We are especially grateful for our medical licenses that we received 2 weeks ago! Now we only need two more permissions and we can actually start to see patients in our clinic. After you receive the right to practice medicine, you still have to go back to the College of Doctors for permission to practice medicine in your own clinic and then once you have that permission from the College of Doctors you go back to the Ministry of Health (Directia Sanitara) for the exact same permission from them. These are usually mere formalities that take a couple of weeks each. However, Linda is still waiting to get her new Cartea de Identitate with her new name. Having her new ID card will mean not having to go through these last two steps twice. Six weeks ago they said it would take about a month. She goes back at least twice a week to check. So please pray that she will receive her new card soon!
Sanepid ("the Sanitary Police") came to the clinic this morning for a very important inspection. The inspector promised to file a favorable report as soon as we provide her office with a few more documents (which we already have). After Sanepid approval, the only approval remaining is from "Protectia Muncii" (Worker Protection), but as usual, we can't start that process until we actually have the signed and stamped approval from Sanepid.
We started interviewing applicants for nurses last week and have some more to do this week. So far several of the applicants have seemed very promising. We are also scheduling interviews for receptionists and a social worker to help with all the poor people that we expect to see. Marius is helping to set up a file system for the network of donated computers (which are wonderful!), and that is going very well. He makes computers seem so easy.
Ruxi, our director, is in her last month of pregnancy. Now that we are citizens, Milt will become president of the foundation and take over many of the administrative responsibilities, which we have all been involved in during this whole process anyway. But the timing is very advantageous. Ruxi plans to have a three month maternity leave. Her husband, Dragos, will work with us as soon as the clinic opens. He graduated in Emergency Medicine two years ago, and wants to have a time for us to mentor him in Family Practice especially in a modern clinic setting. Also we expect that residents will be allowed to rotate through our clinic soon after we start, even if we aren't officially open at he start of the next group's rotation later this month. There are way more residents in Family Medicine in Bucharest than there are qualified and motivated preceptors. Many residents are told by their assigned preceptors something like, "Don't bother to come. Just stay home and study for the exam at the end of the year and I'll stamp your resident's booklet and say you've completed the rotation."
Some other projects in the pipeline include working with three teams from the International Mission Board (Baptist) who will be here this summer, but who now need to work with an approved clinic in order to bring in the medicines that they are donating. We are also hoping to be able to help a church from Tennessee bring in 4500 pairs of donated eyeglasses for a short term mission project in June. This should be such a blessing for so many here who can't afford eyeglasses, provided there are no problems in bringing these glasses through customs.
Francisco Gross is still waiting for word from the Spanish embassy about his visa there. He can't get approval from the Ministry of Health here until he has Spanish citizenship (and recognition of his dental school diploma by an EU country). They have been told that it will take about 3 months for them to obtain Spanish citizenship once they are in Spain.
When we're not dealing with the bureaucracy or seeing patients, we continue to work on the final details of the clinic. We received enough funding to pay this month's salaries for the guards and accountant, etc., and there may be enough to surface the parking area. In order to do it right, it will take some careful planning regarding drainage. One company that we talked to last week impressed us.
We also continue to facilitate a Bible Study every Sunday evening. We finished a study of Romans in February and are now doing a study on evangelism. It's a very interesting group including 2 Romanians, a Dutch family, a resident in Cardiology from Kenya, and 4 Americans. There are 4 English language churches in Bucharest and now none of them have pastors.
We are getting so close to the long awaited opening of our clinic. This will really not be the end, but rather the start of what we have felt called here to do ever since 1992. We have been here almost 8 years. Milt used to run marathons and ski even longer cross country ski races (one was 56 miles). He says the trick is to start and not stop. Last month he was getting frustrated when we discovered that we still had so many things to deal with even after the citizenship and the "license to practice medicine." It was like skiing 56 miles and finding out as one approached the finish line that they had added another 10 miles, and you're already exhausted. So please pray that we will both have all the necessary stamina, spiritual and physical, to stay the course, no matter how many more surprises the Romanian bureaucracy tries to put in our way. It's not just a matter of starting and not quitting. We also still depend on your continued prayer support, as well as financial support. And we appreciate it all so very much!
"I have placed before you an open door that no one can shut. I know that you have little strength, yet you have kept my word and have not denied my name." Revelation 3:8