Special Messages

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Why Romania?

People ask me all the time, "Why Romania?" "Why did you go to Romania to be a missionary?" The honest truth is, I didn't pick Romania, Romania picked me! I was serving the Lord in Seville, Spain with Youth With A Mission (YWAM) and one day, a close friend of mine asked if I would like to join their team on a two week outreach to Bucharest, Romania. I prayed, asked the Lord if I could go and in less than one week I was on a plane to Romania.

I was a emotional wreck after the two week trip. I was glad for the experience and I promised the Lord I would pray for the many children that touched my heart...from where I was at, in SPAIN! However, I couldn't get them out of my heart, I couldn't get them out of my mind! These images of children tied to their cribs with faces of despair caused me to seek the Lord on His WILL for my life in Romania. I was never the same...

I began to seek the Lord for direction and for a WORD from Him that would personally show me I was to move from Seville, Spain where I had been serving for the last three years to a country that had been communist for the last 44 years until the fall of Communism in 1989.

I would need to learn a new language and culture and on top of all these new changes, I would be going alone. I knew what it was like to join a team in a foreign country. However, I had no idea what it would be to be in a new country by myself!

The Lord gave me Isaiah 58:10 & 11 in three different and profound ways:

"...and if you give yourself to the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then shall your light shine in the darkness, and your darkness as the noonday.

And the Lord shall guide you always, and satisfy your soul in drought, He will strengthen your bones; and you will be like a well-watered garden, and like a spring of water, whose waters never fail.

The Lord was speaking loud and clear to my heart and sharing that there would be fruit, much fruit that would come forth from my life if I would move to Romania and simply be a "baby hugger!"

I didn't have a lot of detail instructions from the Lord, but if any of you who have served the Lord for any length of time, you know that He doesn't always give all the details out at once. Then it wouldn't be stepping out in faith, now would it?

I moved to Romania in 1994 with two large suitcases and very little confidence that I was the right girl for the job but the Lord's grace is sufficient and His strength is made perfect in weakness. (II Corinthians 12:9)

I was so amazed by the inner peace I had in my move to Romania and even though I had no idea what the next ten years was going to reveal and entail, I had the Lord and His promise that He was going to guide me always and He would bring forth fruit if I would be obedient to His call. The more amazing thing was that I wasn't even afraid to be there by myself. It was as if the Lord Jesus was right by my side with every step I took.

ROCK Ministries (Romania Outreach to Christ's Kids) came into fruition three years later from the time I moved to Romania. I had discovered in those three years that most of the children in the orphanages and state-run hospitals were not orphaned but abandoned. They had parents but their parents were either too poor to care for their own children or they had the convenience of leaving their children in a state-run institution because this is how it's been for the last 25 years while Nicolae Ceacescu was their dictator. The people of Romania were using the system as a form of "day care" but worse than that, they were not even coming to visit their children for months! The law in Romania kept a child from being placed on an "abandonment" list for adoption if a parent or relative came to visit the child within a six month period. This law has been used to keep children from being placed in permanent homes.

In 1998, I visited a state-run hospital and this is when the Lord truly moved in my heart to get these babies out of the institutions into a family setting, even if it was to be one child at a time. This was His purpose for my life.

The babies were being bathed only once a week and their diapers changed twice a day. The stench was so horrific because of the lack of care.

I have seen the Lord move in miraculous ways. In ways that only He can get the glory for all that He's done because it was beyond human effort. It was supernatural...His sovereign power.

ROCK Ministries has been approved by the Romanian government to have a foster care and family assistance program in the city of Bucharest as well as being an "emergency" intervention at a state-run hospital for abandoned babies. We also have permission to teach the gospel at a state-run orphanage as well!

We have been blessed to see many of our children adopted by many of the team members that come and serve on an outreach team. The person has no intention to adopt but the Lord begins to put a special love in the volunteers heart and the next thing you know, they're planning to adopt the child they fell in love with on their outreach!

Unfortunately, at the present time, International adoptions are closed but we pray they will be opened once again as there are so many children that need to be in permanent homes. In the meantime, ROCK Ministries is placing these abandoned children in Christian foster care homes in Bucharest, Romania. ROCK Ministries has three well trained social workers that work with the families who are loving and nurturing our babies!

Through the many trials and deaths of many of the sick babies we have loved and nurtured, I can say without a doubt, the Lord's Grace is sufficient and His strength is made perfect in weakness. He has shown me His sovereign power and His precious love through these abandoned babies. He says in His word, "when you have done it unto the least of these, you have done it unto me." I have loved on and kissed the face of God through these babies in Romania!

I will never be the same...

In His Grip of Grace,

Nannette Gonzalez
President, Co-founder
ROCK Ministries

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