Portrait of a Roma Bible Club Leader: Vasilita Cobzaru, Republic of Moldova

 “She looked so happy. That’s how I saw her. Happy to meet with the children,” a coworker described Vasilita Cobzaru. 

It is fitting, then, that Mrs. Cobzaru is the first person profiled in this series on Roma and Sinti children’s teachers. 

In many ways, Vasilita Cobzaru is a typical Roma woman from the Republic of Moldova. Like many other Moldovans, she grew up in a village with unpaved streets and no running water. Like many other Roma, her first language (Usari Romani) was not the language used in the village school. Still, Vasilita got a basic education there in everyday math, reading, and writing—in the Cyrillic alphabet. At that time Moldova was part of the Soviet Union and instruction was in Russian.

Also, very typically, Vasilita married a boy from the same village and had four children more or less one right after another (photo:  Vasilita hand-sewing skirts for her young daughters). This, however, is where Vasilita’s story begins to differ. 

Her husband’s father was the first believer in this village. Night after night people would gather at his home to hear Bible stories and to sing Christian songs together. Many of those people repented, believed in Jesus, and were baptized. Vasilita and her husband Anatolie (Nicanor) were among those people. 

(Nicanor with two of his children and his father. You can hear Vasilita’s father-in-law tell his own story here How the church in Vulcanestibegan - YouTube, Romanian with English translation.)

“Twenty years ago when I became a believer, I wanted to do as much as I could to teach children about God,” Vasilita recalled. She mentioned the name of adults, now newly born-again. “ I put the small seed in their hearts.” (Vasilita, far left, with one of her children at an outdoor service, 2000.) 

For some of them, it took a long time for that seed to sprout. Vasilita and her husband also had ups and downs in their faith journey. At times they found it tempting to make money-related choices that would not exactly honor their Lord.  They came through those rough times with a renewed commitment to their Savior and their local church, Bethlehem Baptist. In an outpouring of love for Jesus, in 2020 Vasilita spontaneously organized a children’s choir in the church. 

Meanwhile, a Sinti pastor in Germany, Brother Kennedy Laubing, had felt led to invest in Roma in Moldova. He discussed different possibilities with Petru Ciochina, the pastor of Bethlehem Baptist. They agreed that an afterschool tutoring program would be very helpful. Would Vasilita be willing to turn her choir into a children’s club? Yes, she would. 

Would she be willing to add tutoring, perhaps basic literacy? Vasilita did not feel comfortable doing that. She learned to read and write in Cyrillic. Now the village school uses the Latin alphabet and teaches in Romanian. Vasilita can read in both alphabets but did not consider herself prepared to teach reading like that. 

Okay, then would Vasilita be willing to add a Davar: Bridging to Literacy game to each Bible club meeting? These fun, simple games teach and practice skills that we all need to succeed in school. Yes, Vasilita would definitely be willing to do this. Especially if her friend Alina Molla would coach her in leading these games.

Alina Molla is an experienced educator from Romania. She came to Vasilita’s village several times over a span of nearly ten years as part of small volunteer teams. Local believers like Vasilita and her friend Katea (both in photo at left) served side-by-side with these volunteers to share Bible lessons in Usari Romani, lead praise songs in that language, and prepare dramatized Bible stories. 

A couple of years earlier Katea  and a young man from the village had also volunteered to start a children’s club using Davar: Bridging to Literacy games. Alina, who had helped develop Davar, came to their first meeting to show them a few games.  The young man found the club too much to continue on top of his other responsibilities. Katea, who is legally blind, could not continue the club by herself. 

Katea was, however, as eager as Vasilita to help the children in the village. Together they faithfully led this new year-long children’s program. Alina met with them every week online to pray together, discuss the upcoming lessons together, and go through the Davar activities for week. 

This new children’s club began meeting several times a week in an activity room at the village school. The children responded positively--so positively that the school director became angry. More children came to this children’s program than came to school. Why did they come to the club and not to school, he wanted to know. 

Vasilita told him the club was from God. “God does that, that’s why they come.” 

A usual session consisted of prayer, the Bible story, and the games and Biblical truths Vasilita and Catea had discussed over the phone with Alina. In the first few meetings, Vasilita read the

Bible story from a children’s Bible in Romanian. She soon decided it worked better to tell the story in her own words. 

“Telling the Bible story in your own words makes it more interesting,” Vasilita noted. Since her own words were in Ursari Romani, it also made it easier for all the children, even the very youngest ones, to understand the stories and lessons.

Vasilita wisely used the games as extra motivation for the children to listen to the Bible stories.

“Listen to the story first,” Vasilita would tell them. “Then we get to play a game.”

The children really enjoyed the Davar games. They had no idea they were practicing school skills while they played. Everyone also liked acting out Bible stories. The children’s club did this at Christmas, acting out the story of Jesus’ birth. 

As much as Vasilita enjoyed working with the children, at the end of the school year she felt led to focus on outreach to women. During the Pandemic, the church had moved their weekly women’s meeting from face-to-face to online. God really worked through this. Many people from the village go abroad to earn a living. The online Bible studies provided a way to stay connected, even when people were spread from Siberia in the east to the coast of Holland in the west. The pastor’s wife had started the face-to-face meetings. Sometimes she led the online Bible lessons, sometimes the pastor did, and Alina was also invited to do a few. At the end of the school year, Vasilita asked Alina join her in starting an additional online women’s group designed for women who are not yet Christians. Alina leads these Bible lessons, choosing topics that the women request. The women then go on to sing and pray together for an additional hour . . . or two. 

Vasilita Cobzaru, a typical Roma woman, understands how to reach other Roma, whether they are children in her village or women scattered across Eurasia. She uses songs, prayer, and Biblical truth anchored in stories that are told rather than read. Most importantly, she sees God working through community. She led the children’s Bible club in the context of community—Catea in Moldova, Alina from Romania, Brother Laubing in Germany, and many others who prayed with and for her. Vasilita continues to organize online women’s gatherings in community with others to foster community among others.

This community is especially precious to Vasilita since she and her husband, like so many other Roma, have now gone abroad to work. She still looks happy, happy to plant seeds of faith and to join in Christian community wherever her Lord leads.

 

 

(Photo: a very young guest visits Vasilita and one of her daughters 
at their temporary home in the Netherlands.)

 

by M. VanRheenen

 

 

 

One-two-three Clap!

 Rhythm--clapping, tapping, stomping--did you know all that fun lays the foundation for doing math? I sure didn't. My friend Marleen Schönthaler, the educator behind most of Davar: Bridging to Literacy, had put rhythm games like
Repeat the Rhythm into Davar Start Games. I thought those games just had something to do with listening and concentrating. 

They do. But they do even more. When you repeat a clear rhythm, you are unconsciously counting. Kids who have never been taught to count can still accurately follow a rhythm like this one:  clap, clap-clap, pause, clap, or even far more complicated ones. This calls for a sense of how many, for a sense of--you guessed it--numbers. It is math preparation.

So while these kids are clearly having fun, if they were following a set pattern they would also be practicing math skills. 

Much more fun than drills like multiplication tables. Though there are Davar games that help with that, too . . . .