It is a lovely Tuesday night in Bucharest. Emily and I have settled in well. We got our clearance for the baby hospital today, we start on Thursday. Emily has been busy with school, I have been busy with clinic. I already know at least one reason why God has brought me here this time. One of the new social workers at the clinic has a 22 yo sister with Cerebral Palsy who is brilliant but is stuck in the complicated system of being disabled in Romania. We will go visit her in a rural village on Sunday. I have done lots of physicals on missionary families, Romanians, Turkish, Dutch, English diplomats. Tomorrow we will do the whole Mormon missionary force in Romania. Its fun work. I assisted on a small surgery today. The only sadness is I cannot get clearance to go work with the disabled children from last time. The one child who I had a special relationship with though has been moved to a private Catholic orphanage and I am hoping to get clearance to go see him at least.

Things are slightly better accessibility wise here. There is a van with a lift to help one get off the plane and lift into the terminal. I actually rode down the whole street today by myself in the green machine, curb cuts the whole way. I almost had tears in my eyes. Such freedom, my people here have never known such physical freedom. I learn so much of spiritual freedom from these simple things. God wants to free us from our sin and our own selfish selves but we have to let him tear down the walls (the curbs) in our life. I think often of my friend who was my initial introduction to the plight of my people who died soon after I met her. I am sad she did not live to see these days but happy to know she is with the Lord. We still have a long way to go education and health care wise, but enviromentally they are making an effort.

God is doing interesting things in my heart. I love this land and I love Eastern Europe. But Romania is chaning rapidly. Romania will need less and less missionary doctors over time. The medical missionaries who run the clinic are thinking about retiring. There is still much work to be done here but I am not sure if this is where God has me to come for the long term. So where Russia? Ukraine? Africa? I recently received an e-mail from one of my future supervisors in Africa he is asking for pediatricians with a passion for the disabled to run a rehab center in Tanzania, they want to start a series of these throughout the continent.  I am going to work in one of them in Kenya in Jan. They were very clear, that my elective is a window to employment, they are almost recruiting me 5 years early it seems. Also on my way here, I ran into a guy who works for Samarthian’s Purse who gave me his card and wants me to e-mail their medical missions dept. It seems possible jobs are growing on trees at the moment…

 

,.,,,there is so much to tell about being back here and about Spain and Italy and France…but it will take me a while to get back to speed with my blog. I am also writing my reisdency personal statement wich is a painful endless process.