ION BARBU was born on May 4th, 1928 in the village of Bicaz-Chei, Neamţ County.
His parents were Solomon and Rusandra. He also had a younger sister, Ileana, who went to the Lord, and who had three boys: Ion, Viorel, and Nicuşor. “Mosu” Solomon was among the first believers in the village and suffered greatly from relatives and authorities.
In 1953 Ion married Ioana Dandu and they had two daughters, Aurelia and Lenuta, who lives in Piatra Neamț, Romania.
In September this year they had 67 years of marriage.
Ion had five grandchildren: Mihaela and Michael, from Aurelia; Dana, Iulia and Estera from Lenuta; and great-grandchildren: Andrei and Vanessa, Sammi and Emma, Ethan and Michael Jr.
They were Orthodox Christians, but in 1977 they decided to receive Jesus. During this time brother Barbu worked the night shift as a miner at the limestone quarry. There was a powerful explosion and he was thrown onto a pile of stones, and when those who were helping arrived, they did not go to him thinking he was dead. But after a while they saw that he started to move and took him to the hospital in Piatra Neamț, where he stayed for 3 months. He had his left leg broken in two places, experienced burns and hearing loss in his left ear, and his colleagues taunted him that God had punished him for leaving his traditional orthodox faith. But Ion told them: “Because I received the Lord Jesus, He gave me life, and I did not die!” God rewarded him for his faithfulness with the beautiful age of 92, while all his colleagues died long ago. He was baptized with his foot in a cast and witnessed to all his colleagues, relatives, and neighbors. During this period he learned the song, “At midnight Jesus will come with a soft step,” and when he woke up in the morning he sang the song to his wife, Sister Ioana.
In 1994 they emigrated to America and, although he was retired, Ion worked so that they would have their own house and car, not wishing to be a burden on anyone, but having his pension so he would not ask for it from the state. In the past three years, his ear no longer wanted to cooperate with the hearing aid, and we have not been able to understand each other, except by writing and reading lips. In recent years, dementia had spoken its word, and he could not remember recent things. The great pain was that he no longer recognized his wife who had cared for him all his life and sacrificed herself for him, and she herself had been very ill in recent years. He remembered from his youth how he went with his father to propose to her — that is how his wife remained in his memory, still young. In recent years he has prayed to the Lord to take him home, repented of all sins, and read the Bible even when he was overwhelmed by dementia, his favorite books being Psalms and Isaiah. He prayed earnestly to the Lord and thanked Him for all He had given him, for the woman who cares for him and gives him food. Until the last months of his life he was humming his favorite songs: “I had a longing for home”, “At midnight He will come”, “Jesus my good friend”.
He was a simple man, but with a great heart who loved the Lord and wanted to go to be with Him.