Written 14 November...

Street cleaning equipment - brooms of branches

Well, the weather outside completely replicates my mood.  Leaving Tirana is always bittersweet.  Tirana is high 60s and cloudy, hopefully without rain, but the weather here in Munich is much more somber... 2 C and dripping.

Because of the pesky viruses that inhabited my body, I haven’t done as much blogging as I had hoped.  By 8:30 or 9 I was exhausted, facing a night of interrupted sleep due to coughing.  It is only the last three nights that I have slept through - and those have been shortened by mock packing.  Why is it that everything doubles in size within the last 24 hours?

The last few days have been a whirlwind - I managed over 4 miles by 10:30 yesterday.  Dori was to have a test and asked if I would be there.  So, I walked to her place (about 2+ miles), then to the hospital (about 1 mile), then “home,” another mile or so.  All in all, it was a typical day (in terms of walking).  I generally walked 3-7 miles daily.  Hummmm... didn’t seem that far.  It does, however, give you an opportunity to pray for those around you, ponder imponderables (“Exactly who, Lord, of all these people are “the least?”; “Will there be departures in heaven, so that we have to bid farewell to friends?”; “Lord, where in the world am I going to find someone to inhabit the vacant hospital?"), and generally soak up the environment.
 

CT scanner, ER, dialysis...

120 private beds, neonatal ICU...

A hospital, you say... remember that there was a hospital sitting vacant that Barry(from IPA) mentioned?  Well, I met Michelle, who worked with the administration of the hospital, and she was able to arrange a tour of the facility.  It looks ready to go - a little dusting, and calibration of the machines, and perhaps an addition here or there and it will be ready for labor & delivery, angios, lithotripsy, Lasik and a myriad of other things.  The in-patient area is 120 private beds - with a little different style than ours.  Since family often stays with a patient in the hospital, there is an area for the family to stay/sleep as well as an area for the patient.  So, pray with me and a bunch of others that our Abba would grace me with the opportunity to interest somebody in populating the facility and providing modern and Hippocratic medicine to Tirana.

Alban commented that doctors and judges are disdained in Albania... both take “favors” from their supplicants and seem unconcerned about those who haven’t the wherewithal. While there is a style of public medicine, it is grossly inconvenient, available primarily in Tirana leaving vast swathes of countryside without care, and selective.  I have the impression that Hippocratic medicine is yet to reach Albania.  Wouldn’t it be incredible if that dawning were associated with our Abba?  So, pray with me that God would make this possible!

Well, the gray morass has continued to envelope us as we climb to our cruising altitude.  Now begins the long wait... already I’ve been in my seat for an hour (waiting to take off, then all the rigamarole that follows) besides the 1.5 hours from Tirana and 2 hours waiting in Munich... it will be another 11.5 to 12 hours before the opportunity to stand in line and go through passport control and customs once more.  The first time I did this, the weirdest thing (and most memorable) is when the passport control agent said, “Welcome home.”  It did feel welcoming.  Well, at the end of this is a scurry to get my bag, call my hotel, wait for the van, and then unpack a little in order to sleep for a few hours before I head to the Central Coast from San Francisco. 

Well, I’ll fill you in on more after I reach the West Coast.  There is much to share; much of it will have to be in person. 

Mirupafshim!