After 42 years of Communist rule, the people of Romania overthrew dictator Nicolae Ceausescu in 1989. There was tremendous hope for the future after a courageous and costly revolution. As Luke Society director Dr. Augustin Batis tells it, people were hugging in the streets. But we learned that to be free doesn't mean you'll have everything you want. Instead of being better off, many people are worse off.
People are very disappointed.
They've lost their hope. The first elections were marred by violence, and the economy quickly crumbled in the early 1990s with inflation making basic goods unaffordable to the average family. The cost of bread nearly doubled overnight with no corresponding increase in wages. The optimism that once permeated the country has completely disappeared in the last decade. Augustin and the Luke Society in Romania are trying to restore a greater hope to the people of Pitesti, a city of 300,000 with less than 1,000 evangelical Christians.