This article originally appeared on the byFaith website, the magazine of the Presbyterian Church of America
By Erin Jones
DECEMBER 17, 2024
In 1989, as communism crumbled across Eastern Europe, McLean Presbyterian Church in northern Virginia gathered for its annual missions banquet. Theologian Carl F. Henry spoke on the conditions in Eastern Europe. Henry had preached in the underground church in Romania, and he urged McLean to see that the fall of communism in Europe would create many opportunities for kingdom work. Henry invited a small group from McLean, including then Missions Director Mary Ann Bell, to accompany him on a mission trip to Romania to see the conditions first hand.
The group accepted Henry’s invitation, and the horrors they witnessed galvanized them to join the kingdom work taking place in Romania. The resulting partnership – Romanian Christian Enterprises – has been extending mercy toward those that society deems the “least” for more than three decades.
Failed Policies Lead to Abandoned Children
Under communist leader Nicolae Ceaușescu, Romania banned birth control and urged citizens to have many children. But as the country descended into poverty, the failed policies led to orphanages crowded with abandoned children, with few workers and resources to care for them.
The team from McLean saw orphanage rooms with 40-60 infants, all silent because the children had learned that their cries were useless to bring food or comfort.
“Something breaks deep within a child when they are rejected by those meant to love them most, and that injustice was writ large on every little face I saw there in that horror,” Bell wrote later of her experience.
Over the next few months Bell and the other members of that mission trip felt a need to work in partnership with local Romanian believers to rescue abandoned children. RCE’s aim was always to encourage adoption into local Christian families.
“Philosophically, we are helping churches in Romania live out the gospel in their community and for their own people…helping Romanian families adopt,” Bell said. “It isn’t that we were against international adoption, but that was not our mission.”
Romania banned international adoptions in the early 2000s, but in the midst of an explosion of international adoptions in the mid-1990s, RCE met someone who would change the course of the organization.
When couples from Europe visited orphanages to meet children for adoption, workers in the state orphanages would hide the disabled children, Ovi said, so the children wouldn’t scare off potential adopters. As RCE learned about the children in the back rooms, they were particularly moved by a boy named Darius.
“He was … profoundly autistic, and about five years old when we first saw him,” Bell recalls. “He couldn’t walk, he screamed. It was the image of brokenness. His plight and the plight of the other children in those back rooms led us to focus on special needs kids.”
Ovi remembers the workers asking, “What chance will Darius have to live a normal life or for a family to pick him up?”
For RCE, the answer became clear. These abandoned children, hidden away in squalor and suffering, would be the focus of RCE’s ministry.
Provision, Prevention, Placement
According to their mission statement, “RCE is called to bring God’s love and provision to the poor, the orphan, the widow, and the stranger in Romania to the glory of God and the advancement of His Kingdom.” RCE still operates from a three-pronged approach that has been present from the beginning: provision, prevention, and placement.
Provision
RCE meets the practical needs of children they rescue by operating six recuperative group homes, a special education school, and an activities center and job centers for young adults who have matriculated out of the school, but are unable to live independently. They also provide counseling, speech and occupational therapy, summer camps, and ongoing love and care from a dedicated team.
Poverty Prevention
Recognizing that economic desperation prompted many families to abandon their children, RCE seeks to equip the most destitute families. This often begins with emergency relief like firewood or food, but also includes educational support and economic development with micro-loans to start businesses.
“RCE tries to get ahead of the problem and asks, ‘How can we prevent kids from being abandoned? How can we come alongside families living in extreme poverty and bring them emergency assistance or long-term help?’ The goal is to help families break the cycle of poverty, and to be able to help themselves, or even others.” Frerichs said.
Placement
RCE provides for the practical needs of abandoned children, and the organization is ultimately eager to see these children adopted into loving Christian families. Over 100 of RCE’s children, most of whom have some level of disability, have been adopted into local Christian families in the last 30 years. After adoption, the organization continues to offer long-term support through counseling and medical and financial assistance as needed.
One of the facets that makes RCE unique is the strength of its trans-Atlantic partnership.
“It’s Romanian-run, with just a little bit of help from their friends in America,” said Erin Frerichs, RCE’s director of development.
Bell served as RCE’s executive director until her retirement in the spring 2024, but from the beginning she understood the value of creating a Romanian-run ministry.
“From the very outset, it was indigenous. It was going to be run by Romanians,” Bell said. “It was Americans supporting the vision of Romanians, not Americans driving the vision.”
Early on Bell formed a strong connection with Romanian believers and was eager to support them living out justice and mercy in their community. She discovered a strong church in Romania, forged through years of persecution. Today RCE partners with 50 Romanian churches across denominations.
Ovi and Doina Martin of Arad, Romania, were among the first connections Bell made. Ovi has been general manager of RCE for 28 years, now managing a team of 100 employees who run RCE.
Doina was RCE’s first employee and was instrumental in bringing Ovi into the vision of “making mercy happen,” a phrase that has become RCE’s rallying cry. Doina’s work took her into the state orphanage, bringing supplies and an extra set of hands for the over 200 babies housed there. She convinced Ovi, then a driver for Arad’s mayor, to accompany her on one of her supply runs.
