ROMANIA UPDATE
The newsletter of Romania Care, registered charity no. 1012759

October 2002

Family Shoebox Appeal 2002

This year’s Family Shoebox Appeal is now gathering momentum. People from as far afield as Hull, Taunton and Milton Keynes are busy filling their shoeboxes. Schools, churches and other local groups are helping with this years appeal which promises to be the largest yet

Please be careful with what you include in your box. Remember :

No dried or tinned food of any kind
No coffee or tea
No money
No medicines
No out of date items.

Just one jar of coffee, or one bottle of Calpol, included in a box could jeopardise a whole articulated lorry carrying thousands of boxes.

Don’t forget the deadline for getting boxes to us is 31st October – the boxes begin their journey to Romania on 1st November.

If you need further help or advice please contact Helen Beames (01727 860900) or Vicky Slater (01727 765516)

Nursing and Respite Care Project.

The weather has been very wet in Romania this summer. This has caused flooding in many parts of Romania (see below) and delayed construction work on the Nursing and Respite care home in Ilisesti.

We are however pleased to report that the roof is at last nearing completion and the contract for the windows was signed at the end of September. This means that hopefully the building will be weatherproof before the winter snows come! Please pray that this would be so.

Looking to next year, we still need to raise another £45,000 to fit out the building. Any help you, your church or group, can give with this would be gratefully received. We are planning a number of fund raising events next year. Watch this space for more details!

Floods in Clit

At 18.00 on Friday 19th July it began to rain at Clit, a small village near Suceava in northeast Romania.

It only rained for 20 minutes, but in those 20 minutes so much rain fell that a wall of water 1.5m high swept through the middle of the village.

25 homes were either destroyed or so badly damaged that they need to be rebuilt. In all 200 people have been affected by this tragedy. Many of these people have lost everything - home, possessions, animals and crops.

10 days after the waters swept through the village, two Romania Care Trustees visited it. Two bridges have been destroyed, the bulldozers were in trying to clear away the rubble; most of the village wells had been destroyed.

A village bakery was making and donating 400 loaves of bread a day to the people affected.

The government had promised aid in terms of land and bricks. Bethesda Foundation from Suceava, partner charity of Romania Care, has donated medicines.

On Saturday 3rd August, some of our summer team returned to the village taking clothes for those who had lost everything. These were distributed with the assistance of the Orthodox Priest in the village.

We have also committed to provide new wells and repair old ones.

Romania Care is getting bigger

This is a fact! Our mailing list now numbers nearly 300, our income last year had increased to nearly £84,000, and the number of calls and emails to the office continues to grow.

At a recent meeting of the trustees, a decision was made to seek to appoint someone to work as an administrator for the charity. This decision was not taken lightly, as we have seen the fact that we were totally dependent on volunteers as a strength. However, the charity has grown considerably in recent years and we now see the lack of volunteer time as something which is hindering the work. Hence the decision made.

Job Vacancy

A vacancy exists within Romania Care for an administrator to work from home initially 3 hours per week.

The followings skills/aptitudes are needed : Self motivated. Committed to the work of Romania Care. Regular user of Email. Microsoft Word. Microsoft Publisher. Basic book-keeping. Pay negotiable.

If you are interested in this position, please send a CV to the office at 4 Bury Lane, Codicote, Hitchin, SG4 8XT or by Email to info@RomaniaCare.com

News on giving

It is possible to give by cash, cheque, CAF voucher, CharityCard and Give As You Earn.

More details of all these ways of giving can be obtained from the office.

Romania Care
Registered Charity No 1012759
Office: 4 Bury Lane, Codicote, Herts, SG4 8XT
Phone/Fax: 01438 - 822007.
Email: info@RomaniaCare.com

Romania Care - Paul's update July/August/September

My apologies for not writing sooner but times here have been very busy. As well as work, we have had many guests staying and of course the new addition to our family…..Joshua!

Baby Joshua weighed in at 3.450 kg but, unfortunately, Lenuta had to have a Caesarean section to ensure their safety. The whole event for a new British father in Romania was very stressful as I wasn't allowed in the hospital and therefor was unable to touch or even see Joshua for a week. This is the just the way it is in Romanian hospitals. They told me that the reason that I couldn't go into the ward was that I might be carrying an infection. Having seen a Doctor smoking in the hospital corridor didn't seem to square with that argument! Anyway, Lenuta was allowed out of the hospital after 7 days. She was still very weak, and unable to lift anything around the house, so I became a house husband for a while.

Soon after Joshua's arrival the British team came to Romania and I met them in Bucharest. The mornings were taken up with the now annual Holiday club where the village children come in their hundreds (literally) to listen to the Gospel and then participate in various sports and craft activities. The afternoons were taken up with various jobs including painting the back of the school, the hospital wood store and garage. We also repaired the roof of the house of a very poor old lady who is helped financially by our partner charity in Holland. She was very grateful and is now able to sleep without getting wet.

For the second week we went to Ilisesti for the Holiday club and to decorate the newly purchased house. Unfortunately the village Orthodox Priests told the village that we were Satanists! As a result very few of the village children came to the Holiday Club. We went to see the Priest about this and after a long, and at times heated, discussion we invited the Priests to attend the holiday club and then to comment. To our surprise they came and visited, and even participated. Afterwards one Priest told me that we were doing some extraordinary work for the children. We thought that we had resolved our differences but sadly this was not the case. The Priests are very sceptical about any one coming to share the Gospel, who isn't Orthodox! This is an area we will have to work on, to build up their confidence in us.

At the end of the second week the main teams went back home and I went with just two English people to the Republic of Moldova. We held a holiday club with our Moldovan partners in a small village called Ricipeni. The weather was not very good, but the week was a success.

Some of you may have heard of the plight of a village called Clit. This year the village was flooded and many people lost their homes and livestock. During the team's visit we went to this village, to see for ourselves the problem and also to distribute a van load of clothes to those who had lost everything. Since that visit money has been raised to help these people and at present we are working on building a community well for the village.

Lastly the Ilisesti nursing home is coming on well and if you visit the Romania Care website you will see that the roof is progressing very fast and should be completed by next week. We have also signed the contract for the windows and doors to be put in and all the building should be closed off in time for winter. We are also having the site fenced.

Thanks for all the support everyone gave us during Lenuta's pregnancy and especially for all the lovely cards and presents that we received after his birth. A special thanks to the members of Laurence's Church in Codicote who gave us a musical toy, which Joshua loves, as well as the money raised.

We look forward to seeing everyone sometime in the winter.

Paul and Lenuta Clark
6th October 2002