Well I touched down at 3:20 this morning, and have been on the go ever since... I have just barely touched the surface of what is going on. I have focused my attention on two things... Back to school, and getting winterised....
Lets start with winterized.. I am not just talking about weather stripping, but in many cases we need coal, And something to burn it in... we also need to make sure every one has good winter cloths and a warm bed to sleep in. .. As far as school goes,... the economic situation has had a devastating effect on many kids here. There sponsorship although for many is assured to arrive, it has not yet made it, and there are more then just Tanya that I shared about a few weeks back, that need help right away so they do not loose the semester. Our friend Olga has also given me a tour around her Projects...incredible... the knowledge store is now completely booked and running at capacity with about 30 classes a day of tutoring and child therapy. This is the centre that we sent several of the children sponsored for tutoring and operations to to help them catch up.... She has had to open a second centre that will be focusing on physiotherapy... what I was most impressed about is the shoe string budget she operates on... Classes are offered free of charge to any one that needs the support, and a nominal amount is charged to those that can afford it... all together the two centre's are able to be self sustaining... all but about $100 a month... so basically what we are getting when we get behind her is a dozen teachers and two help centres, and more energy then you can imagine.... that's only $50 a month for each centre.....makes you think......
Well I had a good talk with Sergey and Anya, Acel and Tallant, Olga, Gengish...... and it was like pulling teeth to get them to to share the needs never mind the dreams... like Sergeys desire to get a large home in Tokmok that all our kids that have timed out of the orphanages or are moving to town for college could live in complete with house parents.... Big dreams.... A dream like that might be a $40 000 project, but left in their hands, my bet is that by the time I leave, he will have that down to about $4 000. I will share more about this incredible opportunity as soon as I am allowed...
But as I started in my head thinking of all the needs, I started to get bogged down... maybe it is the 2 days with out sleep or one day... or one and a half... I don't even know what day this is... I guess it is all relative. But any way.. I decided that I should start writing these down... The list is a monstrosity... and that's from day one... I have not even been out of the city to the villages yet. 
This is whenre I should be getting so overwhelmed if I had not been here before... after all just a few days ago, we cleared the operating board that I thought would take us years.... You see I remember that I am not here alone... All of you are here with me. iam1 and many of ur2....So I think that one of the tasks that this team from Quebec will be doing is helping write up these dreams... take them off the walls, break them down into bit size pieces and post them over on the iam1ru.com site.
1 comment:
Those first days are are always long and tough.
Ron
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