BondServant News
January 2008
A Newsletter by the Anton Osoinach Family...

Hopes for Others             Arad, România        Osoinach_ro@hotmail.com      

The last few time I have gone to the nursing home in Tamand, I have had the old US post office motto come to mind …”neither rain, nor snow, nor sleet or hail will keep us from our appointed rounds”… On one recent visit I arrived a bit late having visited a home in the town of Pancota first.  Tamand is located between two small towns about 4 miles from Ineu town and 2.5 miles from Bocsig. For our first few years in Romania, I always took the train to Tamand as there is no real road. The only problem with that was that in the winter the train is very cold and before very long no matter how I dressed I ended up with a cold. It was like sitting in a refrigerator. So, after the home in Pancota opened about 20 miles away from Tamand, I began driving so that I could visit both homes in the same day. Now the problem was the condition of THE ROAD.

In the last few years I have gotten to Tamand mainly by driving to Bocsig (the nearer town) and then either walking the last few miles or riding my bike the rest of the way to Tamand. Occasionally, when I have some things like Christmas gifts to deliver or when Benjamin and a friend wanted to build a stairway to help the older people get on and off the train at Tamand or when we have brought the dentist to work on the people's teeth, I have chanced the road.  But back to a few weeks ago, I arrived late and while I was at Tamand it began to rain, so I had the pleasure of riding my bike back to the van in the dark, cold rain. I suspect that most of you have not ridden your bike down a pitch black, well rutted tractor path in 38 degree rain, but it is quite a memorable event. Two weeks later when I went, it was below freezing so the tire depressions were frozen over making the bike ride into Tamand much easier than my last trip.  But by the time I left it had warmed up a good bit and as I was riding back the ice was cracking and braking as I rode along. The temperatures had not been below freezing very long so the ice had not been very thick and now each patch of ice I passed over either cracked or broke off sliding under me like a surf board on the water.

One Christmas season 5 years ago, a friend had driven us to Tamand in his van, which was the first time I went to Tamand on “the road” rather than the train. The ice and ground had been frozen hard that day and though it was a nervous drive we made it all the way to the home without any problems.

So that brings us up to this Christmas. This time the temperatures had been freezing or below for more than 10 days so the idea for driving all the way to Tamand rather than carrying the gifts 2.5 miles seemed very possible and much easier. So when we arrived at the train station where “the road” to Tamand begins and had asked at the station when the next train would be going to Tamand, to hear that it would be in 3 hours seemed the nudge we needed to drive the rest of the way.

Oh the best laid plans… we actually made it almost all the way to Tamand before we came to a rest about 1/8 of a mile from Tamand with the frame of the van resting on the ground and 2 of the wheels deep in tractor ruts. Not much we could do about that now but to unload the gifts and walk the rest of the way... thankful to God we had made it as far as we had. Six and a half hours later we were again thankful to God as a tractor pulled us back to the train station where the asphalt road began again. It’s days like that one that make me think of the mailman motto.

1 Chronicles 16:34  O give thanks unto the LORD; for he is good; for his mercy endureth for ever.

Many thanks to those of you who helped put the Joy bags together for these nursing home residents. They do bring much joy to the people and we remind them that these gifts are a gift from the Lord Jesus, who has not forgotten them.