April 2 - April 8

Tuesday April 3
Purchased air conditioners for our first project. We will have them installed in the Bishkek Rehabilitation Center for the Disabled.  This is the place where we taught and assembled the wheelchairs for the Bishkek area. Luckily the weather wasn't bad so the rooms were comfortable. The major rooms face west so in the summer the sun heats up those rooms immensely. There is one of those rooms that have heat lamps for therapy and the room gets extremely hot. LDS Charities provided 6 wall mounted AC's for the main west rooms which will help or eliminate the extreme heat during the day.

Wednesday April 4

Wheelchair Recipients Interview start:

Today we went out doing follow ups for wheelchair recipients from last year. We have to account for the wheelchairs after 6 months of being given out. So from last Nov dispersement we did the checks.

This was a real eye opener.  The Wheelchair recipients live in remote villages.  We saw five recipients today.  Most of them had strokes and are unable to speak. They are bed ridden, paralyzed; but have smiles on their faces.  They are thankful for the wheelchairs because it helps them to be mobile.

This lady was an OBGYN Dr. in Lebanon for 30 yrs has severe arthritis.   

Thursday April 5

We visited an older couple. The recipient is 80 years old. He was a musician and a famous Choir Director for Russia. He traveled the world. His wife was a Chemist that worked in the Academy of Science. You heart goes out to these people. They struggle everyday. This man has such a keen mind but his body doesn't work anymore. We played some Mormon Tabernacle Choir music for him.  He recognized the music. I got emotional listening to the music; I am so happy we have it to share with others. 

Friday April 6

One woman had back surgery. The surgery failed, and she is paralyzed from the waist down. She was busy in her kitchen making a Kyrgyz dinner called "Lagman" that she  makes her own noodles for. It smelled really good. I guess the noodles are quite a process to make. 

 The Social Workers go with us to these homes. They are the Clinicians that were trained in the Fall of last year. The Social workers in Kyrgyzstan are like home visitors; they each have areas they are in charge of. It usually takes us 8 hours to see 4-6 people, because of the homes being so remote and far from each other.

Sunday April 8

Our Sunday taxi ride to Church: 

We use a Namba Taxi app on our phones to get a taxi.  They call you after the order as gone through to confirm you ordered the taxi, then they call you when they get here. The app tells us what type of car and the license plate number.  (There are usually many taxis in front of our apt building.)    

    So, the taxi driver gets here and he doesn’t speak English. He just motions us to get in the car.  We show him the address on our phones where we want to go on a 2g’s app.  He looks at it then pulls up a bit and stops.  He wants to look at my phone again.  He drives down the street, we need to tell him which way to turn.  

       I finally give him my phone with e GPS running so he can see where to go.  The car is a manual stick shift; he is having a hard time shifting.  We get on the main road and he starts telling us his name in broken English, and that he has been driving for six days!  He then mimes like he is swimming to tell us he lives in a place called Issyk-Kul, out by a lake (a 5-6 hour drive away). 

    He tells us how many kids he has while trying to shift the car and grind the gears as we hold on for dear life  The car shifts in each of the gears really hard, as we bump along. 

We have to tell him where another turn is and he is in the wrong lane. Cars are honking and he is swerving to miss them, they are swerving to miss him. We almost get hit three times! My GPS has gone to sleep he says. Yowza!  

    We continue telling him how to get to our destination. It cost us 104 Som=$1.52 in US. Bill gave him a tip of 50 Som=.73 US.    

The drive is usually 10-15 minutes (if you make it and not get killed).

    Poor guy. I hope he learns how to drive and find the right addresses.

This is the messages we get on our phones from Namba:                                               

 Namba Taxi: Mirbek edet k vam na(coming to  you on a) Daewoo Ravon R3 s gos. nomerom 01KG381ACG. Bort: 7112, T: 0776224554

Mashina na meste. (the machine is here)

Namba Taxi: Vash schet sostavil 60.09 som bez ucheta dop. uslug. Otdel Kontrolya Kachestva: 979060 (08:00-20:00)

“the machine is here’ cracks me up.  

Living and still alive in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, 

Issyk_Kul Lake is 113 miles long and 37 miles wide-2,408 sq miles it is the 2nd largest mountain lake in the world next to lake Titicaca, Peru.