Another fast and busy month in Romania! We are so thankful for your faithful prayer support!
We bought the land! Or rather the Open Door Medical Foundation did, a very important step toward building the Family Practice teaching clinic that we have envisioned ever since we felt God's call to come to Romania. Just a few highlights of the week and a half long process: going to the bank on three separate days to avoid an extra $400 in withdrawal fees (there's a charge for withdrawing money from your account, and the larger the amount, the higher the percentage), going to a different bank to get a money order and being handed a form with about 19 blanks to fill out in order to buy (!) a form with another 15 blanks, and finally carrying more than $40,000 in a briefcase to actually pay for the land and the other fees.
We are pretty sure that the best building for the clinic will be a metal building. A company in North Carolina has used this system to build several churches in Romania, shipping the materials from the United States in a container. It is not exactly "pre-fab", but much quicker and definitely less expensive to build than the usual thick walled reinforced concrete that is the norm here. A Christian architect from Oradea (on the other side of Romania) with considerable experience with this type of building has come down twice this week to meet with us and the Bucharest architect who seems to be very competent and also has a great deal of skill and experience in working through all the bureaucratic details in Bucharest. They seem to get along very well.
There are so many rules and regulations, and each time we talk to the architects we find out more. For example, two weeks ago we learned that the building would have to have a second floor, to comply with the secret (yes, you read this correct!) urban zoning regulations that are already on file for this area. This week we learned that the clinic will probably need a bomb shelter. (Gabi, our assistant has taught Milt the Romanian equivalent of "Uff da" - "Vai de mine.") We are still short of the funding necessary (especially with all these extras, like bomb shelters), but we are trusting that God will provide through His people for the costs in the 6 months that the architect anticipates for the approval process. He has told us that it may be fewer than 35 permits needed, or may be more, depending on what each department says.
This has also been the month of conferences. In late September, Paraklesis Ministries sponsored a 5 day retreat for missionaries, mainly to encourage and support missionaries. It took place in the beautiful mountain resort town Sinaia. It was great to be pampered, and also to make new friends who share the same love for the Lord and Romania. We also attended a 3 day conference on chronic pediatric diseases in another mountain resort last weekend, sponsored by Humana Foundation. These last 3 days we participated in a World Vision conference on "Addressing the Needs of Those for whom Christ Died." It took place in the Casa Poporului (House of the People), now called the Palatul Parlamentului (Palace of the Parliament). This was built under the Communist dictator Ceausescu and is the second largest building in the world. In this same building where countless numbers of Romanians slaved and died for the "glory" of Communism, Christians from all the major church bodies in Romania now worshipped, prayed, and sang hymns together to the glory of God. We will be going back to the "Casa" one more time the end of this month for a conference on home care.
In our "spare time" we delivered medicines and other supplies to several hospitals and clinics. One of the doctors at the main emergency hospital is the vice president of the Colegiul Medicilor (College of Doctors), a new organization similar to a state board of medical practice in the States. He seemed moved by the donation, and he also was very supportive of our clinic project, saying that we should get it up and going as soon as possible.
We have also been to the see the Traistarus recently. Mrs. Traistaru (Georgeta) wishes that we would move to Peretu permanently. Milt drew a diagram for them of how to change a Turkish (just a hole in the floor) outhouse into a "luxurious" American one (with a place to sit). Mr. Traistaru smiled and said he thought he could handle such a project. We also visited Flori and Georgeta in a health spa where Flori was sent for some treatments to help his chronic cough caused by damage that he suffered when he burned his esophagus with caustic soda. The treatments consist of going down about 700 ft. beneath the earth to sit in an old abandoned salt mine for several hours a day. We were planning to make a side trip to see them at the health resort on the way to the pediatrics conference when Georgeta called us the day before we left and asked us if we could bring her a heater for the room. The heat wasn't on in the hotel and it was getting down close to freezing outside at night. Flori had already started coughing more and was running a fever, so we examined him and brought him some medicine as well as a small room heater.
We didn't have any problems with our car this month! So we thought that we could substitute a bug story. For the last year we have had trouble with moths in our kitchen, in our food--ever since we bought some fresh walnuts at the market last fall. Although we cleaned and sprayed everything we could other than the food, the moths persisted. They seem to like to eat plastic. In fact, Linda had put the walnuts in a zip-lock bag in the cupboard, and they ate through that, laid their eggs in the zip-lock baggie box, etc. So when we got back this summer, we put all the food not in cans (e.g. macaroni, cereal, etc.) in the freezer. We haven't seen any moths for more than 2 weeks now. But somehow, the biggest cockroaches that we have ever seen have occasionally come into the apartment. They have been few, and they all seemed dead until we tried to pick them up to throw them in the trash (perhaps because of the roach spray we've used). Many of our friends have big problems with this category of God's creation. So we are thankful that they are few and far between!
Looking ahead at our schedule, it looks just as busy as last month, but hopefully mainly in Bucharest. We are really looking forward to Chuck Lindquist, the General Director of World Mission Prayer League, and Gene Bunkowske (on the WMPL board) being here in early November on their way back from Africa. Please keep praying fervently for us and the Open Door Medical Foundation and clinic. We wish to thank you again for your support and your prayers--they mean so much to us!
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