In 2000, the Adventist church in Ploiesti, Romania
cleared two rooms to start kindergarten.
Now, the two rooms grew into two school buildings
that soon will house 200 students.
It started when a group of parents and teachers from the church
dreamed of a school to provide children a safe environment to grow.
This desire led them to set up two private kindergartens in Ploiesti
in a space provided by the Adventist church.
Parents loved the idea of an Adventist school.
Both of my children were enrolled in public school before coming here.
It’s difficult when I teach my children about our faith at home
and they encounter conflicting beliefs at school.
More and more parents prayed for a school
that would help instill the principles of the Seventh-day Adventist church
in their children’s hearts.
And in 2015 Excelsis school opened.
It started with only 22 students,
but every year, their numbers doubled!
Today over 120 students from kindergarten to eighth grade
are enjoying Christ-centered education at Excelsis School.
Every morning they start their day with a devotional and a prayer.
Children are safe here, physically and spiritually.
Aside from learning subjects like math or physics or chemistry,
more importantly, they learn about life and God.
The school administrators help to connect families who cannot pay tuition
with potential sponsors.
As of today they have over 20 sponsored students.
Parents began hearing about the quality education
and the values taught in Excelsis School.
Some even send their children a long way from home
in order to study in the environment that the school provides.
Fifty-eight such students live outside Ploiesti,
and some of them travel up to 80 kilometers daily
to go to school.
I love that the students here are very friendly
and we have a lot of extra-curricular activities.
Our teachers don’t yell at the students,
and they don’t discriminate against us on any basis.
They’re very nice and they respect us, even if we’re just kids.
In this school students prepare for their classes every day.
We teach them to explore and discover new things,
and we prepare them for a better future.
The students are not perfect; neither are the teachers.
But we try to understand them,
and we learn that behind every child there is a special story.
The parents trust us.
And together, the teachers, students, and their parents are a family.
The school building is now working at full capacity.
Staff rooms are used as additional classrooms,
and the archive room is used as a library.
To accommodate more students,
the school has started construction of a new building
which will allow them to enroll over 200 students.
Soon Excelsis School will expand its ministry
to teach even more children about the love of Jesus.
This school answers the needs of Christian families in Ploiesti
because they want their children to learn good values and principles.
Our goal is to present a beautiful God not only to the children
but also to their parents.