“Many people had asked us, ‘What is your project? Are you going to plant a church? What exactly will you do?’ We had to answer that all we knew was that we had to go as a ‘family’, to have a house which was a haven for the young people; we had no specific plan but to be obedient to God’s Call – ‘the Slade family in Romania’. It was to be a place where the young people could share in family life and be involved with cooking, washing up, cleaning – all with a spiritual input. It was hard! The instinct to put a label to what we were doing to justify why we were going was strong, but we knew this wasn’t what God wanted. In every way God was asking us to buck the trend and do the unexpected, the unexplainable. Who would believe us that we were taking our family on an adventure into the unknown, living by faith, purely on the basis that we knew God had called us to serve HfR in Székelyudvarhely/Odorheiu Secuiesc? This was a lesson for life as it threw us back on God to show us the way forward, His way into the ‘unexpected’ and the ‘unexplainable’. He was teaching us not to depend on man but on Him for all things.”

The motto for Cobham Romania Aid (now Heart for Romania) is ‘Hope, Help and Heart’, and the Slade family have most certainly brought all those things to the people they have met and lived with. This book is a timely account of how one family responded to God’s call to head to Transylvania.

                                                                                    David Taylor

It has been a total joy and privilege to be part of this family, as a friend and a mentor. Each one of them has touched, and is continuing to touch many individuals, and by so doing transforming nations.

I vividly remember my first and only visit to the Slades’ home in Odorheiu Secuiesc. They were just living the life as an inclusive family in their distinctive way – warmly welcoming and loving many young people into their home and their hearts.                                                                                                                                                    Linda Harding