Gina Rogers

Testimonial
Growing up, I didn’t feel loved and accepted by my parents and I started seeking this from friends. I grew up in an Orthodox family, where I know there was a God but I didn’t know about a relationship with God through Jesus Christ. The Romanian Orthodox Church is very similar to the Greek Orthodox Church. It’s a church full of traditions and rituals which are supposed to lead someone to Christ. These things should symbolize the truth but instead they cover the truth. Many times you feel that the focus is on traditions rather then God. The Orthodox people believe in God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit but also worship saints like John, Peter, Mary (Jesus’ mother). If you are baptized, married and buried in the Orthodox Church, that makes you an Orthodox. Your salvation is based on good deeds. After you die, your good works will be weighed and if they are heavier that the bad works, you are saved! But you never know the end result in this life. In the Romanian culture it is very common for children to be raised by grandparents, so that the parents can work to provide enough money. So, I spent a lot of time with my mom’s parents. My grandmother’s job at the time was the Orthodox Priest’s assistant. I was in church every day and I was the Priest’s buddy. He let me go in the altar (the Holy of Holies place) – where only men are allowed to go. My dad was cold with all of us, and I thought then that he doesn’t love me. I tried hard to get his approval and to measure up to my mom. In High School I had one very close girlfriend. We even went to the same college and were roommates. By the end of the first year of college she ended our friendship. I was devastated. Loosing her made me feel like I had lost he whole world. There was nobody that I could share my thoughts and feelings with. During this time I was also involved in a bad relationship with a guy. My grades began to drop and I started loosing all hope. I was afraid and lonely. During my spring break in 1994, I went to visit my grandmother, whom I considered to be like my mother. I then went home to see my parents and my brother. The evening before Easter I went downtown with my brother and some friends of his. As I was talking to one of them, he invited me to a new church that he was going to. I argued with him saying that the only true church is the Orthodox Church. We had been told that churches like his were basically a cult where they would drug you with pills to believe what they want you to believe, and turn off the lights and abuse you I learned later that this was communist propaganda. My brother finally convinced me to go and see what it was like. So the next day, on Easter Sunday, I went to the evening service which was a program for teens and children. As I walked in, a group of children were singing about Jesus coming back and the hope that they had. It felt like a corner of heaven. The atmosphere of peace and hope was something I’ve always wanted and yet didn’t know where to find it. It was a small church, and they asked me to sit up front. A man stood up and started his message by saying, “Maybe you have come here today thinking that your life is getting worse and worse and you don’t know who you are or maybe you came here today thinking that if you lost a person, you have lost the whole world. I thought to myself then, “Did I meet this person before? How does he know me?” Then he continued, “I want to tell you something, if you have a certain person then you have the whole world. That person is Jesus Christ. And he read 1 John 5:12, where it says, “He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son does not have life”. “He is talking about me”, I thought, “because I don’t have life”. I felt dead inside because of my best friend having left. This was the first time I had heard that Jesus died for my sins and that I needed to receive Him in my heart to be my Lord and Savior. When I was asked if I wanted to receive Jesus, I didn’t know what that meant. He explained to me that I need to invite Him in my heart to forgive my sins and to give me eternal life. So that man prayed with me and I repeated after him the salvation prayer. It was on Easter day, (May 1, 1994), that I received Jesus in my heart as my personal Savior and Lord. Immediately, I felt this joy and peace. I felt forgiven and full of hope. I told my brother, “I have life! I have life!” He told me that his girlfriend (now his wife) and he had received Jesus too. That day, my brother and I became best friends. Before that, my brother and I fought like cats and dogs. So, this was the first change that my parents saw and they asked what happened. We told them that we had become “repenters”. The biggest sin for an Orthodox person is to leave his/her church. So my parents began to worry and they warned us not to go to this new church anymore. They even took away our Bible. They didn’t let us use the word, “God” anymore. My dad secretly followed us to our new church and in the middle of singing he said, “Florin and Gina, come out now”! I was always afraid of my dad…but this time, I had peace in my heart and I even told him to wait until I finished the song. My parents also went to the high priest to ask his opinion because we chose to still attend our new church against our parent’s wishes. The priest told them that Florin and I were possessed and that they needed to kick us out of their home. So they did. I took my brother with me to live in the dorm with me at school 60 miles away. We prayed, fasted and sang praise songs together. When summer break arrived, my parents sent us to different sets of grandparents in order to separate us. They thought that if we were separated from each other and church, then we might forget about this Jesus stuff and give up. My grandmother, whom I was sent to be with, was informed about our “new life” and she took me back to her church. It was there that I refused to bow down and kiss the icons, which is a typical act of worship. Icons are painted pictures of Jesus, or saints or different events like Jesus’ death on the Cross or the baptism of Jesus. The Orthodox Church would say that “icons teach us all we need to know”. Icons are indispensable to the Orthodox understanding of Christian identity. They are considered holy and can even bring miracles. So, she told me that if I refused to worship, she would take me to the priest. Now, you never contradict a priest in Romania. He is the only way to God through the Orthodox Church, plus he is holy. He came to me and said, “Gina, why don/t you participate anymore in our service?” I replied, I can’t anymore because I don’t want to worship idols. He said, “What did they tell you at that church? Did they give you pills to make you believe what they want? What kind of church is that with no icons?” He was beginning to get mad. I opened his huge Bible from the table and turned to Exodus 20:5. I read where it says, “You should not worship idols.” I shared that when I bow down and kiss the icons. It’s like worshipping idols. Then, he said, “Let me ask you something. If your mother died today, wouldn’t you want to have a picture of her to remember her by?” I said, “Yes, of course I would like to have a picture of her, but Jesus is not dead. He is alive and He lives in me and I worship him in spirit and truth”! He slammed the Bible shut and left without saying anything else. So, I took my little Bible and went outside to be alone. I was thinking that I needed to be worried or afraid, but I had this unusual peace in my heart. I opened to Matthew 10:18-20 and read ”On My account you will be brought before governors and kings as witnesses to them and to the Gentiles. But when they arrest you, do not worry about what to say or how to say it. At that time you will be given what to say. For it will not be you speaking, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you.” Even though I wasn’t arrested, under Communism, many Christians were arrested for just being believers and they were tortured and killed. They were persecuted in schools, at work and even by their neighbors and family members. After I read these verses, I realized that the Bible is true today just like it was 2000 years ago. I wanted to read the Bible and know more about what God had to say to me. My parents had hoped to destroy my faith by sending me to my grandmother, but I actually went home feeling stronger. So, actually, my parents helped me more than they realized. The same was true with my brother. When I arrived back in my dorm room, I prayed for one single Christian that would be a friend and teach me more about God. God led me not to just one Christian but to an entire group of Christian students during their prayer time. They were part of Campus Crusade for Christ. The minute that I saw them, I knew that this is where I want to be. I learned how to pray, how to study my Bible and how to share my faith with others. In 1997, I was accepted on staff with CCC and worked on Bill’s team. Two years later, we married. We now have two little boys and we’re still on staff with CCC. As for my family, my brother Florin is now a Baptist pastor in Bucharest and together with his wife, Cristina, they have two little boys. Eight years after I became a Christian, I had the privilege of helping to lead my mom to Christ. Nine years later, my grandmother came to saving faith with Bill and me. Ten years later, when my father visited us here in Columbia, he, too, surrendered his life to Christ. God had truly been faithful in not only my life, but my family’s life as well. He is faithful. The desire for friendship, love and acceptance that I once craved so much has now been truly satisfied in and through Him.