Back in 1992, David Percy took a short sabbatical from his work as Pastor of Newbold Baptist Church, in Rochdale. A part of his leave he went to Romania on behalf of a British based childcare agency, to perform a study of the feasibility of beginning a childcare work in Romania. Whilst there he witnessed the appalling conditions in which many people lived and the daily fight for existence. He recalls the horror on his arrival at Bucharest Airport, having been warned how to deal with the nuisance of begging children he was confronted by a small boy wanting to sell him some dog eared post cards. Having been counseled to hold up his hand, smile politely and firmly resist, the sound echoed in his ears as the taxi pulled away, "please mister, I very hungry". Fortunately, just a short time later, he met that boy again and free from counseling shared a cup of coffee and a sandwich with him and something of the Agape love of God. 

Whilst in Romania on that first visit, he befriended the family of a Pastor living in Vaslui, in the eastern part of Romania. The Pastor Dinu Pop and his wife Natalia lived with their toddler son Virgil and their baby daughter Emma in a tiny house, loaned to them by a friend, since they had nothing of their own. Their plight was desperate. As he left their temporary home, he resolved to try to raise the $2000 needed to buy a house for them. Today many foreigners and friends stay at the Pop's house, which is in Iasi, (Yash), a town further North where they minister in the local Baptist Church. 

For a couple of years after that first visit, people began to join in going to Romania, mainly with aid lorries, but also gently taking every opportunity to share the gospel. At first the aid was mainly food and clothes, much needed as Romania emerged from the darkness, which many remember with horror depicted on our television screens. As more people joined and the needs and helps began to change the name, "Project Agape", was registered in order to give charitable status and credibility to the people group of people who were involved. The aid trucks these days contain machines and sophisticated equipment and computers alongside the more traditional helps. The work in Iasi has reached out further into Osoi where recently a huge log playground was installed in a little village called Osoi, just east of Iasi on the Ukraine Moldovan border. The playground stands alongside a new Church and community centre, planted and built under Dinu Pop's Pastoral oversight and now Pastored by a young family man, who took on the task without payment in order to serve the Lord. 

Sorin and Genuta, a young Romanian couple, looking out of their window a number of years ago, saw three young teenage girls playing on a blanket on the ground. Since they stayed for such a long time, Genuta went to chat with them and discover who they were. The girls were from the local orphanage. They were fourteen years old and had qualified at that age to leave the orphanage with nowhere to go, no life skills, no relatives and nothing to eat, nor money nor knowledge about where to obtain food. Genuta and Sorin began to collect these girls into an organization which they have founded, called, Shelter of Care, where these girls and the many more that have since followed, are given a safe home where they can continue to grow and be taught the ordinary skills necessary to live in their Romanian culture. 

Teams of people, many of them young, now travel to Romania with Project Agape, to lead children's clubs in Osoi and holiday camp with the girls from Shelter of Care, and to share Bible Teachings with Pastors from Churches in fellowship with Dinu. 

More recently, Project Agape has had the privilege of working with street children and families in Arad in the west of Romania. This is in conjunction with Networks, a Romanian charity headed up by Lee Saville, an Englishman, called by God to work and live in Romania. Amongst all of the desperate struggle for life, progress is being made and children's computer clubs are a huge resource of fun and education. The need amongst Pastors and workers to have a computer system to assist them in their work is ever increasing. Money is still needed for the provision of the most basic of every day requirements amongst some of the poorest people on the planet. 

Compucycle is a local Rochdale charity who supply computers to the third world, in particular to those communities and organisations that will benefit from them the most and provides funds for the relief work of Project Agape in Romania and elsewhere from the sale of refurbished computers in the UK.

---

Home | About Us | Greeting Cards | Links | Contact