September 24, 2008

Last week the team from Oklahoma trained our national workers in the cooking and cleaning responsibilities. The Georgian women have been doing the food preparation and supervising the cooking but now the whole process is in the hands of the Georgians. We still have a few things that we have hired a team of construction workers to finish. They are closing in part of a wall and they will be putting plaster on the walls in the main room. All the American volunteers have gone back to America with many planning to help with disaster relief in America as needed from the hurricanes.

September 20, 2008

Yesterday the Jonesboro group left after completing their work on the ceiling. They were able to install lighting and ceiling tiles in the main room of the church and nearly finished building the bunk beds. The group from Oklahoma left Gori this morning after passing off their cooking jobs to the Georgians. The distribution of soup and bread by the Georgians this afternoon went smoothly. Because we ordered lumber yesterday we were able to continue work on the bunk beds by cutting slats, sanding, and installing guard rails on the top bunks.

17 September 2008

The team from Kentucky has now returned to the U.S. and a team from Jonesboro, Georgia has come to do more construction. The Oklahomans are still here and working hard to feed the large groups of people that come each day. We have organized the feeding process by giving out cards with numbers on them so that the people will wait for their bread and soup in a more orderly fashion. A ceiling is being constructed in the main room of the church and more doors and windows have been installed. Workmen are replacing the tile around the main entrance and the lumber for building the bunk-beds arrived yesterday afternoon. Today construction on the bunk beds started and they are progressing well.

The group from Texas Baptist Men returned to the United States on September 10th. They did a great job establishing the kitchen and feeding the people of Gori. We currently have two groups from Kentucky and Oklahoma. The group from Kentucky is primarily taking over the cooking, while the group from Oklahoma is doing a great job with the construction and renovation of the church building. In the last couple of weeks the church has really come along. We have laid a new concrete floor in a number of rooms, installed additional lighting, and put in a new bathroom. The kitchen is now fully operational with shelves, fans, and a refrigerator.
The Texas Baptist men had a shower built at the pastor’s house before they left and a couple of days ago we finished putting in another outhouse. The Oklahoma Baptist men are currently building tables for use in the church. The group from Kentucky left on September 14th, and they did a superb job taking over the cooking after the Texas group left.
Additionally, we had a group from Jonesboro, Georgia just arrive yesterday. They will be primarily a construction group, and we’re looking forward to their construction of some bunk beds and for the installation of ceiling tiles in the main room of the church.
We truly appreciate your prayers for the people of Gori, the reconstruction of the country, and the feeding of refugees.

Continued Relief

The picture on the left shows one of the many people we have feed from our soup kitchen. She first came to our center to get soup in an old paint can that she had cleaned up. One of our volunteers found an old tea pot near the church, cleaned it up, filled it with soup and gave it to her. She was quite overjoyed.


We were able to ramp up our feeding operations to feed refugees in 18 of the collective centers (kindergartens) in Gori. This was a total of over 2,000 refugees getting hot meals through our efforts. We have given out over 15,000 hot meals to the refugees and citizens of Gori.

Tuesday (Sept 2) we discovered that the Italian Red Cross had been given the responsibility to feed the refugees in the collective centers and they had begun this effort. We immediately stopped feeding in the centers to avoid additional troubles with coordination with other humanitarian aid organizations.

We had an argreement with several aid organizations to provide hot meals to the refugee families who were living in the private homes of family, friends, or neighbors. But when we informed the deputy mayor of our plan, we were discouraged from providing hot meals but instead providing food supplies.

At this point we will continue feeding from the church building as a soup kitchen.