Banquet Afternoon

David and I have started a Coffee hour in the village. We have made such incredible inroads to that community, we felt it was time to get to know the people there a little better. we had our first visit today..there we about 32 people thee that showed up... it was so nice to be able to spend time with them, and we could tell that the encouragement that it brought to them was more then words could express.. They then asked us if we could return on Sunday night for an Easter celebration .... Easter is a week later here... this is such an honor for us as this is the first time that this village will be celebrating this holiday.. The only trouble we are having is that they don't quite understand the meaning of Coffee... they wanted to prepare full meals, and I think the term hour may cause some grief as well... maybe we should re name this to Banquet Afternoon !

On the way home we found one of the men living on the street that Larisa has been helping... he is so scared of the institutions here that we could not get him to move to the seniors home. He is living in a concrete garbage bin... The walls and the ceiling were black from the soot of his small fire. the rain made it's way through the cracks in the roof and through the large opening in the front window His glasses are broken in about 4 places, and melted back together and sit crooked on his face... he has only one leg and is hunched over with a home made crutch... The floor is about 2 inches thick of mud and wast... It is hard to imagine that this life is better hen living in an institution.....but then I have seen some of the institutions out there and he may be right.
We talked to him, and he has agreed to come with us tomorrow morning out to the village to see the new seniors home... we have assured him that he will not be locked up and that he will be well cared for... I can only imagine what has happened in his life to bring him to this point.

We left him and went to the orphanage where we cooked supper... shashleek... the kids favorite..
22 kids, and I got 80 portions.... I think we had 4 left at the end of the night, but they did polish off the 4 cakes David and Jayne brought as well...oh ya and 18 leproshka ( the round loaves of bread ). the whole time I could not stop thinking about our new friend out in the rain for the night, but I am sure h is used to it by now.

We happened by a babushka with her grandson that were trying to get back to a certain village... they had tried to find a new place to live because there was no work in her area, but had not been successful so she was heading back... I took them for some food before arranging a ride home for them... I had made a batch of chicken wings, a salad and a pot of tea... the little boy ate the wings bones and all, then drank the tea, emptying the entire bowl of sugar in the process...

They too are out there somewhere in the rain tonight, I don't know that we will ever see them again, but at least they know that someone cares...

We have been working on some new simple dreams, I will hopefully have some of them ready for tomorrow... I will have them on the iam1ru site, but will put some links here as well..

I fell behind on my battery recharging today, so unfortunately I did not have photo's maybe David will post some over on "the journey continues "