Romania & Moldova

Highlights

What if “mission” isn’t something we bring to another place—but something we can slowly discover with each step, each conversation, and each community we enter? Join this unique experience of pilgrimage, service, and peacemaking as we visit Romania and Moldova, including the Transylvania region, Bucharest, and Galați.

Juniors Abroad 2027 invites you on a journey that begins not in a classroom—or just another tourist site to snap pictures of—but on a path across the Romanian countryside. For three days, we will walk a section of Via Transilvanica, Romania’s long-distance trail known as “the road that unites”—a camino or pilgrimage-like route that threads through village life, forests, and rural landscapes, marked by handcrafted stones and stories of place and people.

This walking experience sets the tone for the rest of our time abroad: a posture of slowed-down attentiveness, embodied presence, curiosity and asset-based community development. It invites students into pilgrim practices—walking, listening, noticing, reflecting—as ways to deepen awareness of self and neighbor and to awaken to where God is already at work.

After this rhythm of contemplative walking, we will shift into place-based cultural and community immersion with our long-standing global partners at Word Made Flesh specifically in Moldova and Romania, where relationship, asset-based community, and mutually-benefiting service and learning shape our time together. This isn’t about saving or fixing through short-term mission—but about being reshaped by a place, its people, its strengths, needs and its wisdom.

If you want a transformative experience that slows you down before asking you to serve, that invites contemplation as well as action, and that expands your understanding of justice, vocation, and faith, this trip is for you.

This Juniors Abroad trip builds upon George Fox University’s 14 year partnership with Word Made Flesh in Eastern Europe. WMF staff and host families embody long-term incarnational presence with children and neighborhoods facing poverty, displacement, and marginalization. Students will engage with these communities in mutual relationship and shared life.

The immersion and adventure starts in the vibrant capital city of Bucharest, Romania that blends historic influences with modern energy. Its grand architecture, from Byzantine churches and Ottoman inns to French monuments and the colossal communist House of the People, showcases a city rich in culture and history. From Bucharest, the group will head toward the Via Transilvanica for 3 days of spiritual pilgrimage through the Romanian countryside.

Then we will journey to the diverse city of Chisinau, Moldova. A city of lush parks and Soviet-era architecture, which continues to be shaped by the pull from East and from West. Here, students will begin to reflect on God’s mission, God’s heart for those in need, and the work of God in your life, visiting Eastern Orthodox churches and medieval monasteries, and learning about the eastern Christian tradition and practices. Students will have the opportunity to participate in the activities at the Word Made Flesh Community Center, organizing games for vulnerable children and participating in service projects.

Returning to Romania, the journey will take us to Galati, a city founded as a port on the Danube River and which is now known for its industry of steel manufacturing. Here, the group will have the opportunity to join in the daily practices of a long-term missional community at the Word Made Flesh Community Center, spending quality time with host families, neighborhood children living with various vulnerabilities, coordinating crafts and games and joining in a service project. In Galati, you will compare Romanian Orthodox churches and monasteries to those in Moldova as well as with Romanian evangelical churches and ministries.

The trip concludes with a train ride to the edge of Transylvania. You will enjoy the mountainous surroundings, strolling through the picturesque town square and visiting a Gothic church. Students will also have the opportunity to tour a German castle. In the beauty of the city, you will debrief the discoveries made on the trip and reflect on how they may continue to shape you.

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