Bine ati venit Romania!

(Welcome to Romania)

Well, as I'm sure you can guess from my title I am officially in Romania (and have been for the past two weeks). But before I get ahead of myself...

After Prague I drove with the tour group to Berlin, Germany stopping off in Dresden for a bit to have a look at the cathedral and old parts of town there.
Berlin wasn't at all what I expected. Julia told us it was the fastest growing city in Europe, and I believe it. West Berlin has grown and developed so much in just the last 20 years, it was unbelievable by just looking at old pictures. I loved seeing all of the history and being able to tour around the city with one other girl from the tour-Sophia after our Third Reich tour of East Berlin. Highlights included the Jewish Memorial, free audio guided tour of the Parliament Building (Reichstag), Brandedburg Gate, Checkpoint Charlie, Babelplatz and of course the Berlin Wall.
In front of the Berlin Wall: (most of it has been repainted by various artists in celebration of the 20th anniversary of the wall falling this year)
Probably my favorite part of the wall, from what I saw at least at the East Side Gallery:Reichstag:
The next morning I had to say my goodbyes to the rest of the tour group as they continued onto to Amsterdam and I stayed behind in Berlin for one more day and night. It was a great last day before heading off to Romania as I was blessed to have friend Aka join me and hang out the whole day just chilling and 'getting lost' and meeting up with her best friend who lives in the city. We even ended up going to a Water Festival thing. The perfect end to my month of travels before the 'real work' started in Romania.

Sunday (Sept 6) I caught a flight to Budapest, Hungry and met up smoothly with the UCLA team with whom I have spent the last 2 weeks. Katelyn and myself coled this team of 11 with Fonda supervising/strategically leading with us. It was a great and trying experience-I definitely underestimated how hard leading my peers is, but I learned so much about myself and leadership and missions and...(the list could go on and on, but I will resist now as I am starting to get tired). The purpose and goals of this team and trip is apart of a much larger vision for the healthcare system of Romania, the details of which I will not go into now but will happily send anyone the information packet if you wish (email me at ashley.laurenlevine@gmail.com). The basic idea, however, is to inspire a new paradigm of healthcare that treats the patient's self as a whole-body, soul and spirit and is made accessible to all Romanians, particularly those who live in rural poor villages where no healthcare or health education is currently available nor encouraged. This trip was the second I have been one (the first I have co-led), but I pray not the last. In the end we are hoping more and more Romanian healthcare professionals will become passionate about the plan so that the system may spread nationally. It is exciting because on this past trip we met quite a few doctors that have this passion and are working towards this same goal, though there is still much of the country that has not been reached so I see many more trips in the future (well...so much for not sharing the details...) We spent our first week in Timisoara setting up free health clinics in 6 of the nearby villages working alongside a Romanian doctor, pediatric nurse, a pharmacist, and one day an addition doctor and nurse. The team's role as premedical students was basically patient in take and vitals. A typical clinic set up was as such:
1. Patient intake done by Romanian from church we partnered with: Gogatha Church in Timisoara
2. Blood Pressure and pulse station
3. Glucose levels testing station
4. Temperature and Weight station
5. Doctor Consultation
(6.) While the patient was waiting to see the doctor or after they had received their free medications from the doctor one of the local Romanians from the church would share the Gospel with them or offer to pray for them for free (something unheard of in the Orthodox church).

