Wanting Spring but not waiting

This is what we woke up to on March 2nd following several days of temperatures which melted most of the

 snow!  It snow until about 2pm.  We are hoping that we will not have much more snow! 

 We have made several trips up to Balti and Orhei which are 2 hours/1 hour from Chisinau.  Some of our time has been spent for water projects or service projects of various types and some of our time has been spent with the Branch and the Group of the Church there, as we are providing shadow leadership for those congregations.

We have the opportunity to pass through many of the small villages.  It is always a pleasure!

We also had a wonderful zone conference.  I did not get many pictures of that but this one is a keeper!  Sisters Bennett and Komar have their Russian hats!  Sister Komar, born in Russia, was adopted along with her sister and her home is now in Washington State.



This past Tuesday we went to the villiage of Balauresti, which is near the Romanian border and is about 2 hours from Chisinau.  There we met with Susan Adams, a Peace Corp volunteeer and also the employees of the village clinic.  (Susan and her husband Curt have been working over a year in this village and they are also members of our branch in Chisinau.)  The village clinic is on the second floor of a building and they have no running water.  The water is brought in by bucket and leaves the building in the same way, ending up on the street in front of the clinic.  Their nearest toliet is at the mayor's office a half a block down the street.  We are working with the Peace Corp to get them running water and a toliet.

 

Susan Adams, a Peace Corp volunteer is with the Dr. and two nurses which work at the Medical Center in theVillage of Baluaresti. Below is one of four wash basins used at the clinic.

Followng our visit to the clinic Susan took us on a tour of the local bakery...now that was worth the drive!

The following day we again visited the Society of the Disabled because the plans were ready for them to begin installing the gas line. 

Ray McGovern, Senik Sargsyan our translator, Mihai Marginean above
Senik and Matvei Ceban (contractor), Matvei  and Constantine

As you can see it was really cold in Mihai's office.  We fine tuned the pricing and agreed to get started on the line, which will take about 3 weeks.  We then discussed several aspects of the wheelchair program which we have for the disabled and also the possibility of helping with Constantine's shoe factory, which is on the second floor of the build.  And yes, it is also unheated!