Bericht uit Abrud

Dear Mr. Maarten,

The transport of yesterday was quite an experience, both for us and for Mr. Gerben and Mr. Ljibbe. The heavy rain made the roads very difficult and delayed the truck with about 8 hours. They arrived in Abrud only at 22 p.m. Because  Abrud is a small mountain town with very narrow streets, we asked for the help of police in guiding the truck through the town. And let me tell you the story: so, me in one car and one police officer in his police car were waiting the truck at the border of Abrud more than half an hour, and since the last 27 km took to your volunteers more than one hour drive, the police officer decided to go on the road and search for the lost Dutch truck. You could imagine how Mr. Gerben and Mr. Ljibbe felt when, somewhere on the dark mountain road, a police car with the lights on, stopped them and asked them to follow him. But in few minutes they arrived on the border of Abrud and saw my car, and everything become easy to understand. And then, was really nice, because police stopped for us the entire circulation on main street of Abrud and we marched as an official motorcade, with the police car in front, your truck in the middle and my car in the back (and my driver couldn’t resists and put the breakdown signals on).

 The downloading took us about two hours and, then, we put Mr. Gerben and Mr. Ljibbe into a nice hotel from Abrud (we treated them as very special guests, we don’t let them to pay the accommodation but, since the Government gives no budget to pay hotel for our guests, we discussed yesterday with the owner of the hotel and give him in exchange some scrap iron from our center and in this way, we covered the cost of accommodation and everybody was happy).

Due to the heavy rain I couldn’t make any picture outside, with the truck, but Mr. Ljibbe took some pictures inside with the old wooden stove from the center’s kitchen: I suppose that he will show you the pictures and you will understand why I said that our stove looks like it is from Stone Age. Anyway, I hope that you will make some time and visit this center, and in this way you will see how your goods are used and you will realize how much these improved the life of our beneficiaries. Everything you sent before, and in this truck, was much better than all the goods we ever had, from sponsors or from our budget. The kitchen is, as I expected, of high quality, very complex and perfect for this location. I hope that on our Easter Holydays (May the 5th), beneficiaries will eat food prepared on this new appliance. They are really missing the cookies, pastry and food cooked in an oven, because the old stove has no oven. So the sacrifice of your volunteers who loaded the truck or who left Holland in the second day of Easter Holydays will help 80 poor people in Romania to have great meals on their own Easter Holydays, and, hoping, many years from then.

So, dear Mr. Maarten thank you for your special help, to you and all the volunteers who worked for this to be possible, and also I have a special “Thank you” for Mrs. Imola which was all the time ready to help, to share with us what you sent her, or with her advices in any situation.

Probably, our beneficiaries will never understand who helped them: they are too ill, too old or demoralized to understand this; but we – the normal people – have to know that God wants us to take care of our under-privileged brothers, and He will reward us millions times more.

May God always be with you all!

Nicoleta