Guineafowl

The view of our neighbor's guineafowl from our back yard

 One of our neighbors has chickens and guineafowl. Last week five young guineafowl escaped to our yard. The next morning Nancy and I decided we needed to get them back home, so with much effort we were able to corner them and throw them back over the fence. I knew guineafowl were noisy, but I didn't realize how dirty and smelly they were also. It was not fun.
During the week the young birds escaped to our garden a couple more times and we managed to return them. However, Sunday morning before leaving for church we noticed them in the yard again. We decided that we needed to speak with the owner, so after church we went to his house. We found him at home and between his broken English, our little Romanian, and sign language we were able to let him know about the escaped birds. He was so apologetic and said he had not had a chance to clip their wings yet. We caught the birds again, put them over the fence to the owner, and he clipped the wings immediately. Again, he apologized several times as we went back to the house, and we thought everything was fine. A few minutes later our bell rang and there was our neighbor with a bag of a dozen eggs which he gave to us with more apologies. I don't think we'll have a problem with the guineafowl any more.

The eggs are delicious

Social Health Insurance

Sunday during the sermon, the guest speaker reminded everyone that we can do nothing at all without God's help.  We are totally dependent on him.  Thinking of that reminder, today we say, "The Lord helped us to apply for, receive and pay for Romanian social health insurance.  Praise His Name!"
Romania has government health care and every citizen pays health insurance through their employer.  Health care is then received without additional cost.  When we applied for Romanian residence permits, we signed a document promising to obtain "the social health insurance."  In other words, as a requirement to live in Romania, we needed to pay into the health care system.
It took a while to find out exactly what that meant for us since we have no income from Romania, but finally we discovered where to go.  It happened to be an office just a few yards from the Open Bible Church!  Pastor's wife Gabi went with Nancy to the office to help her make the proper arrangements.  The clerks in the office had several discussions among themselves and the supervisor made a phone call before they figured out what to do with us foreigners.  However, they were kind and finally worked it out, giving us the papers we needed to sign.
Meanwhile, Viki, a friend from church, called her cousin who works in the exact office in Cluj from which we needed papers to submit to the immigration office.  Viki's cousin was able to send us the necessary papers in just a couple of days--an amazing accomplishment for a government office. Friday we turned in the papers to immigration and this morning we completed the matter by paying for the health insurance here in Gherla.
So now we have health insurance required in the US and in Romania.  But even so, we are relying on the Lord to keep us healthy.  We also do our part by eating a healthy diet and exercising.
Update on language test:  Thank you for praying for us when we took our language test at our last class in Cluj on Friday.  Mike and I both passed.  We thank the Lord for his help.  Please continue to pray as we study on our own and with the help of friends.
God is good.  He is our helper!

Language Test Friday

A page from our Romanian language textbook.

This Friday is our Romanian language test, so we are studying hard this week.  It will be the end of the second module of language classes we are taking in Cluj, about an hour's drive from our home.  Holding a conversation is still beyond us, but we are understanding much more of what is being said and we can give appropriate greetings and express simple things.  Hopefully, our test on Friday will show that we have indeed made progress.
Since, Lord willing, we will be in Romania for only a couple of years, fluency in the language is not our goal, although we would like to be able to communicate on a basic level.  Our current plan is to continue our studies here in Gherla with the help of our Romanian friends through conversation and self-study.
Please pray for us that we will be guided by the Holy Spirit not only in our decisions concerning language study, but especially in His plans for our time here.  It is evident that God is working and we want to stay in step with Him.

Red Romanian License Plates

Mike replacing Hungarian license plates with temporary Romanian plates

Today we received temporary Romanian license plates for the car.  These plates have red numbers and are good for two months, which allows time to have the car inspected and for Romanian car registration and permanent plates to be issued.  We are making progress.
We had to wait until we received our Romanian residence permits before we could begin work on getting the car registered in Romania.  Pastor Simi and his wife Gabi are helping us get everything done.  The process here is interesting.
There are businesses that specialize in handling the entire registration process including the paperwork, making appointments, taking the car in for the proper inspections, getting temporary insurance, and other things we don't even know about.  Right after we received our residence permits, Simi and Gabi took us to a company they know well. After making arrangements there, we had to go to a notary to have papers drawn up and signed giving the registration company permission to act on our behalf.  We had to go to the notary twice because the first time they would not allow us to sign the papers without an official translator present to make sure we understood what we were signing.
Today we went back to the registration company to pick up the temporary registration, temporary license plates and the interim insurance papers.  The company made an appointment to have our car inspected the end of May, so we will take the car to them the day before the appointment for their agents to take it to the inspection center in Cluj.  We should have the permanent registration and license plates the first of June.
What a blessing it is to have help from our pastors who know what to do and translate for us.  Thanks, Simi and Gabi!