07 Feb 2009, Posted by justin in the category, 0 Comments

The Poor, The Posh and The Perplexed

To give you a bit of an overview on Moldova’s situation, we thought we’d dedicate this entry to reflecting on our observations of this interesting country’s culture…

As expected, Moldova is significantly poorer than the rest of Europe, and the ramifications of this are enormous. Whilst a stroll down the main street, ‘Stefan Cel Mare’, or a glimpse at various parks or malls such as the newly constructed ‘Mall Dova’ might suggest otherwise, it doesn’t take long to realise that by and large, there are many great needs. The infrastructure of roads, the health system, public transport, along with the general standard of living all contribute to this status of being ‘poor’…and we haven’t mentioned the villages yet! On the positive side, such needs lend themselves to opportunities, as The Poor have a need for hope beyond financial measures, and we have something to offer there. However it also presents challenges, as we need to somehow cross a massive socio-cultural gap to relate to such people. There’s also a risk of dependence, where people with great needs may simply seek the hope we can lead them to with ulterior motives; they may purely seek a channel of hope which can meet their desperate physical needs. Whilst this presents opportunities, there is a risk of insincerity and distorted belief.

On the other hand, like most cities, there are a hand-full of The Posh, who live vastly different lives in the same country. We’ve seen dozens of Mercedes, modern housing, excessively expensive clothing and so on in our short time here. This adds a totally different complexity, where we need to somehow communicate a need for hope, when to be honest, hope is probably the last thing on their minds. From what we’ve gathered, the disparity between The Poor and The Posh seems to be widening as time goes by, and like many Australians, there’s a real difficulty in communicating the message we have for them.

So this leaves us as The Perplexed! We have some brilliant people to work alongside with here, who have a wealth of experience and understand the culture well. But in thinking about these differences, we realise there are many barriers which need to be crossed -missiologicaly, urban areas are said to be some of the most challenging, and we’re now beginning to see why…thank goodness we’ll also be working in the villages!

There’s a few things you may like to pray about.