Tuesday, March 20, 2012

We have our Moldovan green card and SPRING is here!

Elder McGovern and I are both offical here now, we have our Green Card good through May 2013!


On the 3rd and 4th we have a visit from the Howells and Wahlquists coming here from Romania to do various types of teaching. 

back: Elder and Sora Howell and Elder and Sora Kitchen
front: Elder and Sora McGovern and Sora and Elder Wahlquist
March 2012 in front of Balti church
All of us, to include the Kitchens, visited the Balti group on Sunday and had a wonderful experience!  The Howells are from England and teaching was/is their profession.  It was a treat to watch them work!

Elder Howell teaching how to teach with Elder Garlic translating

We have also joined with the Kitchens to hire a great tutor, Elena Mironiuc, to teach us Romania with lessons twice a week.  It is going well so far as Elena is an excellant teacher.
On March 7th we attended the theatre and it was a wonderful experience.  I wish I knew how to put the music with the dancing...but..I don't!

We also have approval for the clinic in Balauresti where Susan Adams and her husband Curt as working with the Peace Corp.  They will get running water and toliet in the medical clinic!

Susan Adams, a member of our branch, is seen here with the Doctor on the right and the two nurses on the left.  They are all very dedicated individuals.


Currently the water is brought in buckets from the well down the street and put in each basin.  When the water is dirty it is taken back down the stairs and thrown in the street in front of the clinic.  The nearest toliet is almost a block down the street at the mayor's office.

While visiting this city we were able to tour a bakery!  Yes, it was great!




The evening of March we took the Maxi Taxi down to the theatre with Elder and Sora Kitchen and     .  In a beautiful theatre built in the 1980's by Gorbachof we enjoyed many traditional dances of several countries.





  Wish I were able to put music to it but it was lively!!!  We really enjoyed the entire evening. 

On Friday the 16 of March the Kitchens went with  us to visit English classes in Cimislia.  Here a group of 8th graders had prepared "The Three Little Kittens" poem which they purrrrformed purrrfectly!  We had fun! and there are 3 great English teachers here!



As we finished the day the children said good-bye and we snapped a picture with Elena, Oxala, Viorica, Sora McGovern, Elder McGovern, Rodica, Sora Kitchen and Elder Kitchen

The following day the new equipment for the school kitchen arrived!



You can see the equipment before and today they are actually eating food prepared on the new equipment!



We are searching for a place that our branch could have a regular opportunity to give service and I hope we have found it at the school for the mentally handicapped which we visited earlier in the year. Anatol, the director, works diligently for his students.  We may have also found a Helping Hands project at the same school!  We are still working on that.
Elder McGovern just pushed the button to submit our first large water project in the cities of Piatra and Jeloboc.


Tomorrow at 5am we leave for Frankfurt, Germany to attend a humanitarian conference and the Temple of course.  We are so excited and will update when we return!

Friday, March 2, 2012

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!