Dear Family and Friends,
There are many days when I proclaim I am going to write everything that happened because people wont really believe that such funny/crazy/freako things really take place. Today was one of those days except I am foregoing dinner preparation to be able to journal about this. (I know, poor Daniel!)
This morning started out at 7:30 a.m. with Daniel and I leaving together at which rarely ever happens. This morning, Daniels role in the ministry was to play bodyguard and chauffer to me, our social worker, and two caseworkers from a village that is off the end of the earth plus another 20 miles on unpaved roads. I am sure the expression out in the middle of no where came from the person who visited this village. Daniel, at my request, dressed in camouflage shorts, an old t-shirt, and a do-rag on his head topped off by loads of facial hair and dark sunglasses. Even I was afraid of him! Please keep in mind that it is now summer here so it was 90+ degrees in a van without air-conditioning and windows that cannot be rolled down for cross ventilation because Romanians believe you will get air stuck in your head which can cause a sore throat, ear infection, pneumonia, inflammation of the glands, or one of many other horrible problems that may result in serious illness. I am used to this cultural phenomenon by now but it is particularly irritating to deal with when in a vehicle during the summer or on one of the floors of the hospital.
The reason for todays adventure??? One of our foster children, Flaviu, who I have had in care since he was a couple of months old, has a biological mother that, after five years without one visit, states she wants him back home. I am desperately sorry I did not have my camera with me so you could see what home looked like. It is a one room hut that 11 people sleep in with mud walls that were caving in and no proper roof. Currently, Flaviu lives in a beautiful, large home with his foster family complete with tile, in-door plumbing, and a brand new everything. I am convinced that putting him in his biological home would cause him permanent psychological damage, especially since his biological parents are total strangers to him. Our mission was to convince her to sign him over to be adopted by a Romanian family. She had refused us once before but we thought bringing in the local case workers would help influence her. Sadly, it did not. The case worker for her area sent a message what time we were coming today and for her to be at home. She was not at home but had taken a job assisting a local farmer. We inquired which farmer and set off to find her. When we finally got there, (did I mention there are not paved roads) the farmer told us that she had just left after Flavius 15 year old pregnant sister RAN ALMOST A MILE THROUGH A FIELD to inform her we were coming and beat us there!!!! The mother then fled on foot but we turned back around towards the gypsy village to find her coming out of a side field. She had no where to go because she was clearly in our view and the site of Daniel froze her in her tracks!
We explained what a wonderful life Flaviu now has and to pleaded with her to just allow him to be adopted. She was truly behaving as someone extremely mentally ill and told us she would die before she would sign anything and that she wanted him home immediately. Neli, our social worker, got very tough with her and told her she was thinking only about herself and not her child and that she would NOT get any money by holding out but that we would see her in court to fight for Flavius rights. She became irate and it was clear that her years of severe alcoholism had taken a toll on her. We will have to continue this battle in court now and the two caseworkers were very kind and agreed to help us in every possible way. So we left to go find another gypsy family that one of the caseworkers wanted me to meet because they have a very bright daughter who wants to continue her education into high school and college. I eagerly said, lets go meet that girl!!!
We had to travel about another 5 miles through the middle of a field to get to the main pot-holed ridden road. We found no one at home except the grandfather of the girl who the family cared for in addition to their biological children plus the children of the fathers sister who had abandoned her children with them. Can you say altruistic!?!! Their garden was superb and their house nice and tidy complete with electricity, a nice television, and a refrigerator. I had not even met the family and I was so proud of them for how industrious they were to grow such a large garden and sell the vegetables to make money. The grandfather, one of the few original village members, explained that they were all in the forest gathering mushrooms to sell. The caseworkers began bragging on his musical ability and he sent a boy to go and fetch his fiddle for him. His bow was broken and carefully taped back together so we didnt really expect him to be able to do much with it. To my delight and Daniels, he instantly began playing gypsy folk music like a professional. Through a toothless grin, he explained to us that he once made a very good living performing at weddings and events but that those days were long over because no one wanted that kind of music anymore. It was one of the classic Romanian missionary moments that you really cant even capture on video. You just have to live it.
