Ok, so I’m a little late for Pentecost. But here’s a great story from the BBC about the growth of the Pentecostals among the Roma of Eastern Europe.
An excerpt:
These people are Pentecostalists – a church movement which has spread like wildfire among the gypsies of Eastern Europe in particular – a form of religion which fits better with their own mythology, than the strict rituals of Orthodox or Catholic.
It is also giving a people much derided as work shy, a protestant work ethic.
“I stole, I drank, I was lazy,” Iliya told us later, with a twinkle in his eye, playing the caricature of a gypsy villain, on a stage of his own carpentry.
“And then I got a life-threatening illness. And I started to pray.”
That was 10 years ago.
With God’s help, he said, his whole neighbourhood practises Christianity now.
Together they have built a church, rebuilt their own homes, and found an energy and purpose in their lives which seems, to a stranger at least, almost miraculous.
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