My father was a member of the Communist Party. Seeing the advantages we as a family had because of that, I thought that Communism was something I could live for. I wanted to be a part of something, and when I was in High School, I became a Communist youth leader; I felt I was fulfilling my life purpose until the Romanian revolution in 1989 when communism fell and all my "glorious" future fell too. I didn't know what to do with the new freedoms we gained after the revolution that December. I lost control of my life, and I ended up being involved in some seriously bad things.
I remember being very scared about the possible consequences of my bad decisions when, in the summer of 1992, someone approached me to talk about God. He was a student from the U.S. who traveled to Romania for a summer project to talk with Romanian students about a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. He shared with me something that totally changed my life. It was during this time that I learned that God loved me, that I was a sinner, that Jesus Christ died on a cross to pay for my sins and that I had a choice to choose Him as my Lord and Savior. It was then I asked Jesus to come into my heart and to change my life!
Nothing spectacular seemed to happen, but something deep in my heart and my mind started to change.
Two weeks later I met the same group of students at the seaside, and I saw them talking with the students on the beach. I asked Dean (the student who told me about Jesus) if he would take me with him. While Dean was presenting the same message I had heard two weeks before to one of the students, I also shared what happened in my life and what changes I had seen in the two weeks since I had become a Christian. That student decided to ask Jesus to come into his life as Lord and Savior, and he prayed there on the beach with us!
That moment was a turning point in my life. I finally understood the real purpose for my life. I found something that I could live for: to get to know Jesus Christ better and to make Him known to as many as possible.
After I graduated from college, my wife and I decided to invest our lives in helping others to know Jesus Christ.