We left their house and took a short cut back to the town hall to drop off the case workers. To their surprise, the family gathering mushrooms was walking up the road with full buckets back to their house. We stopped and got out and talked to the mother about our idea of supporting their daughters financial needs with the agreement that they would not sell her into marriage (it is not legal marriage) until she finished four years of a university. The mother replied, If I was going to marry her off, I would have done it by now! She wants to learn and I want to let her. That made Neli and me laugh because she acted as if her fourteen year old daughter was an old maid and really didn’t stand a chance anyway of marrying! So now we begin the process of trying to find a Christian school take her in the area.
After we dropped the caseworkers off, we went back to Oradea where I picked up my car, dropped off the Dacia truck for repair, dropped off the van that Daniel drives for repair, and then went to pick up one of our Agape Home residents for her third ultrasound of her liver, gall bladder, and kidneys. She has lots of health issues that we are trying to resolve and I had two different opinions and I wanted a third one to see if he matched with any of the others! So, I whisked a highly nervous Voichita into my car (she is certain she has a serious illness we are not telling her about because of all the medical attention she is getting) to the local county hospital. Let me preface this part of the story by stating how much better conditions are in this 8 floor hospital than 8 years ago when I first came.
Voichita and I enter the hospital and snake around numerous halls until we find the elevators. We see two men dressed in white standing before a stretcher that is carrying an unconscious woman that appears to have been severely burned on her scalp and in considerable pain given the way she is holding her trunk. Both men are chatting away and one is eating a piece of bread over the patient while wearing surgical gloves. (No, I am not kidding.) Once he finished his bread, his promptly discarded the gloves because he stated his hands were sweaty and then proceeded to do something to the stretcher. At this point, I ask if that elevator is for public use and he and his colleague lightly laugh. No, he starts, I am afraid we dont have public elevators here. Just ones for emergencies and staff. I then exclaim, Are you joking?!!?? We have to go to the 7th floor! Voichita, trying to impress all with the one nice pair of shoes we gave her, is wearing high heels. He looks at us and says, Its okay, well make room for you. I wish we would have climbed the 7 floors after all.
After 5 more minutes of waiting, the elevator, operated by kind lady, arrives and they instruct us to enter first so they can push the stretcher in. We enter and they begin pushing and bouncing around this poor lady on the stretcher. I am bewildered by all that is going on and one of the men dressed in white, giggling, asks me if he can hold me to make more room in the elevator. I pretend not to hear him while the other man is just about to bust wide open guffawing at what a witty colleague he has. A man and yet another woman pile into this elevator and I was beginning to wonder if I might now just jump up on the stretcher since tight places are not my favorite thing. We go down one floor (to where the morgue and I hope other departments are) and they wheel the lady out while another stretcher filled with office furniture appears from before us, clearly loaded with items that are too wide for the elevator. The stretcher driver of the furniture begins to swear. We are all instructed to get off so they can engineer a way to make this work when it is very clear from basic physics that it aint happenin! The man who got on when we did offered to help unload some the furniture and load it into the elevator making room for the other pieces to be pushed in on the stretcher. They did this and we were all instructed to get back on but since there was so much less room, Voichita was being fully body pressed against one of the women and I against the furniture. We went back up to the floor we originally got on so the man could offload the furniture but it is the wrong floor. I am biting my tongue at this point. We go up to the 3rd floor and he does offload everything and more people get on. The elevator stops approximately 82 more times and after 15 minutes from the time we got on the elevator, we arrived at the 7th floor!!!
Voichita has nothing wrong with anything and we praise God for this! She is much relieved and so are we. She and I drove back to Agape Home with Voichita chattering away. I made two more stops and then headed home to write this email.
So that is what our day looked like here. I hope maybe it brought a smile to your face.
Keep pressing on in the name of Jesus! (regardless of whether or not you get to have this much fun in a day)
Basking in the Son,
Michelle
Posted on June 27th, 2006 by Michelle
Filed under: Michelle's Journal