Children’s Hospital Luis Turcanu.. 2
Since 1988 we have come together as a group of young
Christians.
We are from various denominations and churches. We live in different cities and
villages,
but we often meet in the village of Albershausen, which is located about
20 miles southeast
of Stuttgart (or about 130 miles northwest of Munich).
We want to
share the good news of Jesus Christ because we’ve experienced that the good
news of Jesus Christ has changed our lives, and we`ve started to follow Him.
One night
some of us watched the news on TV.
There were reports on starvation in Romania, which is only about 900 miles
away from us!
It was also reported about a giant lack of medical treatment and about an
immense number
of poor people.
Children’s
hospital get almost no money from the government. Children die because of the
lack of antibiotics. There is almost no social network. Therefore old people
don’t get any pension
(or just little); they live in the streets starving and dying. During the
winter many of them freeze
to death.
Agricultural work is almost always done without machines. Instead horses are
used. As a result
they have only small harvests.
Watching
those bad news we realized that something had to happen and that we had to help
someway. But how? Of course, we couldn’t change the political and economical
problems of
this country.
Above all
we were no experts at all in providing social help. We just knew: It had to be a very
practical way of helping the poor.
Well, we
started planning a transport aid and began to collect clothes, bikes, packets
of food,
and money for medication. We called this project “Der Treck”.
At that
time we got to know a German catholic monk called Father Berno who lives in
Timisoara. He does street work and he has taken care of social programmes for
poor
people for years. We decided to help his ministry with our transport aid.
We were
going to do a single action. But it turned out as a great and continuing
project: Coming
home again we knew that we had to help again; the poverty did of course not
vanish in this country
just because our single trip to; but help in various kinds was always necessary
– not just
once or twice. And since then we have organized transport aids annually.
We all work
on a voluntary basis and some of us spend their holidays in to help there
(for
example in the children’s hospital in Timisoara).
We are
running various projects spread over . Let us introduce them to you:
It began with
three small lorries full of clothes. But soon we had three or four of even much
bigger
ones to load – with about 30 tons of clothes and agricultural machines and
other relief supply each.
Most of the clothes went to Caritas in Bacova near Timisoara. Caritas gives the
clothes and the
shoes to poor people for very little money. The clothes are also used to help
to help street kids
- or teens. The city does not help these kids (or teens). The average life
expectancy of those kids
is about 33.
We brought
Caritas also tractors, combine harvesters, and other agricultural machines.
They help children’s homes or other social projects with the money they make
from selling
the agricultural products, or from lending the machines to nearby farmers.
In children’s hospitals haven’t received any
financial support from the government
for years. You might easily picture the tremendous problems caused by this:
lots and lots of ill
children, no medicine, no hypodermics, no gloves, even no cleaning detergent.
We are
shown round in the children’s hospital. A dying child in one of the rooms.
We ask:
"Is there no medical treatment to heal this child and save his life?"
The nurse
says: "Yes, there is. But only in Western countries. To heal this child a
certain medicine
is needed which costs about 2.500 German Marks (800 Pound Sterling or 1.200
US-Dollars
or 1300 EUR). But we don’t have the money here."
But we are
very happy to have given our contribution to saving many children’s lives with
the help
of our benefactors here in the south of Germany since we had gone to Romania
for the first time.
We set
ourselves the goal that no child had to die because of the lack of simple
medication.
Often, we have reached this aim; not always, though. We watched some the
children die.
We have
supported this children’s hospital since 1994 with medication and other medical
things
like gloves, dressing material etc. We collected money, bought the things or
the medicine we get
from pharmacies or other benefactors.
Here too,
in this city on the frontier Romania - Hungary, we are applying our plan of
helping to
develop self-help: We have delivered agricultural machines to produce food and
to earn money.
This way the money can be used to maintain the social status and to run an old
people’s home.
In 1996 a
house for old people was started where they are given food.
In
Hunnedoara, a city in the middle of Romania, an organisation called "Live
in Jesus Christ"
started a training centre. Now almost 30 farmers are employed there. With the
produced food
and the money they make a kindergarten is run, two shops, and a house for
feeding the poor.
We’ve already brought them some agricultural machines. With this help the
farmers are able
to produce food which they use to feed the poor.
In the
beginning of 1999 we visited a project in Tortomanu near Constanta and the
Black Sea:
A group of Christians helped old people by providing clothes, food and shelter.
The poor would
else just
not have survived the winter. Many had already died of starvation or had frozen
to death.
We decided
to collect money in our home towns and in our churches to support this project;
and we
could help saving lives throughout the winters of 2000/2001 and 2001/2002. And
one more time
we bought agricultural machines and brought them to the local Baptist church in
Constanta which
works for the poor in a very practical way.
They have
produced food there for two years now. How great it is to see them till the
fields not
by using horses but tractors and combine harvesters!
We are
praying to Jesus Christ to fill our hands and to enable us to help the people
suffering
from incredible despair and poverty. Many people have already decided to
support the
Romania project.