That’s how we started last month. It is hard for me to relate here in Romania after having spent the first forty years of my life in the U.S. Many people here seem to have lost any sense of direction or the ability to make even small decisions for themselves. Much has changed since the revolution in 1989, but many things don’t seem to have changed at all.

The most difficult issue to deal with is apathy---people’s willingness to just wait and do nothing. An example would be Albert who fell and broke his arm on the 21st of December. Each week Albert complained about his arm hurting and that he had not been taken back to the hospital for another x-ray to see if it was healing properly. “Albert,” I would say, “if you want to go to the doctor or the hospital, I will take you. Get your coat. Let’s go.”  “No, it is scheduled for twelve weeks (or six weeks or two weeks) from now. I can’t change it.” Someone in authority had told him he had to wait---so he waited, only to be told when he finally did go back, “Why did you wait so long?”

Or Elisabeta who was moved from one side of a room with six women to the other. Now she is by the window and complains of the draft. “Why don’t you tell the Director the area around your bed is drafty and ask to be moved back?” “No, this is where she wants me.” 

Many of these people have seldom made decisions in their own lives. They have been told where to work, where to live, what food they could have, what they could listen to on the radio or TV and so on. Children here have been told that their profession would be based on their grades in school. If a student achieves a ten (the highest possible score), he goes to this school and if he gets a nine, he goes to that one. It does not matter that he wants to be an accountant rather than a worker in a sewing factory, the choice is made for him.

If one wants to move he can, but to get a “legal” job in the new city or to use the health care system, there is major paperwork involved. “Oh, you broke your arm on vacation? Sorry. You better go back to your county to have that taken care of. You’re not our responsibility.”

It is not odd for us to hear of people having jobs, even government jobs, and not being paid for months. How does that work? How does one feed his family and pay his bills? There does not seem to be an explanation. It is unexplainable. It is just this way. The people keep going to the same nonpaying jobs because they feel it is their only hope of ever seeing their money.

A young lady we know who had been working at the hospital as a nurse was let go by the foundation she worked for and was hired by another foundation. After less than a week, she was let go by that foundation and hired by a third. In the midst of it all, her concern was not over the money, but her “work book.” If she has a period of time when her work book has a hole (a period of unemployment), she would have to go back to school and then be retested. O.K., I can understand that if she was out of work for an extended period of time, but the way things work here, if she decides to take  some time off while she is between jobs, she must then go back to school and be retested to return to her profession.

There are so many things here that we cannot understand even after living here with the people and talking to them day in and day out and seeing it all first hand. And for the people here, these things---these limits and controls---are just taken for granted.

Please pray that I will be a comfort and an encouragement to these people in their times of need.

            “’For I know the plans that I have for you,' declares the LORD, 'plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope.’”            

Jeremiah 29:11