The second week we went to Dej and Cluj-Napoca, two places we had never been before but this time the doors were open. We were amazed to see so many doctors and pharmacists volunteering their time to set up similar clinics to what we had been doing in Timisoara...they just lacked the manpower and tools to do vitals and glucose testing so we happily stepped right on in thankful to be a useful piece fitting in nicely with their puzzle. That week we had many strategic meetings with the doctors and pastors to start planning for next year but mostly to see how we can support them now as they not only tr to do as many clinics as they can in the Cluj area, but they have also started doing ministry in the Oltenia (southern province of Romania bordering Serbia) and Moldova. They have the doctors, they sometimes have medications which are donated by a ministry located in Ohio, all they need is the equipment. All they have are blood pressure cuffs, so we happily handed over our glucometers and cholesterol testing machines to support them and help to improve their clinics as well as the hope that we would be able to return with cholesterol and cold medications and a portable EKG machine and ultrasound machine-these are what they described as their basic needs to be able to serve all of the patients that they see. Most patients in the most rural villages have only seen a doctor a handful of times in their lifetime due to the inaccessibility, lack of health education (therefore they do not see the need) and finances. In addition to doing many many clinics and seeing upwards of 700 patients, we many times split into two subgroups within our teams for the day in order to run two clinics, or also have a children's program going in another village. Our children's program included a Noh's Ark interactive play, proper teeth brushing demonstration with a stuffed lion, food pyramid education, coloring, and outdoor games. It has been a great two weeks of learning, growing, helping, inspiring and being inspired, fellowshipping, and of course, travelling.
Wendy doing blood pressure in a clinic in a village outside of Dej:
Lauren working the glucose station: (yeah PHS glove box making a debut...)Terry at the weight and temperature station:Myself testing cholesterol levels (unfortunately we didn't have enough strips for our machine for every patient so we were only able to do about 150 patients at the request of the doctors):Doctor consultations: We had the privilege of working with this doctor for 4 days in the villages around Cluj and Dej:Dr Cosmine doing consultations in one of the many churches we based our clinics out of: (we are very much looking forward to working with him again in the future as he is the unofficial leader of the team of volunteers in the Cluj area):
Some patients looking over the health education posters we had brought at the clinic in Cerna Village (just outside of Timisoara):

Dana (member of Bethel Church in CLuj whom we partnered with) sharing outside of the clinic in Garbau village:
Children's program-performing our Noah's Ark play outside of the clinic in Sanger Village outside of Cluj: (you can see the church where the clinic was held in the background-the log cabin):

Practicing proper teeth brushing techniques with our 'patient' the Lion in Itzvine Village outside of Timisoara:

The team with the view of Cluj-Napoca behind them:
After working...well volunteering for 2 weeks with the team we headed about 75 km northwest to the sub-Carpathian Mountains in Bucea Village to relax for two nights and have a team debrief of the trip before they all headed home and I continued on.
Katelyn and I in front of hay stacks with the mountains behind us on one of the many walks we took: (it was nice to have the time to catch up with her and be friends opposed to stressed out leaders...)

And now, after 15 hours of traveling on the Romanian train system (much different from my Eurail experiences with Katie...) I am safely in Nicoresti Village just outside of Tecuci, Romania in the region of Galati (far East of the country). I will be spending the next 7 weeks working at the Tanner Romania Mission here which is a ministry started by an American couple (Sandie and Bruce Tanner) almost 20 years ago who opened up a home for disabled orphans in the area. They now have 4 different homes in Nicoresti and care for over 35 children whom they all call their own and who call them Mama Sandie and Tata Bruce. I am living in the basement of one of the homes (Casa Elizabetha) with the other volunteer here, Kirstie, and I will be/have been working in Casa Elizabetha hanging out with the 8 women (age ranges from 16-31) who live in Casa Elizabetha with various disabilities. I can already tell I will learn much here and already have. Needless to say I was very excited when I first arrived to unpack my backpack-something I haven't been able to do for the past six weeks, and have a place I can be grounded in, at least for these 2 months. Even more so, knowing that I won't have to say goodbye to someone soon-I am getting tired of saying goodbye every other week... I will write more about the Mission and my job/responsibilities/experiences here more later this week as it is getting late and I have work in the morning (tomorrow is my first official day of work...though I have been here and shadowing Kirstie since Saturday morning).

2 Corinthians 9:12
Matthew 4:23
1 Corinthians 12:12-31