Wow! Courtroom Surpise!

9:00pm one night we got an invite from our wheelchair partner, Mihail, to join him at a "governmental meeting" the next morning. We thought he just wanted us to meet someone he worked with. We got there to find we were in a courtroom. We met Mihail and his co-workers and were surprised to see Victor, another of our partners in court. Then we saw Dr. Bendulac there who is the doctor we are partnering with on next weeks vision surgery training project. Turns out this was the monthly court hearings for deciding who the government will waive the 20% customs taxes for. They were reviewing 8 requests and 7 of the 8 requests were approved. Turns out that 4 of the 8 requests were our projects! 2 were 40 ft shipping containers of clothing/blankets/hygeine kits/newborn kits/boots that Victors group is partnering with us on. 1 was the medical equipment Dr Lewis is bringing from the US to do the eye surgery training then donating to Dr Bendulacs hospital, and 1 was 350 wheelchairs to Mihail's group.
As if that weren't all surprise enough...just before the hearing was adjourned a man from the government stood up and said that since the VanWormer's from LDS Charities was in the courtroom he wanted to thank us. He said that we had brought in 5,000 wheelchairs in the last few years, and so many containers of goods, and so much help to Moldovans that he wanted to thank us. And thank us he did. Then immediately Victor stood up and addressed everyone saying all kinds of wonderful things about how we have helped him distribute goods to people. It was a lovely unexpected "love fest" as someone called it. After court was over the ViceMinister came down to shake our hands and thank us again.
Then the man who was so grateful to us to start with, came to Tom and said that he heard Elder Jackson was coming from Salt Lake City Utah regarding wheelchairs and he wanted to present him with a medal to show his gratitude. What do you say to that?? Tom tried to explain that the Jacksons were Short Term Specialists that were like technicians coming to train us and it wasn't the Prophet or even an apostle coming. Boy did we ever raz Elder Jackson about almost being "decorated" with medals for doing his missionary work! Here is the Government building with the same roses that are grown all over the city.

Photo from left to right: Vasile Ouatu (the man who wanted to present medals to the Jacksons), Tom,Toni, Mihail (in the wheelchair), Sister Jackson, Elder Jackson.