by geraldw | May 22, 2015 | Friday Update
In 2000 I was in Romania for a conference at the resort town of Braşov. I was eating supper and surprised by something crunchy. It turned out to be a piece of my tooth. It had broken off down to the gum line. I could imagine the pain I might have on the plane trip back home as they pressurized the cabin. I had to get it taken care of, but I was a continent away from my dentist. So I asked several people on the street about a dentist. When I got a dentist’s name twice, I figured he must be good, so went to his office. But the dentist didn’t speak English. A local ski instructor who spoke a little English was in the waiting room and explained my situation to the dentist. So the dentist called a taxi and sent me to get an x-ray at another office. The x-ray office was one room with everyone sitting around waiting their turn at the seat in the middle. No secure room; no lead shield; nothing. The cost was 4,000 lei – about 12¢. When I returned with the x-ray, the dentist explained that I needed a root canal. He drilled out my tooth, extracted the nerve, and packed the cavity with antibiotic soaked gauze. I had to return in two days. At the next session, he cleaned out the tooth canal and installed a titanium post that would hold the new crown. He finished the crown in about an hour. The total cost for root canal and crown build-up was...
by geraldw | May 15, 2015 | Friday Update
I had an afternoon off while in Romania in March, 2015, so Brother Florin Doboş took me to the dinosaur museum in Haţeg. During the late Cretaceous period Haţeg had been an island and home to some interesting creatures. The Dinosaur Museum of Transylvania in Haţeg is where school children are “indoctrinated” in evolution. The bones and a life-sized reproduction of the famous Balaur Bondoc are on display. But the details are telling: no neck vertebrae or skull bones have been found. How do they know what the head looked like? No tail vertebrae have been found. How do they know what the tail looked like? The Balaur Bondoc model on display has contour feathers, flight feathers, and wing-like forearms. But no feathers were found at all. Why are feathers displayed on the model? The janitor snickered and told me that the feathers on the model were actually from four turkeys! And this model of Balaur Bondoc – with its fake head and fake tail and fake feathers – is shown to school children as factual...
by geraldw | May 8, 2015 | Friday Update
In 1991 I was challenged to do more to get Scriptures in to Romania. We had bought New Testaments printed in Oskosh, Wisconsin, but they were too expensive to buy in bulk. Keith Vanderlinden at Source of Light Ministries referred me to Gilbert Lindsey, a printer in Richardson, Texas. Brother Gilbert had a contact in Minsk in Belarus at a printing company. Just after the iron curtain had collapsed in 1989, the Russian Academy of Sciences printing operations had run out of funding, and had stopped printing. They had presses and workers, but no money and no work. I contracted with them to print 40,000 Romanian New Testaments and 10,000 Russian new Testaments. They sold them to me for 30¢ each, delivered to Romania! We couldn’t even get New Testaments shipped to Romania from America for that price if we had them for free! They were delivered to Chernovski, Ukraine and Alba Iulia, Romania and we distributed them the following summer. I was amazed at how God had worked! I grew up under the Cold War cloud of Soviet aggression. The USSR was a constant threat with its atheism and iron-fisted control over its people. But God is in control of the world. In 1991, New Testaments were printed in Russia, on government presses, and then exported to...
by geraldw | May 1, 2015 | Friday Update
Cipri Balta, a dear Romanian friend living in Chattanooga connected me with Dr. Ionut Buşan, a dentist friend of his from high school days in Arad. Most times that I visit Romania, I plan to get dental work done by Dr. Buşan. He is not only a Christian and a good dentist, but has also has become a good friend. He explains everything that he is doing and I am interested in the technical aspects of dental work. I have had crowns and fillings, and I just had two implants where I have lost teeth. What a blessing to use your talents for God’s kingdom! Thank you Dr....
