Hands of Hope

May 2012

Florin (young man with broken legs and spine) is doing ok, he is staying at Cobila and we have arranged for local nurse to come in twice a week to change the dressing on his back. Have to get Dr from the hospital to do a home visit later this week to change his catheter. His sister is a lovely lady but with 6 children to look after she has taken a lot on. he was sent home from the hospital with no guidelines as to what he should do while he was home just told  “come back in 2 months to have plaster off”.

Ana ( I am taking her to the hospital twice a week to have the leg ulcers dressed). She was slightly worse for wear from drink when I collected her at 9am this morning! But it is good that she is getting the ulcers treated. We have given her vitamins and trying to encourage her to drink lots of water rather than the pure alcohol!

Gaëlle is recovering from miscarriage, has 2 aunts from France visiting this week which is a boost for her.

Samantha is mother in one of the gypsy families (built house for them last year). She has gynae problems and one day I have to go and collect her and take her to see Dr in Botosani (about 1 ¼ hours away from where she lives) with view to arranging surgery for her.

Lots of paperwork in the pipeline and certainly prayers needed for it all to happen. So please pray for new electric supply, land registry and transfers, planning permissions etc.

Today & tomorrow are bank holidays here but we have still been busy. Had a call just as we were coming home from  Cobila this evening that a tractor was near one of the pieces of land we own. (we need  it disking so we can plant corn and getting tractor on site when land is in right stage is like gold dust). So we went up to sort it out and hope we can get the same tractor to the other land we need disking tomorrow! Heavy rain due again later this week and then the land may be too wet for a few days. It has been very hot for the past few days max of +35C on Sunday. Bit of a change from the -35C in mid-February when we left.

Thank you so much for thoughts and prayers, words cannot explain how much it means to us.

Many blessings to all at Broadway

Ruth

 

 

April 2012

The Bakers are basking in temperatures of 35+C at present.....don’t covet it folks as you adjust your thermals! 

Things going well and there have been four baptisms at the Varfu village church.  Always busy, they are so grateful for your prayers.  Ruth is taking Ana to the hospital today to have her leg ulcers dressed.

Please continue to pray for wisdom and integrity (in a very corrupt society) and compassion and wisdom (dealing with many difficult pastoral issues)  May God bless their week and yours.

 

February 2012

Whenever we are getting ready to leave Romania for the Isle of Man it seems we experience a situation which reminds us why we are here and compels us to come back. Today less than a week before we leave Dorohoi we had a great time with the families at Cobila, and we were running just one last one errand at the end of the day; it started earlier this morning when we had been contacted by a grandmother we know, pleading for help for her and her family.
 

She lives in a small 2 room house with one if her sons, his wife and 2 children and a daughter in law and her son. At the time we were already out delivering aid and said we would try and call to see her after lunch.

As we drove down the lane to her house we saw the grandmother walking through the thick snow carrying a crust of bread and a jug of something. It looked like she was taking food to an animal. But when we asked here where she was going she told us she was taking food to the old house which we had stopped alongside.

It is a house we have driven past a number of times. We had given food before to the old man who lived there until he died a few years ago. We thought that now it was uninhabited. It turned out that her 37 year old daughter and husband lived there. The man who had died was her father.

 

It is an old house built of mud bricks, half of the house is falling down, the ramshackle wooden door led into a porch and then through another broken door into the room the couple were using to live in. With a temperature of -15C it seemed colder inside than out, the ad hoc soba was not lit and you could see day light through the holes in the walls. The lady was huddled under a damp quilt and was shaking with cold. We had fire-briquettes in the car so brought then in and also left some food which she ate immediately. As we were leaving the man happened to come back and he lit the fire. We  went back later with bedding and some hot food.
 

It was cold enough in there today, nothing short of a miracle that they have survived the past few days when the temperature has been down to -30C overnight.
 

We spoke to other NGO’s in the town to see if they were receiving help from anyone else but as far as we can tell they have not had any help and they have nothing, no jobs and no income.
We will go back in next couple of days with some more aid and see what we can do to help them access regular support.

You can find out more about Hands of Hope at http://ruachhope.blogspot.com