The Journeys of the Edwards Serving in Moldova: Soroca

May 7 2017- One month ago today, we were flying back to Canada for my father's funeral, and he died this day one month ago. It makes one contemplate life and death deeply. One thing we have found is that a mission does get in the way of proper mourning, as one is too busy. Is that an answer? We will find out after we return home, but it has been odd for us to think of. I had a letter for Shauna, my sister,who said she missed our dad every day. It made me think, because many days we are too busy to even think of this. It is odd and we may yet have some mourning to do. Anyway, we did a trip to Soroca, a city on the northern border of Moldova, which has an old building, the Fortress, one of the oldest remaining buildings of renown here. Many older buildings were destroyed in war in this country. The countryside leading to Soroca is beautiful, rolling green hills, bluebells everywhere and the forests are full of lilies of the valley. We got together our YSA in Moldova and had a day together, travelling by maxi taxis that we rented. We had 40 together in all, and had a grand time. We toured the fortress,[ a guide told us the history in Russian and English], had a picnic and climbed hundreds of stairs to Lumina Recunoștintă, or the Candle of gratitude. This is also a beautiful building on a hill with a fantastic landscape. Soroca is also renowned for gypsy houses, large housed built to be like famous buildings around the world. They are huge, interesting and usually unfinished. They are owned by țignani, or the gypsies here. We saw a few. We had no picnic table, had a shower curtain as a tablecloth on the grass, ate a lot of food, and had a good day. We had woke on Saturday morning to rain, but that was the only could we saw. Oh, the maxi taxi drove like they often do here, like a bat out of a hot place, a speed of over 120 km,hour made her nervous. Deb asked him to slow down, as we were in the front seat, legs tight against the dash, and no seat belts. Too bad he spoke no English and certainly not slow or careful. I travelled to Rezina another day to give medical advice to a member living in Transnistria. A bad fracture, not healing after 3 months. She probably needed surgery way back when it happened. I did get another opinion from an orthopod in Medpark, a private hospital, but it was a little late for surgery. the lady did give me the chance to pay for her surgery and trip to the USa to fix it, I thought this very generous of her to offer to take thousands of dollars from a man she had never met before. Oh, and on way back, a long way back, nature called and I answered in the forest, where I saw all the lilies of the valley on the floor of the forest. I also did pick up a traveller the next morning, as Deb got to help me become ticked off, as she provided a few naval maneuvers. What is the moral of that story? Do not become too attached to things. They just are not that important and can suck the life out of you. Okay, there will be a lot of pictures, probably spread over 2 posts.