“Episode 3 of the Romania Life Stories eventually concludes with the Conders adopting an abandoned baby. However, there were more challenges along the way which make this story even more amazing.”

There are several individual accounts experienced by the Conders and others affected by the Romanian Revolution on December 1989 in this particular Life Story. and here are some notes made about that time.

One day it got to the point where there was only a matter of 24 hours for the Conders to obtain certain documents signed and notarised for a court hearing the next day in Arad which meant that Howard had to travel over 400 kilometres to Bucharest the capital, find an interpreter, interpret the English document from UK social services into Romanian and return back to Arad where Lesley would be waiting to address the Romanian Court.

This looked like an impossible situation. Nevertheless, Howard managed to catch a train. He travelled for 12 hours through the deepest of winters, minus 25 degrees Fahrenheit, and managed to get the documents all sorted, only to arrive back at Bucharest train station to find his train had been delayed in the mountains because of the high level of snow on the tracks. Knowing that time was running out…he prayed that somehow God would intervene and turn an overnight 12-hour journey back to Arad into a somewhat time-warped happening…. Otherwise, they would be too late for the Court appearance which was to finalise the adoption.
Lesley will take over from here and her story of just how God dealt with this impossible situation.

(Lesley) you tell what happened)
“We had a 10 am Court Hearing and Howard was supposed to have arrived back from his all-round 24 hour trip to Bucharest and get back in time with the final set of documents which the Romanian authorities insisted on having in order to rubber-stamp the adoption of baby Rebecca. If this was not to happen that day, Rebecca would have to stay in a Romanian in an orphanage.

The judge soon became aware that Howard’s train was not going to arrive in time, so the Judge made an impromptu decision to approve and sign the documents on one condition. The court would not hand the documents over to the Conders until Howard came directly to the Court with the documents he had picked up in Bucharest.
The time to collect would expire by 3 pm. Thank God that Howard’s train arrived just in time to take the documents to the Court in Arad. We also had travel documents for Rebecca which meant that we were all able to fly back to London and complete the adoption in England.” Lesley Conder.

February 14th St Valentines day 1991 we arrived back in the UK.
The Conders had to start from scratch again and build up their finances which was not going to be easy with two young children of their own and now also needing to provide for their newly adopted baby Rebecca.
However, their trust again was in the Lord God of heaven as they knew in their hearts that He will provide for us as He had given us a direction and vision in which to pursue what was to be… to one day start Christian Television in the UK and to make programmes that educate and encourage others to enter into His Kingdom and serve the living God rather than follow the desires of this world which were soon going to fade away and come to nought.
Because their mortgage on their apartment in Surbiton had been miraculously paid off, they moved back into it and set up a work area for Howard to edit and make programmes but now with two young boys and one girl and there being only two bedrooms, Lesley and Howard slept on the Sofas. They saw this was quite the norm when they lived in Romania, so they thought nothing of it to do the same when living back in England in their two bedroom apartment.
Now what was next was yet another ONE MORE DOCUMENT to come from the UK Courts to say that we were officially the approved parents to adopt Rebecca…