By SARAH PADBURY  Posted Jan. 21, 2016, 03:00 p.m.

When Marius and Ruth Bodnariu sent their daughters off to school one day last fall, they had no idea they would not come home. And they certainly never imagined their three sons would also be gone before the next sundown—all five children seized by the Norwegian government because of their parents’ Christian beliefs.

Tens of thousands of citizens across the globe have joined in protesting the Norwegian Child Welfare Agency’s seizure of the children after a school principal reported their parents for “indoctrinating” their children.

The Bodnariu family lives in Naustdal, Norway, where Marius works as an IT engineer for the mayor’s office and Ruth is a nurse at the local hospital. Marius is Romanian and first met Ruth, who is Norwegian, when they both served at Open Doors Foundation, a Romanian Christian charity that serves disadvantaged children and families. They were married and became members of the Philadelphia Pentecostal Church in Bucharest. The couple eventually moved to Norway to raise their children in Ruth’s hometown. But their idyllic village life turned into a nightmare last November, according to a Facebook post written by Marius’ brother, Daniel Bodnariu.

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