Romania, Day 6

Today was the last day of clinic. We split the teams up again. Sunni, Pepper, Larry, and Debbie stayed at the clinic here and saw Gyn patients while the rest of us went to a little village just next to the town we were in yesterday. The team that stayed here said they saw 54 patients - that's with one doc. So, they were very busy. We say 112+ with 2 docs and 2 nurses that were seeing patients on their own at times during the day, so we were busy, too. Both teams seemed to have had good days.

Sunni and Pepper said that in the two days of Gyn clinic, the total number of abortions by the women they saw was over 200. It's mind boggling how often that is used as birth control here. I asked if we were just losing something in translation and if those could have also been miscarriages, but they were not. It's very sad. However, today was not need as dark with oppression as they felt on Tuesday. Many of the women who came in today and had had several abortions in their past have since become Christians and serve faithfully in the local church. It was encouraging to the team to see the forgiveness and renewal in these ladies' lives.

In our group, we again had a good day full of patients who were eager to see us and continued to ask when we'll be coming back next year. That was nice. As has happened each day of clinic, at least one person brings us grapes plucked straight from the vines in their yard. Today it was a whole bunch of green grapes. Here's Kerfoot enjoying one:

There are two stories I want to tell about today...or maybe 3.

While I was serving in the pharmacy, several children came up to get stickers we were giving out and to play around with us. Two in particular were cute because they were wearing their school uniforms and were brother and sister. So, I had to take their picture. Then they had another liitle boy with them who I assumed was a younger brother. In fact, he was their uncle. His mother was their grandmother. She seemed very pleased with all of her children and was excited for me to take all of their pictures. Later I heard the rest of the story. That woman had mothered 6 (I believe) children in the past who were all older. Her youngest son came later in life and she tried to abort him. He survived. He seems perfectly normal physically. However, she told this to Johnny in triage and pointed at him standing next to her as she told the story. So, he had to have heard it. So, we're praying extra for him and the great plans God must have for his life.

Here is the little boy:
And his niece and nephew:

Later, Dr Kerfoot was making a house call and I got to go with him. It was just around the corner to the home of a woman we saw in the clinic. She wanted us to come see her dad. This man is 92 years old. He was in the Russian army back in WWII. During his time in the army, he would trade cigarettes for bread to get enough food. After the war, he and his battalion were just dismissed from the army. They weren't returned home - just dismissed. So, he and 10 others began the walk back home to Romania from Slovia - about 1500 miles. They started in February. It took them 3 months. This was through the snow at times and all the harsh conditions and without boots as they had worn out apparently. Before he left for the war, he was married and had one son. When he got home, he stayed faithful to his wife and they had 3 more children. He continued working as a farmer in this village of Romania. It was quite a story. We went to see the man because he had an infected place between his nose and eye that really needs surgery to be removed. He doesn't want to go to the hospital. In fact, he doesn't want to walk at all now. He fell 4 years ago outside and hasn't been out again since. Dr. Kerfoot talked with them a long time about his need to get up and stay moving. He gave him some anti-inflammatories to help with the pain so he can try to start standing again. Who knows if he'll do it or not. The story was really interesting, though, just to think about all this man has been through.

Vicky, the soldier, and Dr. Kerfoot:

The other story is about our time tonight once we got back to the dorms. All the Romanian people that we've been working with all week shared dinner with us, as they normally do. Then they pulled out a keyboard and we had a time of celebration for what God has accomplished this week. We sang many songs together, each in our own tongue, from Awesome God and Above All to How Great Thou Art and Amazing Grace as well as a few Romanian songs we didn't know but were blessed to hear. God's presence was awesome in the room. It was so great to hear voices of multiple languages singing in unity. It was a foreshadowing of a bit of the heaven we have to look forward to. What a great way to end this week.



Pastor Lucian, Pastor Peter, Leslie, and Johnny. At the end of the evening, we said our thank yous to each other and Johnny gave each of the pastors an offering from the mission team

Tomorrow we take it easy, do a little touring, a little shopping, a little eating. Then it's back to rest before a midnight ride back to Bucharest for a 6 am flight back home on Saturday morning. So, this will probably be my last post until I get home. It's been fun journaling the trip.