“I picked up one baby,” Ovi recalls. “And it clung to me.” But with each new baby he held, the one he had previously held cried for him. The moving experience led him to pray, “‘God, how can I help them?’ And in some way, that was the beginning,” he said.
To care for orphans with disabilities, RCE has built six recuperative group homes for children, and eventually young adults with disabilities. American partners, donors, and churches were eager to help, not just financially, but in special education and physical therapy resources and training for the staff.
The first home they named Darius House in honor of the boy who clarified RCE’s mission. When Darius House opened in 2000, RCE brought Darius and seven other children with disabilities to live there. In the years that followed, those seven children were all adopted into loving, Christian homes. Darius remained with RCE into his teens until he was reunited with his grandparents, who had spent years searching for him.
Darius House has been an example of countercultural, Christlike love ever since its construction. The prefab house, shipped from America, caused a stir among locals, recalls Ovi. Even Ovi had never seen drywall before. He said even the construction workers assembling the house marveled at such high-quality materials being used to build a house for orphans with disabilities.
Mercy Care and Community Integration
Several PCA churches partner with RCE, including McLean, Chehalem Valley Presbyterian Church, and Spring Cypress Presbyterian Church.
From the very beginning, RCE has worked in cooperation with the community and local governments, and the impact has been notable. RCE has garnered recommendations from both Romanian and U.S. ambassadors alike, and caught the attention of local government officials.
Rob Yancy is the senior pastor of Capital Presbyterian Fairfax, a daughter church of McLean. He has led multiple trips to Romania over the past decade. At a ribbon-cutting ceremony for one of the group homes he heard a conversation that particularly impressed him.
“I heard Romanian government officials say they were at a conference, and people were talking about how bleak the landscape was in Romania for these kinds of social services, and this government official said, ‘Yes, but there is a flower blossoming in Arad.’”
RCE has also had an impact in the education sector in Romania, establishing the nation’s first (and currently only) certified, licensed, special education private school. While the children in RCE’s care attend the Sunshine School, the school is also available for local families to enroll their children.
Parents have told Ovi that their children’s doctors are amazed at the children’s progress since attending the Sunshine School. Ovi says doctors began telling other parents, “If you want to help your child, go to the RCE.”
But the reception hasn’t been all rosy. Ovi has brought groups of children to parks and seen mothers remove their children. Ovi sees another part of his calling as educating the community against the prejudice toward people with disabilities.
“When we go to some place, everybody moves around, like [they] consider us a danger.” Ovi said, “We realize how much there is to educate. Now, step by step, this mentality is changing.”
Ovi considers integration with the community to be of vital importance, not only for the enrichment of the community, but for the children in RCE’s care, whom he tenderly calls “my kids.”
“Everything we do for our kids, we try to do for these abandoned disabled children,” he said. “Take them to the public market, take them to the tram, to the circus, to the puppet show, to the church, to the grocery everywhere, and teach them all kinds of things.”
RCE is now in its third decade, and so are the children who came in as infants and toddlers. While many have been adopted into loving homes, RCE continues to provide for those who remain.
“The provision aspect provides comprehensive care for young adults with severe special needs who will be in RCE’s care for life,” Frerichs said.
RCE has created several programs tailored to the level of ability and independence in these adults. This fall, the organization broke ground on a future jobs center. RCE has started several small businesses to employ those who are able to work semi-independently, making jam, running a thrift store, and creating recycled paper products. The new jobs center will bring these workers from three different job locations to one site where they can socialize and eat together, Frerichs said.
The jobs center is the first of several phases as the organization looks to the future. As RCE’s children move into adulthood, the organization is preparing to support them for the rest of their lives. Frerichs said the ministry plans to create long-term housing for adults with special needs.
“RCE is asking, ‘What does end of life care look like for people in RCE’s care?’ How can we treat them with the care and dignity they deserve as a human made in the image of God?’”
Longevity is one of the touchstones that makes RCE unique, according to Yancy, as well as its sustained level of excellence.
“It’s often difficult in mercy ministries in these types of situations to move forward with wisdom, but Ovi and his team really do a great job of … helping in a way that empowers, and provides dignity,” Yancy said. “I really haven’t seen a ministry that does it better than the way RCE does: helping without hurting and the level of excellence.”
Yancy is also excited to see a new generation of leadership stepping up. While Bell remains involved in an advisory role, she was thrilled to pass the baton of leadership to Frerichs.
Around the time of her retirement, Bell received what she considers a treasured retirement gift: a Facetime from Ovi from the home of Albert, a former orphan who blossomed under RCE’s care. Bell had first met Albert at a psychiatric orphanage.
“God’s people picked him up and put him in Darius House where he was loved and nurtured and fed and treated with dignity. He was adopted and came to know the Lord in that Christian family,” Bell said.
Albert graduated high school, got a job, purchased land, and built a home with RCE’s help. The evening of Ovi’s Facetime, he had invited his friends over for a pancake dinner.
“A boy who had once been considered ‘irrecoverable’ is living a normal life,” Bell said.
The miraculous transformation is one of the many ways RCE has seen that nothing is impossible.
“God is the one who changes their lives,” Ovi said. “I learned everything is possible that God allows to happen. All this is possible. Even if you don’t believe it, it’s possible with God.”
RCE will be exhibiting at the PCA General Assembly in 2025.
