A letter from Mary Ferris in Romania
June 12, 2008
Still waters run deep
Catalin Ioanita has just finished a college degree in accounting. When he was 18, the Department of Child Protection wanted him to work in a cement factory.
I have often used this phrase to describe Catalin Ioanita. I attended his wedding yesterday and was impressed by how much this young man has been able to stay the course. NOROC can be very proud of our part in helping this young man, especially the Sunday school class at First Central Presbyterian Church, Abilene, Texas, which has supported him.
I first met Catalin when he was 18 and the Department of Child Protection was trying to kick him out of the boy’s home to work in a cement factory. He was chosen for the cement factory because he was big and strong. He cried, literally, and said they had called him lazy just because he wanted to go to high school. (We at NOROC did not know then about the law that says children in the system have the right to continue school as long as they wish.) Not knowing this, we paid for him to live in the boarding school. When the Department of Child Protection opened the social apartments, they needed high school boys to live there, so they invited Catalin back to the apartments. He agreed, because the apartments were a lot nicer than the boarding school rooms. When the apartments began to overflow, they tried to forcibly “reintegrate” him into his village in the Delta, so once again we took him back under our care.
While he was in high school, he met his bride, Marianna, and neither of them ever had eyes for anyone else after that. Mariana is a wonderful, loyal, young woman whose home is in Tulcea.
Catalin and Mariana’s first dance as a married couple.
When it was time for Catalin to go to the university to study accounting and marketing he received a full scholarship, including room and board. Now, of course, the Department of Child Protection was proud of him. They took over the responsibility of administering the scholarship and they never gave him one extra penny. He received fifty dollars a month for food, but had to pay 20 dollars to come to Tulcea every month to turn in the receipts for the food.
NOROC gave him a scholarship for spending money. Catalin graduated last year. He worked several jobs until he got the job he has now as a comptroller for a large firm in Tulcea. He wants to work in a bank and I have no doubt he will get this chance soon. Unlike other young people, he wants to stay in Tulcea because his wife and her family are there.
Catalin rarely smiles, but he was so happy at his wedding that he never stopped laughing and smiling. I realized that Catalin had done everything in the right order: education, job, marriage. Catalin is a man of very, very few words, but Marianna has helped him tremendously. We wish him a “house of stone,” the traditional Romanian wish for newlyweds.
In Christ’s name.
Mary Ferris
The 2008 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 163
