Richard and Jennifer Sanders are missionaries who serve in Moldova.
They met at Moody Bible Institute in Colorado. 
A 3-year stint as a bi-vocational youth minister showed Richard that being a pastor was not his calling. 
He went to Israel at 16 years old. Remembering the trip helped him redirect his focus to the mission field. So, it was off to Columbia International University in Columbia for a degree in Leadership and Discipleship.
While at CIU, Sanders and his wife attended Oakwood Baptist Church in Lexington. 
Their pastor took a short-term mission trip to Moldova and came back inspired about possibilities there. 
The next year Richard and Jen went. The trip showed them they needed to be missionaries and plant churches there. Today, they serve as mentors and encouragers for church planting missionaries in Romania.
There are certainly challenges. Moldova is a Christian Orthodox country with a much different culture from ours. 
They see salvation as dependent on doing enough good works, and that people are unworthy of salvation. Evangelical church planters struggle with the Moldovan worship style and people not wanting to leave orthodoxy. 
The gospel is not taught, so most do not relate to it. That presents another obstacle. The attitude there is, “to be Moldovan is to be Orthodox.” 
That means the Sanders must make some disciples before they can effectively plant a church.
The good news is that the people are communal, loving and open. They love America. But they still laugh at foreigners when they mess up. 
Richard recalled an awkward moment that happened in their first month. 
They had been invited to a meeting with local pastors. They decided to bring along a chocolate cake. 
However, they hadn’t yet mastered the language. The cake they thought was chocolate turned out to be “drunk prune cake” filled with liquor. It didn’t go over well with non-drinking pastors. But they were forgiven.
Looking to the future, they are continuing to build relationships with more disciples. Sounds mighty good to me.
 Do you have a ministry that you want to talk about? Contact me by phone at 803-957-5755 or email at Chuck.lexchron@gmail.com