BACK HOME AGAIN

Well, it feels like home.  After an awesome week in Ukraine, we arrived at the airport in Bishkek early this morning. After a short line-up to get our visas, we gathered our luggage and headed toward Tokmok. The nintey minute drive is particularily spectacular, especially in the early morning as the sun rises.  About twenty minutes into the trip, the sun began breaking over the top of the snow capped mountains. Surrounded by these silent, majestic giants we made our way toward the apartment. Along the way my thoughts began to focus on much closer surroundings. The houses along the road, the people waiting along the side of the road for marsukas (van type buses). The long string of outhouses, each a reminder that the vast majority of these homes do not have running water. That memory takes me back to the late 1940s, a time when we first installed a toilet in the house (oh my) and tap water.  Up until then it was a trip outside to the back of the drivehouse and a cistern pump in the kitchen.
 
What a contrast!  The daily struggle of the vast majority of the population is to just survive. Few conveniences, fewer good paying jobs. Even if you get a job, say as a labourer in the fields, the pay is 200 soms for a ten hour day (less than five dollars).  A regular paying job in the market might yield seventy five dollars a month.  The pension for the grandma living in an apartment next to ours is $27 dollars a month.
 
So why is the world would we want to be here?  Why is it that we feel so at home here?   It's just not that the country is indeed beautiful, but the people are too.
 
In the song "Revival" by Robin Marks, you hear this verse:
'As sure as gold is precious and the honey sweet,
So you love this city and you love these streets.
Every child out playing by their own front door
Every baby laying on the bedroom floor.
Sometimes where words fail, music is able to convey the message. This song says it all.
 
Blessings to all of you who are supporting us in helping them. The needs are great.  In fact we cannot even dream of meeting the vast majority of the needs we see, however we can stop for the one that God places in front of us. And so we do. The home for disabled men, the seniors' home, the baby hospital, the critical care hospital, the baby orphanage, other orphanages, Jessica's family to name just a few.  As well as the food and clothing drops, the visits, the site renovations and sharing, we continue to provide training to those in leadership and those working with children. Training is the catalyst that will bring lasting change to this small country.
 
Thanks again. Your support is not just essential, but critical.