Assurance comes from an unexpected source
by G. M. Matheny
BBFI missionary to Romania
We crossed the frontier of Romania May 6, 1991, about a year and four months after their revolution. During their revolution many people had died, and they were working hard to make their transition to a western-style economy. It is amazing to me how much the country has been transformed in the last 20 years; there are large stores now, and one can buy anything he or she wants, Romania has also joined both NATO and the European Community. But in May of 1991, America was like Disneyland compared to Eastern Europe.
Just getting this far had been a week-long ordeal since leaving the States, and my prayer was simple: “Just get me to Romania.”
We waited on the train for a while, and three young soldiers boarded with machine guns. These were not draped over their shoulders, but in their hands. One of them shouted, “Pasaporte, pasaporte.”
I could at least figure out what that meant, and I handed him our passports. He stared at me and said, “Opt Pasaporte?” He then put his machine gun under his arm and lifted up eight fingers.
I nodded my head, yes, and eventually he understood that the rest of my family was up front in a compartment. He then turned around and walked off the train with our passports. I had been told to never let anyone walk off with your passports, as they’re the only acceptable proof of identity. So I followed him off the train and tried to get our passports back. Two more soldiers came up and pushed me back. Well, you can’t argue with people holding machine guns! I must have had a startled look on my face, as one solider said, “Okay, okay, no worry.” I got back on the train and thought, “They have our passports, and if this train leaves, I’m sunk.”
After about ten minutes, a uniformed customs agent came on and said something to me in Romanian. I shrugged my shoulders and said, “I don’t understand.” To my surprise he started speaking to me in broken English.
“Are these your bags?” he pointed to our bags in the hallway that were on the ground.
“Well, yes, they are,” I said, and added, “I’m sorry, but there is no place to put them.”
“Where is your paperwork?”
“For what?” I responded.
“For your bags. Show me the papers for your bags!”
I told him we had been in several countries and no one had asked for papers before. Apparently, these papers were to contain a list of what was in each bag. He was, after all, a customs agent and his job was to inspect what was brought into the country. “You have no papers, you open bags,” he said. He moved people off and away from our bags and started opening them; some of our bags were only cardboard boxes with masking tape on them, so he used his knife to cut the tape.
Now something happened here that I will never forget. One of our cardboard boxes was filled with Romanian New Testaments, and it also contained my English Bible and a Russian Bible that someone had given me while I was in Hungary. He had told me to give it to the Russians who come into Romania to sell things at the open-air market. This customs agent only wanted to know one thing — “Why you have Bibles?” I knew it had been illegal to bring in Bibles under communism, but since Romania’s revolution I was told it was no longer a concern. I couldn’t understand what the problem was, but he was not going to let this pass.
He fired off questions, “Why you have Bibles? Are you going to sell them? Why you in our country? How long you going to stay? What you going to do?” He had lots of questions.
“I’m not going to sell them.” I said.
“Why you have them?”
“I’m just going to give them away.”
I was afraid to tell him I was a Baptist preacher coming to start churches. If he didn’t like the Bibles, then for sure he wouldn’t like me being a missionary. This man seemed to have the authority not only to make the train wait, but also to approve what and who went into Romania (or stayed behind).
And then, he asked, “You Romanian?”
“Romanian? No, I’m American.”
“You no Romanian?” he said again.
I shook my head and said, “No, I’m American.”
“You American?”
“Yes,” I said.
“You American citizen?” He asked.
“Yes, I’m an American citizen!”
“No!” he said, and he started going through the box of Bibles.
I stared at him for a moment, and then said to him, “What do you mean, ‘No’?”
“No! You no American citizen!”
I said, “What, is this a joke?”
Then he found the Russian Bible I had. “This is Russian Bible,” he said, and he seemed quite proud of himself for finding it. “Why you have Russian Bible?”
“I’m just going to give it away,” I said.
He looked at its pages for a few seconds and asked, “You Russian?”
I said “No!” and reached for my passport to prove who I was, but it was gone, for they had taken the passports earlier. I thought, “What are they trying to pull here?” I put my hand in the air, as though I was taking an oath and said, “I’m an American citizen!” It now seems funny to me, but at the time it certainly was not.
“You American?”
“Yes, American!” I responded.
“You an American citizen?”
“Yes, you got it, an American citizen!”
“No,” he said.
“No what?” I shot back.
“No, you not an American citizen!”
I was totally bewildered. I stared for a moment, and then I said, “Okay, I’m not an American. I’m not Russian, and I’m not Romanian. Who am I?”
He reached for my English Bible, also in this cardboard box, and said, “Read this.”
I thought he wanted to see if I could read English, to prove I was an American. I began reading the first verse I saw, but he stopped me and said, “No, read this.”
He pointed to Ephesians 2:19, the verse that says believers are citizens of heaven. He stopped me at that point, and said, “You Christian, and Christians are citizens of heaven.”
I stared at him and said, “Yeah,” questioning where this was going to lead. It seemed to have helped me when I read even that one verse in God’s Word, something I needed because I had this crazy thought I might actually be going to jail.
He then looked both ways and said to me, “I am Christian also, and I also citizen of heaven.” He then reached for my hand and shook it and said, “I am so glad you come to our country!”
“Oh, really,” I said. I had mixed feelings at this point. He was a Christian and I was not in trouble, but he had really pulled one on me, and all I could do was grin.
He told me that before the revolution he would let Bibles enter Romania. He said one man had written a book about him saying that, “God had blinded the eyes of the customs agent.” He told me when he opened bags during communism and saw any Bibles, he just closed the bags and said nothing. And then he added, “God didn’t blind my eyes; He just put me there to let Bibles through.”
I was glad that was over, and our bags had been inspected, and apparently everything was a “go” for getting into Romania. A few minutes passed, and back came the soldiers with our passports; as I understand it, they just registered them there at the border. The train started moving again and we passed over into Romania. I was relieved to have all that behind me, and glad to know we were getting off at the first city. When the train stopped for the last leg of our seven-day ordeal, I realized the Lord had answered my prayer, “Just get me to Romania.”
Later, after we arrived and our host pastor helped us get to our apartment, we ate and went to bed early. Our two boys slept in the living room, our three girls in one bedroom, our baby in a makeshift crib, and my wife and I in the other bedroom. Everyone went to sleep except for me; I couldn’t sleep. I just lay there in bed staring into a dark room. I stayed there for a while and then got up and went into the living room, where there was a small light shining from the kitchen, and I thought, “I will pray one more time and thank the Lord for getting us here.”
For more stories by Garry Matheny, see www.truechristianshortstoriesfreebygmmatheny.com.