Day One- February 1, 2007

On Jan. 31, 2007, Susan and I departed for a one-week visit to Georgia on behalf of the Divine Child Foundation. The purpose of our trip was to visit as many orphanages and boarding schools in and around Tbilisi Georgia as possible and meet the children and the directors of these orphanages. We wanted to see, first hand, the conditions there and what the real needs of these children and their caretakers were. We also wanted to find contacts in Georgia who were willing to help us to help these children. Our ultimate goal was to select an orphanage to begin working with. We brought with us three large duffle bags stuffed with donated gifts for the children. Among those gifts were hundreds of new scarves that Susan and our daughters had spent the previous week making out of colorful fleece materials.

Prior to our departure, we established contact with Irma Barbakadze, who was to act as our trip coordinator and translator during the visit. Irma also arranged for a driver for us, named Paata. Both Irma and Paata are absolutely wonderful people and we soon became good friends. By the end of the trip, we all shared a common passion: helping Georgia’s children in need.

Even though our travel from Washington to the city of Tbilisi took us about 25 hours, we hardly noticed it because of our excitement in getting this important mission underway. We left our home approximately 7:00 pm on Wednesday, January 31st, and arrived in Tbilisi at approximately 4:00 am local time on Friday, February 2nd. We went straight to our hotel for a few hours of sleep before beginning our tour of the local orphanages.