Adventures WorldRace SethBarnes Sponsorship Giving

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Sunday I went to bed, but wasn’t quite ready to go to sleep so I
decided to watch an episode of the office on my computer. So I put
my headphones on and watched an episode. When I had finished, I
pulled my earbuds out, but the rubber part stayed in my left ear
when the rest of it came out. It was in pretty deep as I was
carelessly lying on that ear.
After realizing this, I asked Jon if he could help me pull it
out. Just then Mari came in looking for to get a movie to watch and
volunteered to help. Elijah, our translator was in the next room and
head the commotion, so he came too. So I was squatting on the
ground while they tried to get it with flashlights and tweezers. But
it wasn’t meant to be and by this time I was a bit panicked. So
we decided we should probably go to the hospital to get it out. Not
knowing anything about the hospital situation here we asked Eli if
the would be open at night. He said yes so we asked if our contact,
Stephan, would take me to the hospital to get it taken care of so I
could get a good nights sleep.
So after our standard routine of rolling backwards down his
driveway to start the car, we headed into the cold, wet night.
After a few miles of mud roads Stephan, Eli, Mari and I arrived at
the “hospital”. In the night it looked much more like a house
with a mud parking lot and a single light on than any hospital I had
seen before. After knocking for about a minute a tired looking
woman answered the door. After a brief conversation we headed back
to the car. Resigned to the fact that I would have to sleep with
this stupid rubber thing in my ear I asked our translator what was
going on. He said we would have to go to the other hospital.
Overjoyed a the thought of a good night’s sleep I got back in
the car and we drove a block or two to a building that looked very
much like a hospital. We went in but all the lights were dim. We
knocked on a door and eventually, another tired woman answered the
door. As she looked into my ear, another woman came in and they
talked and looked at my ear for a few minutes. Then they said that
it was really deep and the doctor with the tools to take it out
would not be in until the morning. So we headed out.
As I laid in bed unable to sleep I began to pray and slowly fear
lead to calmness, then suddenly I came to the realization that God
in his infinite wisdom saw fit to give me two ears so that in the
even I did something stupid and got a headphone stuck all the way
inside one, I would still be able to hear with the other!
Overwhelmed with joy that I was surely take care of by a loving God,
I had a short but restful night of sleep.
We woke up and left the house at 7:30 so we could be first in
line when the hospital opened at 8. That plan didn’t quite work as
there was a line when we arrived a little before 8. The building
was a completely different one from where we had been the previous
night, but on the inside it looked a lot like any medical building I
had ever been in. But only if that building had been built by
communists.
After waiting in line to talk to the receptionist we headed up
the stairs to the third floor and sat outside a doctors office. It
turns out there was an ENT doctor in the tiny Moldovan town were
staying in. After a series of confusing events that were basically
me going in getting looked at being told to wait outside and then
doing the same thing again I found out the doctor wasn’t actually
there and that the assistant was the one that had been looking at
me. Turns out the doctor was pregnant and would not be coming in
until later, but no one at the place knew when she would be in.
After waiting for twenty minutes the assistant called us into
the office again and told me to take my jacket off and sit down.
She took one of those things the dentist puts under your mouth and
put it under my ear and then pulled the world’s most giant syringe
out of a pot of water. Luckily it didn’t have a sharp end on it or
I would have surely passed out. Eli said that she would shot warm
water in my ear then hopefully the earbud would come out.
After three tires and lots of prayers the earbud came out and my
ear was left completely unharmed! Now the medical system works
different in every country but Moldova may be home to the most odd
billing system I have ever head of. You pay whatever you want!
After making sure I heard right I asked what a normal tip would be
for a doctor. I fully expected to have to go to an ATM and get more
than the 200 lei (about $17) I had got the Sunday afternoon for
spending money for my time here.
Turns out 50 lei is more than generous and the doctor’s
assistant was quite happy. I got a prescription for some drops to
help prevent infection and picked them up at the pharmacy downstairs
for 10 lei. I made it back home grabbed a quick bite to eat and
went with the rest of my team to work on the church for the rest of
the day.
Ill have more on our ministry time maybe sometime next weekend.