Wow, what a month! Rather than one step forward and 2 steps back, like it often seems here, it's been 4 steps forward and only 3 steps back, perhaps! This has been a really busy month. We mentioned in our prayer requests about a man from Washington State, who with two colleagues from California were arriving on 2/10 to install a computer network, including 8 new computers they raised the funds for and most of our 12 older computers. On 2/3, the computers arrived at the airport and after many trips to different offices, with a lot of help from the lady at the shipping company office here in Bucharest, the computers arrived at the clinic on the evening of 2/11. We received donations of software through another man who lives in Washington State. These 3 men worked until 8:30 every evening Monday through Wednesday and most of Thursday except to take a tour of the "Ceausescu palace." D espite lots of glitches and having to find parts in this town of a million stores and no decent advertising they got the system installed! These three men not only donated much of the funds for these computers, they also donated their vacation time to come over and do the installation. We really enjoyed getting to know them at least a little. They really impressed us!
Now we have found a Christian young man, a student in computer science at a private university here, who will help us work the rest of the bugs out and probably write some software or set up some databases to enable us to use the network. We are really excited when we think about the possibilities! Unfortunately, we are Macintosh people--not IBM people, and so the little glitches in the software just leave us scratching our heads and saying, "We need to call Marius!" He was even able to get rid of a virus from our home laptop that two virus programs could detect but couldn't eliminate.
Another praise this month is that Milt received his identity card, and now can apply for a Romanian passport. For Linda, however, there is this little thing called taking your maiden name as your middle name when you get married, which is very common in the U.S. But in Romania, you can't change your "first name" (which includes your first and middle names) when you marry--you can only change your last name. When you become a citizen here, you get a Romanian birth certificate and a Romanian marriage license. But when it came to the marriage license, they couldn't remove my birth middle name, so they added my maiden name to my last name. They said it is impossible and unacceptable here to have your birth last name as part of your first name. So now I am doing a legal name change here in Romania to get the name Linda Hanson (no middle name). This one item alone has taken 4 full days and 2 half days of talking to one bureaucrat after another.
We submitted our applications for medical licenses with the College of Doctors here a couple weeks ago, with our temporary identity cards. We are expecting a favorable decision, but please pray nevertheless. We thought it was just one step. But now we are told there are 4 steps involved in being able to practice medicine here--the first at the College of Doctors (aviz de libera practica-approval to get a medical license), then at the local Ministry of Health (autorizatia de libera practica-the actual medical license), then back to the college of doctors for approval to work at our clinic and then I think back to the local Ministry of Health for approval to work at our clinic!
We got the ambulance registered and it has license plates! We also submitted the file for "omologare" (verification) of the sterilizers early last month but nothing has happened yet. We don't pay bribes so we wait. So we don't know when the clinic will open.
We also got our new car, a Ford Focus! The next day we ran over something and got a flat tire, with a significant slash of the sidewall of the tire. The 3rd day we had it someone "keyed" the car--scratched it with a key the entire length of one side (pretty common here). A couple weeks later when I was parked near a light pole, the wind caught the door and slammed it into the light pole, causing a small dent. So now the car isn't really as desirable from the standpoint of thieves, so perhaps all this minor damage is a good thing! Anyway, we really appreciate having a car that starts!
Milt has seen Ionut's mother (the boy with the leukemia) and given her the money for the chemotherapy he needs for his leukemia a couple more times now. He apparently isn't having any trouble with the treatment. We really appreciate those people who donated money for Ionut's medicine!
We hope to be able to put in a parking lot and sidewalks this spring, but we need more funding for that. Right now we just have stones, which are better than dirt and mud, but pretty hard to walk on, especially for those who are old or weak. So we need the sidewalks and we would like to finish the entire parking area. So this will cost several thousand dollars--initially the estimate was for over $10,000 and we didn't accept that bid. But concrete is expensive here. And apparently asphalt isn't any less expensive. We would also like to add an air conditioner for the building, but that is even more expensive. We would appreciate any donations specifically to these two projects--it can just be designated with a little note enclosed with the gift.
Our tasks for the next month include finishing getting the patient files ready, getting the computer databases ready, getting the patient gowns and sheets and bandaids and everything else ready for the first patient! We've delayed interviewing potential employees, because of not knowing when the clinic will open. We have several good candidates, however.
We really appreciate your prayers for us and our work and your support of this project to bring Christ's love to the people of Romania through better and more caring medical care! We couldn't be here without your support!