Slavic Gospel Association in England. He gave me some addresses in Austria, Yugoslavia and Romania. He also gave us some Serbian Bibles to take to a pastor in Belgrade.

“On the way out from England we stopped in a village near Salzburg in the Austrian Alps,” Stephen went on. “There at a mission house we received training on what to expect as we crossed communist borders. The three of us had to be prepared for what would happen to us if we were caught with Bibles… Our vehicle and the literature would be confiscated and we could be sent to prison… They taught us not to ask for directions, to memorize all our addresses and not to have them written anywhere… They trained us how to make contact with the local believers, as those who received the Bibles from us were in even greater danger…”

“It was hard work on both sides of the border,” I said.

“At the end of the training session, we each answered a questionnaire individually,” Stephen continued. “The last question was, “What Scripture would you give to the believers in Eastern Europe? To our surprise we all wrote down the same verses: “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:6-7).”

“How incredible!” I exclaimed as I finished my soup.

At this time the waiter came and took away the empty bowls. He returned with grilled trout seasoned with lemon and parsley, baked potatoes and red cabbage salad. As we ate, Stephen continued his account.

“We left Austria in our Volkswagen with the Bibles hidden in the trunk. We got through the border into Yugoslavia with no problem… A few days later we arrived in Belgrade and visited Pastor Jakic at his home. We gave him the Serbian Bibles. He and his wife were concerned for the plight of Christians in Romania. They kept a stock of Romanian Bibles in their apartment. While we were with them we met John, a young man from England. He also wanted to travel to Romania with Bibles.

“Pastor Jakic reminded us of the great need for Bibles in Romania. He asked us if we would be prepared to take a hundred… I talked with Paul and Dave and together we decided we could take forty. John had a bigger car and took a hundred Bibles… The next morning we left Belgrade for the Romanian border. John left some time after us so that we would not arrive at the border at the same time. I never thought I would meet John again…

“In less than an hour we arrived at the border,” Stephen continued. “I drove and we went through Yugoslav passport control and customs with no problem. We crossed into no man’s land and stopped at the barrier. After a few minutes it lifted and I drove forward to the Romanian customs point at Moraviţa. It was almost deserted, except for the soldiers with machine guns. Then a border guard came and took our passports away for inspection. We waited in the car, praying silently. After about twenty minutes he came back and asked me, ‘Do you have weapons?’

“‘No,’ I answered.

“‘Do you have drugs?’

“‘No.’

“‘Do you have pornography?’

“‘No.’

“‘Do you have Bibles?’

“I nodded, reached behind me for our three English Bibles and handed them to him. The guard took them away for a long time… Finally, he came back and returned them.

“‘Open the trunk,’ he ordered. My heart beat fast. I got out and opened it. He took a quick look inside, then motioned to me that I could close it. He gave us our passports back and waved us through.

“I will never forget the joy I felt as the barrier lifted and we entered Romania for the first time,” Stephen said.

They did not find the forty Romanian Bibles hidden under the camping equipment.

“As soon as we crossed the border, Dave exclaimed, ‘That was a miracle!’ The three of us thanked the Lord.
“It seemed as if we had gone back fifty years in time,” Stephen continued. “The houses along the sides of the road were painted in bright colors… Ducks and geese, cows and horses, pigs and chickens ran loose in the streets. Storks nested on wagon wheels on the chimney tops… Children smiled and waved at us as we drove by.

“The next day we arrived in Râşnov, a small town in the center of the country. We delivered the forty Bibles to a Christian family there.”

We finished our fish and the conversation continued. At this time the waiter brought Apfelstrudel and coffee.
“How did you get my address?” I asked.

“It happened like this, Genovieva,” Stephen said. “After we had delivered the forty Bibles, we left Romania and crossed into Bulgaria. We went to a campsite for the night. It was late when we arrived and the campsite was full, with hundreds of cars and tents… We drove around a few times and looked for a place to park…”

“‘The only space available is under that lamp,’ Paul said. ‘No one wants to park there because of all the insects.’

“We had no choice but to park our car right there and put up our tent next to it,” Stephen continued. “We tried to sleep, but to no avail. The bugs and beetles crawled into our tent and into our sleeping bags… But little did we know that the Lord had guided us to that very spot…

“When we got up the next morning we saw that we had parked next to another car from England… It was John from Belgrade! We greeted each other in amazement.

“‘How was your trip to Romania?’ I asked him.

“‘It didn’t go well,’ he said. ‘They found my Bibles and turned me back into Yugoslavia… But at least they didn’t confiscate them… I want to try again from here…’ I looked at his passport and saw the word anulat stamped in bold letters across his Romanian visa. ‘You shouldn’t try to return to Romania with this passport,’ I said. ‘They canceled your visa.’

“I talked with Paul and Dave and it was clear to the three of us that this meeting was no coincidence. We believed that the Lord wanted us to go back to Romania with another load of Bibles.

“‘We could take forty of your Bibles if you give us your contact address,’ I said to John.

“He searched his pocket and found a small piece of paper on which was written Marcu Nichifor, Strada Sărărie 32, Iaşi. The three of us memorized the address and threw away the piece of paper.

“The Lord helped us again to go through the border,” Stephen continued. “After a few days we arrived in the city of Iaşi. I went into a hotel and found a street plan of the city. To my surprise the street we were looking for was clearly marked. I studied how to reach it… We parked the car near the magnificent Palace of Culture in the city center and pretended to be simple tourists… But as soon as it got dark we set off on foot for Strada Sărărie carrying the forty Bibles in a plastic bag.

“We walked up the street and found number thirty-two. It was a church… We pushed open the iron gate, then we tried the front door, but it was locked… We walked around the back. There was no one there…

“‘Lord,’ I prayed with Paul and Dave, ‘please send someone to meet us… to take these Bibles.’ As we were wondering what to do, we heard steps… It was you, Genovieva!”

We finished our coffee and I looked at Stephen over the table… We praised the Lord together. I knew that had been a divine appointment.

“Thank you for sharing this story with me,” I said. “It strengthens my faith at this difficult time.”
How will the Lord rescue my family? I wondered. Will I ever see them again?

(to be continued)