A place of peace

Today we got up early and headed out to the rehabilitation centre that Jengish is a vital player in. The center is located on a farm up in the mountains. Jengish finds the homeless men living on the streets in the capital city, then does what he can to help them out... If it is determined that the root of their problems is drugs or alcohol, he offers them a new life... We went out to visit 20 men that he is currently providing a second chance....
Now naturally we can't go anywhere without making a splash, so we stopped at the market on the way. We bought all the supplies to make a monster ploff, as well as a few other treats... I found a young boy working there. he looked like he was about 8, but he was actually 15. he had a little fruit stand... we bought all his apples and all the little Mandarin oranges that he had... he was so excited that he was shacking.... His stand was not as pretty as all the others, but he got to go home early... the total cost of about 50 lbs of fruit was $35 ... The cool part was that we knew that the men receiving them would be just as excited... kind of like a double blessing. On the way we stopped at a Seniors home to visit Nicoli from our last trip.... as we drove up the lane we saw this old man lying on his back on the side of the road.... We could not decide if he wanted to be there, or if he just fell over.... the second we got the van stopped , Jengish was out helping him up.... he actually started to giggle a little bit once he was back on his feet...I wonder how long he would have laid there if we had not stopped .

When we got to the farm, the men got busy making the plov These guys are masters, and make just about the best plov that I have ever had.

We enjoyed a great time of food and fellowship with them.... As I was looking around the table, I was so overwhelmed with the impact that Jengish has made in their lives. In such a hard land and facing such insurmountable odds, these men have a chance.... They are sheltered from the trials of life. For the first couple hours of the day they have counselling for their addictions, then for the rest of the day they all work on the farm.... The goal is for the farm to eventually become totally self sufficient. they are all part of the solution.... After about a year on the farm, they match the men up with community support groups, then ease them back into society over a period of time.... Their success rate is in the area of 80%.... unmatched buy the majority of the addiction programs in the west.

As you walk through the tranquility of the farm, the contrast between the world around you with no hope, and the peace that hope brings is over whelming.....

Here I am with the gang before we left. I have a few days of work to do to register a bunch of the simple dreams and sponsorships that we have found....I think Jengish and I will head back here for a few days to get caught up......

Julie and the girls are out right now at a restarant with about 40 women ... they will be a blessing to them all with some words of encouragement as well as some small presents... I will post more on that later.