Ludwell Orthodox Fellowship co-founder Fr. John Whiteford and his matushka visited Moldova in the summer of 2022. We’re highlighting his travel series at our Southern Orthodox site because Moldova is a highly agricultural and intensely hospitable society – two cultural norms Dixie knows a thing or two about … or at least used to. As Father commented previously about his visit to this distinctly “Orthodox agrarian society,” he “found many things that we have been losing in the South and many things we ought to try to emulate.”
By Fr. John Whiteford
Next month, it will have been a year since my wife and I traveled to Moldova and Romania. I have started to write about this experience countless times since then, but I think what has kept me from getting very far into it has been a fear of my words failing to do it justice. We have a Moldovan woman in our parish (Elena), and she and her husband (Constantine) invited us to take this trip. Not being ones to turn down an opportunity to travel to an Orthodox country, we took them up on it. But while I was expecting to have an enjoyable trip, and to see beautiful churches and monasteries, I really did not expect it to be as moving of an experience as it proved to be.
My experience of the Orthodox Church has primarily been in the context of the Russian tradition, but I have also had a lot of contact with both Greeks, Serbs, and Arabs, and so have some idea of the differences and particular customs found in those traditions. My knowledge of the Romanian speaking expressions of the Faith have been a lot more limited prior to this trip. The Romanian speaking people descend from Roman colonists that settled in the region in the days of the Roman Empire. What now comprises the contemporary nations of Romania and Moldova were once divided into three principalities:
Transylvania, Wallachia, and Moldova. What was once the principality of Moldova under St. Stephen the Great covers the contemporary nation of Moldova, part of Romania, and parts of Ukraine. So even though we visited Romania, the part of Romania we visited was the Moldovan part of Romania.
We flew out of Houston on the evening of Sunday, August 7th, but our trip nearly ended before it began. Elena was very far into her pregnancy, and we timed the trip as we did, because she wanted to take us there while she could still physically do it, but before she would be contending with a newborn. We flew via Turkish Airlines, and Elena had called beforehand to make sure that her pregnancy was not going to be a problem with flying, and was told by their customer service that it would not be, but as we were checking in for the flight, an agent asked her about how far along she was. When she answered, she was told that she needed a letter from her doctor saying that it was OK for her to travel. Getting such a letter on a Sunday night is not usually an easy thing to pull off. She told my wife and I to go ahead to the gate, and she argued with the agent further, and tried to provide something that she hoped would work, but finally, it became clear that she was not going to be able to fly, but she told the rest of us to go ahead with the flight, and she would rebook her flight once she had a doctor’s note in hand.
From left to right: St. Stephen the Great of Moldova, with a map of the principality of Moldova of his time and depictions of some of the many monasteries he established; a pro-family painting on the wall of a restaurant where Fr. John & Matushka Patricia had lunch; and the ledge overlooking the valley below at the Orheiul Vechi Cave Monastery.
Constantine (who is a Cherokee from Oklahoma) speaks only a smattering of Romanian, but we were also travelling with their nine year old daughter Fabi, who does speak Romanian, and so for our first day, she was our translator.
We arrived in Istanbul (Constantinople) on Monday afternoon, and arrived in the capital of Moldova (Chișinău) that night.
Elena’s travel problems threw a monkey wrench in some of our plans, but we spent most of the first day resting from the trip, but did go out to get breakfast, and then lunch, by going around on foot. Chișinău is a beautiful city, with many Churches, and so we could hear the church bells sounding the times for the various services during the day.
Moldova is a very poor country, but I saw no homeless people in their largest city. When I have traveled to Moscow, I encountered a lot of beggars on the streets. And for that matter, I encounter of lot of beggars on the streets of Houston too. But in this country, I kept running into people that I thought were approaching me to ask for money, and instead, they were asking for a blessing. In fact, later on in our trip we had to go back to the airport to get some paperwork for the rental car we were using (in order to take it across the border to Romania later), and while I was standing around waiting, a man approached me that I again thought was going to ask for money, and instead, he asked for a blessing and then gave me 75 Moldovan leu (which adds up to a bit less than four dollars) and asked me to pray for him.
What I came to understand was that the reason why there were no homeless people or beggars in Moldova, despite it being the poorest country I have ever visited, is because Moldovans are a deeply religious people, with a strong sense of honor, strong families, and a strong sense of hospitality. And when you live in a country like that, you don’t have many people who fall through the cracks, and have no one to turn to for help except for random strangers on the street.
I believe Elena was able to join us on Tuesday night. We were staying in an apartment owned by family friends, and that evening, while we were waiting for Elena’s return, we were invited over to a neighbor’s apartment for “coffee,” but Constantine informed us that this would mean a late evening that would involve a lot more than coffee. We also had an interesting time carrying on a conversation that Fabi translated for at first, but she lost interest, and then we were often using Google Translate to bridge the gaps from there. We also got our first taste of Moldovan hospitality. These people obviously live in a city, but I got the sense that they were not far removed from a more rural lifestyle and had that kind of warmth.
