Wow! This month has gone so fast! So much has happened and it seems that so much has been accomplished! We praise the Lord for how He has helped us with all the work!
But first, we want to announce that we will have a dedication of the clinic building to the Lord on September 22, 3 weeks from yesterday, at 11 am. Chuck Lindquist, the director of World Mission Prayer League, and his wife, Cindy, will be in Bucuresti over that weekend. You are all invited! This is not a "grand opening" even though the clinic is almost finished. We can't open until we receive the "aviz de functionare" from the government.
And a second announcement--our website, which has been down for the last 4
months at least, is now up and running again! It is:
So what have we been doing, and what are some of the things that have
happened? The tiling is finally all done and the plumbing is being finished
today! We moved the exam tables out of storage to the clinic last Saturday.
We also bought the reception desk, the doctors' desks, shelves and lockers,
and have ordered the kitchen cupboard type units for the nurses stations,
treatment room, lab and lunchroom. Most of the books and journals are out of
boxes and on shelves in the library, accomplished with the help of some
friends. The stairs to the back door of the basement are done. The
wheelchair ramp and front steps are halfway done! The heating system should
be tested next week. The fence is finished and some friends are putting on
the sealer stain. Yesterday we finished cutting up and burning all the brush
from all the trees that were cut down to make way for the fence, saving the
good wood for one of the guards to use as firewood this winter. During a
break one of the plumbers started asking lots of religious questions. We
gave him a Bible. He really seemed to appreciate it. And he listened to us.
We also received the refund of the TVA (value added tax) that we paid during
the first quarter of this year! About $6500 badly needed dollars!
Another really big thing for us was seeing our names published in the
Monitorul Oficial (the Romanian Congressional Record)! Our citizenship
interview was 18 months ago. Sometime in the next month we should receive
invitations to take the oath for citizenship! Then we can start the process
of obtaining the legal right to practice medicine!
Another thing that happened is that our shipment of second hand computers
arrived last Wednesday, and we received a telegram to that effect on
Thursday! We had already gone to the receiving shipping company to find out
what sort of papers would be needed to get it all through customs, and the
man was very helpful--he even explained to us what a "ProForma Invoice" is
and wrote out an example of the format it would need to be in! He didn't
seem to be a corrupt person at all--after all the stories we have heard about
the customs people here! So now we have all the required papers, we think,
as well as the notarized translations, and tomorrow we go to see if we can
actually get the computers. Please pray that everything will go smoothly!
Other things we've done in the last month include 4 trips to the auto repair
place, having to leave the car there for 2 1/2 weeks waiting for parts,
reregistering the car (maybe the last time since we will soon be citizens!),
Linda worked part-time at the Embassy for 3 weeks while the nurse
practitioner was on vacation, and, of course, we saw lots of patients for
informal consults!
Another fun thing is that we now have 2 puppies, who will one day be our
guard dogs at the clinic! (Sunflower is still our "guard cat" in our
apartment.) There are a lot of stray dogs in our neighborhood and about a
half dozen often hung around our building site. So we started feeding them
last year so they would be friendly rather than bite us. When we got back to
Bucuresti in mid-July there were two young puppies from a litter in the
spring. On Sunday, 4 weeks ago they were both limping. We bundled them into
the car (these puppies are really friendly and love to be petted) and took
them to the vet hospital across town, where an orthopedic vet was one of the
on call people. X-rays showed that one had an ulna (front leg) fracture and
the other a femur fracture. The ulna fracture looked like it would heal just
fine--but not the femur fracture. So we left both puppies there and the next
day they were both neutered and the one had a pin put in her femur fracture.
(The vet bill was amazingly low and the vet explained things very well. Many
people say that veterinary medical care here is better quality than human
medical care.) But the vet lectured us that if we let them continue to be
street dogs they probably wouldn't live long, especially since the mayor now
has a program of picking up the strays and having them put to sleep if they
are not claimed. (With more than 200,000 street dogs, it will take awhile
for them to disappear.) So we bought collars and found some rope for leashes
and now they are our dogs! And now that the fence is finally done, they can
run free, although Maggie, with the femur fracture, still limps. Taffy, with
the ulna fracture, is no longer limping! They are really friendly and seem
so happy to see us when we come to the clinic each day!
There is still a lot that needs to be done before the dedication and before
the clinic can open. We need to organize the 100 or so boxes of medical
supplies and equipment that we have brought over there. We need to clean
every exam room (it was so hot this summer that the windows of the clinic
were open, and so there is Bucuresti soot as well as construction dust and
dirt all over everything). The doctors desks need to be assembled and we
will need to mount the kitchen type cupboards on the walls when they come.
We need to get the sidewalks in and a concrete border around the rest of the
building so the water from the downspouts doesn't just run against the
basement walls when it rains. We need the telephone system, miniblinds for
the windows, and a front gate and fence. And of course, before any of the
final approvals can be obtained (which usually takes 1-6 months), we need
those 60-minute fire resistant doors for the halls! We don't think those
will be in by the time of the dedication, because we haven't heard that they
have even been ordered yet.
So, as you can see, the Lord has been very active in helping us to get things
done and in giving us the energy to do it! And we really thank you for your
prayers on our behalf! They make all the difference in the world! And many
thanks to those of you who also provided financial support! Other than the
parking lot, alarm system, xerox machine, CBC machine for the lab and air
conditioner, we now have most of the funds we need to finish everything. And
none of these last 5 things are crucial before we open the clinic. We really
appreciate all of you who are joining with us through prayer and support in
our work here in Romania!