There are questions flying around out there concerning what it is exactly I'm doing with my life. That's a good question. For now, I must unfortunately keep everyone in the dark because I'm not sure myself. My long term goals remain the same. That's as much as I know. The direction I need to go right now to somehow-one-day obtain those goals... I have no idea. Well, that's not true. I do have a few ideas, but I will remain ambiguous until the fog lifts a little.

To satisfy my masses of avid readers who are now foaming at the mouth for something substantial from me, I will tell you a story from my time in thecountryof Georgia.... as told in a email to one of my supporters.

"One of the most impacting times I had on my trip was at an isolated orphanage deep in the Georgian countryside. Most of the orphans had parents, but their parents were too pour to take care of their children. The Soviet style orphanage was a grim place. The building was made entirely out of concrete and had little electricity. Windowpanes were missing and the cold air blew freely through the building. The sixty children lived controlled lives, making their beds perfectly every morning and getting hit for anything done out of line.

"My team and I were there with a missionary couple to do a two week vacation Bible school. The kids, for all the hardship in their lives, were open and loving toward us, drinking in everything we told them about God and basking in the attention we gave them. Halfway through the school, I had the unique opportunity to sit down with six orphan girls and lead them to Christ. Over the next four days I continued meeting with the girls and taught them the basics of living their lives for Christ. They were so full of questions that it was painful to eventually leave them knowing that their faith was still so fragile."

Now before you go and get excited about this "leading them to Christ" business, know that Georgians are Christian orthodox practically by birth. A Georgian university dean told me once that "to be Georgian is to be Christian." Hmm. So when I asked these girls if they wanted to accept Christ, they of course said yes. What was a more unique experience was actually getting to sit down and teach/explain to them what it really meant to have Christ as an active part of their lives.

They didn't have any understanding of the Holy Spirit and didn't know that you could pray out side of church. They were pretty convinced that Jesus did not have them in mind when he died, and said that he would never have died just for them. It's a sad state of affairs when core truth is striped out of Christianity leaving nothing more than a works based religion. That's why it was so awesome to teach these orphan girls that God actually, honestly, really loves them and wants to have a relationship with them.

I'll post some pictures of them later. The pictures following this post are of Azerbaijan.