A Day in Our Missionary Life.......

Up early...well sort of...since we didn't get to bed until 2:30am I would say that 8:00am was on the early side to be getting up! Showered, put on our "missionary clothes" and headed out the door. (after a prayer of course!)

First thing is to do a really big shop...Went to the big Metro store (like Sam's or Costco) to buy food for the flood victims delivery. Spent 8,959 Lei on food and then tried to figure out how to get it all into our little Opel Corsa.
Every 2 weeks we do this shop and take the food to the 66 people most devastated by the flood last year. These people have lost everything and are living in an old dormatory building. They had no food so we provide it until they get into the new houses the government is building for them.
We bought saugages, eggs, corn, cornmeal, buckwheat, tomatoes, cucumbers, sour cream, oil, sugar, rice, tomatoe paste, salt, cheese, baby cereal, fresh cherries, shampoo, bars of clothing soap to wash by hand, cookies, etc etc

Believe it or not we got the other half of the food into the car too!

We unloaded all the food outside and the Peace Corp volunteer (Katie), Hasmik, Eugene, the Elders helped us set up and distribute the food. There were over 500 eggs and none got broken! 13 kilos of cherries. 465 cucumbers. A lot of food! It was a really big shopping day!

The Sister Missionaries came to help too. Everyone got into it. The elderly folks told Hasmik that they had lost everything in the flood and they didn't even have food to eat until we came along.

Most of the people watched or helped as we set up everything. They are such dear people.

Here is Hasmik passing out food. One of the Elders said they were the egg specialist so Hasmik claimed to be the tuna, cornmeal, peas, and corn specialist. One sister was the mayo queen. It was so fun and people were so very grateful.

The people helped each other to get their food to their rooms. This little girl is carrying the sausages for an elderly lady.

I still can't believe that we didn't break one single egg during all this!

After we passed out the food I passed out the clothes donated from Kristin Chevrier and some that I had left over from previous projects. They were were so happy.
Even a mom got a pair of pants.

This little guy really loved his new coat. He wouldn't take it off even though it a hot summer day. We all got a chuckle out of his little Croc shoes being on the wrong feet. Kids are the same all over the world, aren't they?!

This young woman is alone in the dormatory. She has been fending for herself and I just love her. She has been like the one leper that came back and gave thanks when the others went on their way. She is a special young lady.

The lady in red is Dora. She has been our organizer and contact person. She and her husband have 3 girls. Here she is with some of the children.




Eugene with the Elders celebrating the great feelings of the day. We had extra cherries so all the workers got a bag of fresh delicious cherries to eat on the way back to Chisinau.

Our next meeting... was with Vera and her son Valera. Vera was so scared to ask us for help. She asked us to come to her room to see her son. As soon as she started to tell us about him she began to cry.

Valera has developed some sort of serious growth or infection on his legs. He is in pain and has no money to see a doctor.
We told him that if he could get to Chisinau we would pay for the doctor visit to diagnose the problem and get him some relief.
When we got back to Chisinau... we took Hasmik and Eugene home then we went straight to the office of our wheelchair partner, Mihail. We had contracts for him to sign so he can get two more ship containers full of wheelchairs.


While meeting with Mihail he invited us to a disabled marathon contest in Hincesti. Some of the contestants will be competing while using some of our 3 wheel wheelchairs that have a tricycle attachement on. Those are operated by the hands and they go pretty fast so Mihail thinks his team has a chance of winning. Mihail is disabled also.


We were starving by now ...so we had dinner at the closest Andy's Pizza. I am on a diet to loose the 20 pounds I put on while in Moldova so I just had chicken kabobs and salad but Tom had his favorite pepperoni pizza. They put corn on it. It's really good!

There is a flower market across the street from the Andy's Pizza. The flowers were gorgeous. Tom bought me a bouquet. Isn't he awesome!

We had to hurry though because we were meeting with the Elders at the church to go with them and a fellow to look at a potential piece of property to build a tradtional LDS chapel on. We met them at the church and they took a photo of us with my new flower bouquet.

We are so happy, can you tell?

This is the property we looked at. It is a large lot with a large building on it that would need to be torn down. The building is in poor condition but has a newer front facade.


The price is over a million euro and it is not even on a major road for the maxi taxi's to bring the members to church.
It was pretty much "no go" on this property. I tried to get a photo of everyone giving me a thumbs down sign but that was a "no go" too.
Went home and worked on the computer for a couple hours to turn in an expense report to Germany then washed up and went to bed...about 1am. A full day. Notice my new flowers in the bathroom. Aren't they pretty?

I has been a busy but memorable day. I wonder what we will do with all our spare time when we get home again to the U.S.