"With God, nothing shall be impossible!"

Our thanks go to UFM Worldwide for allowing Global Connections to share this article, which originally appeared on the UFM Worldwide website. This article is drawn from an interview with UFM Mission Partner Maureen Wise, conducted during the filming of a documentary marking the 20th Anniversary of the Casa Mea project in Moldova. You can watch the Casa Mea film here.

As Maureen Wise looks back over more than two decades of Casa Mea’s work in Moldova, what overwhelms her is not strategy or success, but wonder: “A sense of wonder at what God has done bordering on astonishment”, she says. From beginnings so small they could easily have been overlooked but God has built something far larger than she ever imagined.

Those beginnings were almost accidental. Walking through the streets of Oradea in Romania, Maureen quite literally bumped into one of her former students, Veronica. Out of hundreds she had taught over the years, this meeting was pure coincidence. Veronica, from Moldova, was back in Romania briefly and, during a long conversation, made a simple comment: “You should come to Moldova.”

They parted ways, but Maureen couldn’t shake off the words. At the time, she was reading John chapter 10, reflecting on Jesus as the Good Shepherd who leads his sheep, and whose voice they recognise. “I knew his voice,” she says. Months later, she found herself on a plane to Moldova – an almost empty aircraft carrying just twelve passengers.

"The joke at the time, she recalls, was that only mafia and missionaries went to Moldova."

What she found was a country in deep distress. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Moldova entered economic freefall. Power cuts were constant, food and basic supplies scarce, savings wiped out overnight. Institutions housing people with disabilities were among the hardest hit. Maureen says,

“There was nobody who seemed to care whether these men and women lived or died,”

Corruption meant aid rarely reached those who needed it, and residents were cut off entirely from wider society – and from hearing the gospel.

Raised on London housing estates with no church background, Maureen came to faith as a teenager after a growing sense that the beauty of the world demanded a Creator. Given a Bible at school, she began reading it alone. “I didn’t understand much,” she admits, “but I knew it was true.” Over time, she became convinced that Jesus Christ was the Son of God and the only way to salvation.

A year later, at the Keswick Convention, Maureen stood in response to a call for full-time Christian service. From early on, she sensed that her life’s work would be outside the UK.

That calling gradually drew her eastward. Long before the Iron Curtain fell, she visited Eastern Europe, forming deep friendships with believers and witnessing the cost of following Christ under Communism. Alongside this, she trained and worked as a social worker – a preparation she now sees as God’s quiet provision.