By Ronela and Mircea Cristian, Romania
‘Things can change in the blink of an eye’ This fact has become a reality in 2020 as the global pandemic reached Romania and impacted us all. The heavy restrictions imposed on travel and social meetings resulted in all visits to prisons being cancelled. This had a sudden impact on our well-established ministry among many prisons across the nation. We prayed and asked the Lord what we should do.
We looked at what we could offer online and quickly became familiar with Zoom as a way to keep in touch, both as a team and also with our many contacts behind bars. In fact, the prison authorities were also impacted by the loss of outside visits and wrote to Rock of Ages asking if we could run online courses for the inmates!
We reacted as quickly as we could and set up Zoom group sessions in prisons that had internet facilities. We also received requests from prisons with whom we had no previous links. They were very keen for us to provide courses online. Some asked if we could provide laptops as not all prisons had the technology.