We thank you so much for your continued support and your prayers! We see the Lord working through your support and prayers in very real ways.
It's amazing how time flies!! So much has happened since our last newsletter just before Christmas.
Our Christmas programs were once again well received by the families and children and elderly to whom we ministered. The children again received shoe box gifts provided by Samaritan's Purse/Operation Christmas Child. The poor elderly received bags of food, with the help of donations from Bucharest Christian Academy and some of our own funds. They all heard the Gospel message. Several of the elderly came the next Sunday to Biserica Buna Vestire (Good News Church) that met for the first time in the newly remodeled room in our clinic's basement. In fact, that Sunday there was standing room only! Christmas is one of the two times each year that even nominal Orthodox people believe they should go to church! But here, they will hear the true message of Christ in a way that is easy to understand.
Two days later we drove to Budapest--a 13 1/2 hour drive. We spent 8 very relaxing days there with long time friends. The trip home, on New Year's Day, was even shorter--probably because there were almost no cars on the road. We brought back 3 months worth of boxed skim milk. The only one available has been Parmalat, and now that company is facing bankruptcy--an Enron type scandal with 17 billion dollars missing from their books. So this will probably be the last of the skim milk. There are still a few boxes left here in some stores, but the price has gone up to about $1.54/liter.
After a few slow days at the beginning of January, the clinic has been busy ever since. We have one Romanian resident in Family Practice, Denisa, who is in her first year of residency and will be with us for 4 months. Also, Eric and Terra Hussar, from Pennsylvania, arrived January 19 and will be working with us through Friday. Eric is a 2nd year resident in Family Practice and Terra is a first year resident in Internal Medicine who will start her neurology residency next year. Eric also has spent 2 months at LAMB Hospital in Bangladesh. Terra has worked for a summer in the Ukraine a few years back. They both have a heart for missions. They've been seeing patients, presenting medical conferences for our nurses and doctors, and been generally very helpful. Medical students and residents in the U.S. receive a great deal more actual experience in patient care than is provided by the Romanian medical education system. They are helping us to model and reinforce the Western style of medical education that we have been introducing into medical education here.
The ambulance that we were given by the Swedish mission has been used a lot more recently. One man walked into the clinic with an acute heart attack. Dragos drove him to the hospital while Eric and Milt stayed with the patient in the back of the ambulance. They made it to the hospital without any complications.
The first week in January we began a Bible study on Rick Warren's book, "The Purpose Driven Life". We bought the Romanian translation of the book for each of our staff. The staff are learning to participate. We continue to have prayer 2 times per week with the staff. Our team working at the clinic seems to really be pulling together.
Three rooms in the basement of the clinic, in addition to the church's room, are now almost finished. They just need the dropped ceiling put up and flooring put down. Thanks to some gifts we've received for the building, we will be able to have at least the rest of the spaces covered with sheetrock. This will make the basement space much more usable, even if it's not entirely finished. Romanian law doesn't allow the electrician to connect the wiring until it is enclosed in sheetrock. Before Christmas, Linda shopped really hard for doors for the basement. We found a real deal--a Christmas liquidation--and saved a lot of money. The installation of the doors was incredibly cheap--we were amazed. We were also amazed when we found out that the doors were just installed with construction foam--no nails or screws!! Half of the doors close just fine, but yesterday we spent the afternoon cutting out the foam, adjusting the frames on the doors that wouldn't close, and then spraying more foam around the frames! Jesus was a carpenter who healed people. Sometimes we're doctors who do carpentry. : >)
We intended to write this newsletter last weekend, but Friday night we discovered that somebody had taken our cell phone. We called it several times, someone answered in Romanian and then hung up, and after a few times they quit answering. We have had so little theft at the clinic that we had become complacent and often just left the phone on a counter in the nurses' area. So we called the company to have a block put on the phone, and Friday night and Saturday was spent getting a new phone that would allow us to keep the same number. About 10 minutes after the new phone was connected, we got our first call from a family whose son had fallen and had a concussion. We saw the child for an evaluation later that evening.
We want to thank you again for your support of our ministry here in Romania, both through your finances and your prayers! We appreciate having such a strong team behind us, holding us up before the Lord!