My name is Lucian Mustata. In 2019, I committed my life savings to a vision I couldn't shake: that young people who'd lost their footing needed a real invitation back to faith. Three years later, in July 2022, that vision became our first festival, in Cluj-Napoca. I'd spent years traveling for business, watching this same thing happen to young people everywhere I went, and I couldn't walk away from it. That's how Heartbeats International started.

Heartbeats International is a U.S. 501(c)(3) running festival and outreach work in Romania, and we're working to eventually grow that reach across four continents. Every year, we put on a festival with music, speakers, and a prayer moment, for thousands of young people, and that's the part most people usually hear of.

Here's what I want you to know: the festival itself is only one part of the week.

Before it even begins, our team is already in Gherla Prison, sitting with those most people wrote off years ago. We're in the streets and marketplaces of Cluj-Napoca, stopping whoever will stop with us. We're in a room with university students who've never once been asked what they actually believe, and in a room with 200 pastors from across Romania, because none of it holds if the local church isn't standing with us after we leave.

In 2024, that festival week reached over 10,000 people. More than 4,000 Bibles were given out: on the street, in schools, inside Gherla Prison, and across the border into Ukraine. Real people made real decisions, not because of a light show, but because someone showed up and stayed.

Here's what that actually costs. In 2024, running the week came to $70,000: about $25,000 for the artists and speakers who carry the message, $20,000 for the stage, sound, and production that make a free night possible, $15,000 to get the word out so people even know to come, $7,000 for insurance and the government's cut on anything sold at the event, and $3,000 for the small team who pulls it together.

Budgets were a little tight, so we're looking to raise $100,000 for next year. This is what it looks like in numbers:

- Artists and speakers: $30,000

- Production, stage, sound, security: $26,000

- Getting the word out: $17,000

- Outreach and Bible distribution (prison, streets, university, pastors): $15,000

- Insurance and event taxes: $8,000

- Our team: $4,000

That outreach and Bible distribution line is brand new. The prison, the streets, the university room, the pastors' gathering, everything you just read about, has never had its own dedicated budget before. It happened because our team found a way. This year, for the first time, it gets a real one.

"Go and make disciples of all nations." Matthew 28:19. That's the only reason any of us do this.

Would you help us take this year even further? Give what you can. Share this with someone who'd want in. And if you can't do either, hit Pray, we'll take that too.

Lord bless you.

Sincerely in Christ,

Lucian Mustata