From orphanage to organiser

He was dumped at birth, labelled “stupid”, and beaten in a Romanian orphanage. But today, Lucian Mustata, 35, is the powerhouse behind HeartBeats, Eastern Europe’s largest Christian music festival.

Born in 1989, just months before the fall of Ceaușescu’s brutal regime, Lucian’s early life was a nightmare. “I was daily told I was stupid and was physically abused,” he told Sara Kyoungah White of Christianity Today. Locked away with disabled children, his food was often stolen and cries of despair echoed through the orphanage walls. “I still carry physical and emotional scars from those dark days.”

Rescued at age four by ‘SOS Children’s Villages’, things improved – slightly. But staff churn meant more heartbreak. “Each departure only served to harden our hearts further,” says Lucian.

At 12, he learned the gut-wrenching truth: his mother, with “the mental capacity of a six-year-old”, had been raped. “I was born as the result… and she abandoned me at birth.” His father? A complete mystery.

At 18, alone and homeless, Lucian wandered Bucharest on Christmas Eve until a carol concert flyer led him into a Baptist church. “Inside the church that night, God sang a new song over me that flooded into my heart,” he says.

That night changed everything. “Week after week, I felt a new wound heal,” Lucian says. “I felt the real encouragement and love of a Father whose heart goes out especially to the fatherless.”

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