RISKING HIS SAFETY WAS `FOR THE LORD'

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, January 10, 1993                   TAG: 9301070190
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Kathy Williams/Landmark News Service
DATELINE: ORADEA                                LENGTH: Medium
RISKING HIS SAFETY WAS `FOR THE LORD'
Ioan Ungur stood shivering with excitement one November night in 1989 as he waited for a delivery to arrive from Hungary.
Minutes after the four-wheel drive with its secret container pulled into the garage, Ungur went to work. Drilling the bolts off the container, Ungur quickly emptied its contraband - hundreds of New Testaments. Then he screwed the container back onto the underside of the car, carefully concealing the outside with mud and dirt.
Ungur was pleased with himself. He had fooled the secret police over and over for the past two years. They knew nothing of Mission Possible, an American-based group dedicated to bringing Christianity to Eastern Europe. They did not know the code word for his five-room apartment near the Hungarian border or how many Bibles he had helped smuggle into the country.
Or so he thought.
Mission Possible had sprung a leak. For the past eight months, the secret police had known the code word: Pearl Harbor. When Bibles went to "Pearl Harbor," Ioan Ungur was the recipient.
The police had to shut it down. But more importantly, they wanted to know the source. Ungur was "invited" to the station by the secret police. Officials were outraged by his undercover activities. Ungur always had been an upstanding Communist citizen - supervisor of a transport department. He had even been given a five-room apartment for his wife and two children. Most people were on long waiting lists for apartments, forced instead to live with other family members.
Threats of beatings and long prison sentences began. Ungur feared for himself, but especially for his wife, Florica, and their two children - Anca, 11, and Johnny, 8.
He weighed the consequences to himself, his family and his country. The risk was worth taking.
"I was not alone. I did not take the risk for me, but for the Lord."
Every day for a month, Ungur had a note taped on his apartment door, ordering him to the police station. Ungur tore them in half.
Then the police decided on another tactic. If Ungur would tell them who was behind the operation, they would give him a passport out of the country.
Ungur was not impressed. While others were desperate to leave the country, Ungur had decided long ago to stay.
"Romania needs its good people."
A few days after the secret police last visited Ungur, dictator Nicolae Ceausescu was executed.
"People ran into the streets shouting with joy. We were free."
Three years later, Ungur, 39, walks unafraid down those same streets to church with a New Testament tucked under one arm.
Bethel Pentecostal Church No. 1 overflows with people hung ry for hope. Ungur, choir director, leads his fellow believers in three verses of praise. The walls vibrate with the singing followed by fervent prayer uttered aloud by the 2,500 in attendance.
Ungur no longer works for the government. He has devoted his life to\ delivering food and clothing donated by other countries to the poor in Romania.
Ungur's phone is still tapped, but faith has replaced fear.
"If God would not be on our side, they would swallow us alive."

by Bhavesh Jinadra by CNB