Sakartvelo 6/13/10

I've just finished two, two day mini workshops at Tskneti orphanage. I worked with two teams of apprentice facilitators for these workshops. They met and exceeded my hopes and expectations. The workshops themselves were difficult. We were expecting that our morning group of children would be 10 - 13 years of age and that the afternoon group would be 14 - 18 years old. I think that we had younger in both groups. The first day was extremely challenging with a great deal of disruptive behavior. The second day was a huge improvement. We had already been told by officials at the ministry (This particular ministry has only existed for 5 months!) that oversees orphanages that their ombudsman had reported finding instances of abuse happening in the orphanages so I was not completely surprised by the children's behaviors. Nonetheless, as we left today, we had a sense of hopefulness. A sense that we had planted seeds of change - of another way. We will not know what the fruit will be, but the seeds are good. For me, the work of peace making is often about the planting of seeds. I rarely get to see the outcomes but I know that I must continue to plant the seeds moving in faith and in faithfulness to answer the leading I've been given.