The “HeartBeats” Festival, now in its 3rd year, took place in Cluj-Napoca in Romania at the House of Culture of Students. Christian music bands from all over the country, but also from Africa, the United States and Israel took to the stage. The festival created a context in which hundreds of young people, and not only young people, gathered to glorify the name of God.
Source: www.alphaomega.tv
SCRIPT:
HeartBeats Festival
Cluj-Napoca
The “HeartBeats” Festival was intended to be
a festival of joy in Christ
since its first edition.
Although the current edition
was not on the same scale,
it attracted a large number
of young people
who were enthusiastic
about the atmosphere created
by the Christian bands
that performed a variety
of musical styles and expressions
of praise and worship.
This is a smaller edition to ensure
the continuity of the festival.
We are preparing a very big
edition next year,
but because the HeartBeats
community is a passionate one
and we have a large group
of mission-minded teenagers
and young people who need
this enthusiasm, this symbol,
we decided to offer the edition
anyway,
even if we initially,
considered postponing it.
This year we have artists
from different countries,
we even have artists
from Africa, from Uganda,
there are three artists
who are coming
and they are full of fire
and passion for Christ,
we have a band from Israel
who are performing
for the first time in Romania
and bands from Romania
who have just finished
their part of the festival.
Besides the vision
to glorify God with passion,
the HeartBeats Festival aims
to become a platform
that unites people from
different countries and cultures
who share the same values
to connect and motivate them
to get involved in different
spheres of society.
We wanted to create a context
in which organizations
that promote values or campaigns
that Christians should support,
such as the campaign
against human trafficking
or other campaigns
that are noble,
caring for the needy,
the vulnerable, the marginalized,
widows, orphans.
However, the theme that particularly aligns us this year
and where we wanted
to make a contribution
to the awareness-raising part
is human trafficking.
Romania, as we know,
is the country that has
the most victims who end up
being trafficked in the West,
in particular,
and I believe that in general,
such missionary – evangelistic
events should be accompanied
by a cause of social impact.
Kim Westfall founder of Uncaged
came to HeartBeats to talk about
the spread of human trafficking,
which is claiming many victims
among young women in Romania
and how every young Christian can and should get involved
in preventing and fighting it.
Since 2018, “Uncaged”
has been supporting the efforts
of the “WorldTeach” Association
in Romania,
in the fighting human trafficking.
Our association “WorldTeach” started rescuing girls and women
from human trafficking in 2004.
At one point we had
over 750 people rescued,
but we didn’t have a therapy
program
through which these women could be reintegrated.
The only way we treated them is
to show them the love of Christ
and show them acceptance.
We were placing them
with Christian families,
Christian leaders
who cared for them
and were able to rehabilitate
them to some degree.
Then in 2018, Uncaged,
a U.S. association joined us,
and they began to invest in
expanding to a professional level.
We have licensed ourselves
as a “Center for the Assistance
and Protection
of Victims of Human Trafficking”
in Timis County.
Hananya Naftali was also present at the fesival
and spoke about the challenges
facing the people of Israel
after the October 7, 2023 attack.
(Hananya Naftali – speaks En)
The festival ended with a concert performed by Wes Hampton,
singer of the Gaither Vocal Band,
who performed
some well-known hymns
together with
he Coram Deo Timisoara choir.
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