Since the International Family Day has been accepted in Moldova officially, we’ve had the desire to do something on this day to share about godly families. But our resources are limited.
This year we asked our friends, whose business is making animations for kids, to help us do something for 50 families and their kids. And we were excited about this idea. Also, we appealed to a church that wants to develop a ministry to families to work with us on this project. This was our starting point. From the moment we decided to organize this event, we saw with our eyes how the “waters” parted, just as God parted the waters for the Israelites. After three planning meetings, we met another couple of Christians who shared the same heart for families. Meanwhile, a mission from the Orthodox Church asked to be part of the event as well. Because of the combined work of all the organizers, we had to change the location—the first one was too small.
Through this event we set out to celebrate the family in the way God intended it to be. We had several goals: encourage people to value investing in family relationships, establish new relationships with other families, invite people to a special meeting for married couples, and connect families more closely with God’s plan for marriage.
But May 14th, the day we were planning to have this event, brought us surprises. We were planning to hold the event outdoors, but the forecast a few days before said it would rain and rain hard. So we were forced to make some changes. These changes consumed me emotionally. All of the organizers were sad, but the burden of the decision was upon me. On May 12th, even though the sun was shining with no rain in sight, we made the decision to change the event to May 20th. Before we changed the event, I had been praying for no rain; after we made the change, I was praying it would rain so we would be justified in our decision! Thousands of people were following us on Facebook, and some of the comments and dissatisfaction had begun to affect me. But then we had to change the day again because our government designated May 20th a labor day. Many families had to work on that day. So I changed the day again to May 28th. 
Two things kept me going on the way: looking to God and what He wanted, and working with our team of organizers.
On May 28th we had a stable audience of 300-350 adults and their kids and a flood of 2,000 people coming and going. Because it was Sunday, we had a lot of people who do not attend a church. We managed to follow up with many of them, and some of them signed up to come to our next event.
The Day of the Family made us experience lots of emotions, both positive and negative. After we talked about the day, we made an evaluation and are moving forward with the desire to tell as many people as possible about God’s plan for marriage as well as for each individual. From the feedback we received, we can see that couples like coming to these meetings and hearing us share about biblical families. And we rejoice that we have the opportunity to do so!
