Remember we had the complementary Therapy day to raise money to make new clothes for the orphanage.  Well the clothes have been made and the children were wearing them when we went to visit.  Each child has 3 new sets of clothes with one set still in production.  The Tailoring ladies from the slum measured each child and made clothes from the material that Grace bought.  They have done a fantastic job and the clothes look great. 
    

And you guys thought we were sunning ourselves, huh! Well today school was cancelled due to the heavy rains. The kids had already been dressed in their smart uniforms and the women had done their utmost to keep them out of the puddles crossing the road. Do not fear Aunteee Rae and Aunteee Vikki are here with craft stuff ready to amuse the kids. Play dough for the young ones, colouring and bead making for the school kids. “you take the boys, I’ll take the girls” Rae smiled and off she went!  So Aunteee Vikki got to work with her 12 enthusiastic young men eagerly making colourful bead necklaces, then we coloured pictures “super’ and soon they were bored…………. they were stealing each others pencils sharpening them till there was no pencil left, ripping up each others pictures, pulling each others beads scattering them everywhere and literally knocking lumps out of each other, worse was to come the young ones then stood at the door tormenting them with their play dough, HELP! Phew it’s lunch, Chapateeeeee!   Rae’s angelic girls….. We’ll the girls were perfect!!! They were very content making necklaces and bracelets, in fact I think we “acquired” the left over beads from the boys and made lots of necklaces and beads. The girls, when they had finished that, took pride in colouring in pictures they had chosen. The girls were great, of course, as all girls are!! “Sireee – smile”. 

Shobha took us to visit some of the children who have lived at Sangita, who are now older and live at Ebenezer Home 45km away.  The white knuckle ride there was like being on safari pot hole after pot hole past the villages.

Two of the permanent staff at Sangita’s have children who live there, one a daughter, one a son.  They manage to visit once every three months for a short time.  They did not visit with us on this occasion.  We took the children some of our many supplies which were kindly donated and which we were able to bring with us thanks to Pastor Bogle and Mary at British Airways who got us both free excess baggage, “Praise the Lord”.  The children were very grateful and we took lot of pictures of the children for their mum’s to see on our return, this was very emotional.

Ebenezer home has fantastic outdoor facilities and lots of ground for the children to play cricket, volleyball etc.  There are around 300 children divided into houses of round 20 with a “mother”. They wear uniforms with different coloured checked shirts for each house.

We were a big hit once more dishing out chocolate eclairs and had the assistance of a 10 year old “bouncer” maintaining crowd control and frantically instructing us “aunteee” aunteee’ and pointing to who had still to get one while shouting in Tamil and shaking his fists at those who were attempting to sneak extra “pure mental” Just when we thought we could control 60 + kids!!!!

The Sangita Trust’s vision for the future is to have a place similar where the children are divided into smaller groups with plenty of land for the children to play safely.  They also pray they will be able to keep the children beyond 6yrs to allow them to do all their schooling there and give them stability. Please keep this vision in your prayers for this future development, making this vision a much needed reality.

Sangita orphanage is run by Paul and Grace Moses but there are 5 ladies who work there full time looking after the daily needs of the children.  We have been privileged to witness the dedication of these women.  The women (pictured here live) at the orphanage and care for the 68 children who live there 24 hours a day 7 days a week.   Each lady has a story as to why she has ended up at the orphanage.  Shobha is the social worker at the orphanage.  She and her daughter both live there.  Shobha was a destitute woman, her husband had an affair and beat her, he left her for another women and her husband and her in laws treated her very badly.  When he left her she was ostracised from the family and felt she had nothing to live for.  She has large scars on her body which are a daily reminder of the beatings she had. She was going to commit suicide when an evangelist told her that her life wasn’t worthless and gave her the number of Grace Moses.  Shobha has been working at the orphanage now for 7 years.  Shobha’s daughter goes to a local school.  The other women all have similar stories of their husbands leaving them for other women.  Madhavi is 25 and she has also been working at the orphanage for 7 years.  She has a son and he lives at Ebinezer home.  Lalitha is unmarried and was raped when she was younger, her daughter from that rape is 13 and also lives at Ebenezer home. They get to see their child every 3 months All the ladies have found a home together.  Their personal stories, dedication to their job and the care they have for the children is very humbling and is an example to us all. 

Our trip to India was confirmed the minute we boarded our flight to Chennai. 99% of the people on board the flight were of indian origin.  We were seated in the window and middle seat in the plane and the empty seat was filled by an american lady with a gold cross around her neck.  Her name was Pam and she too was heading to Chennai to work with a Christian organisation.  She is involved in working with women who are HIV +ve and have AIDS.  This is her third trip to Chennai and she was very interested in the projects we were visiting.  We have swapped details and hopefully will keep in touch.  We felt that God had placed us next to each other on the flight for a special purpose.This is Pam collecting her bags.  (see if you can spot Vikki!!)   

We arrived at Christ the Rock church just in time to meet the children from the slum who were there having a meal.  Everyone was so excited to see us, many of them remembered Rae from her trip earlier in the year and some children were asking for the others who had been there too.       Later we were taken around the area where the children live, they were all running to greet us smiling and laughing and desperate to have their photo taken by Rae so they could see themselves and have a chuckle. It is difficult to put into words how you feel when you first see this area, even having seen pictures and been told all about it does not prepare you for the real thing, a very humbling experienceSunday Service, in the afternoon the children from the slum area came for Sunday school, we linked up with St Andrews morning service and the children sang for them, some of the older girls had been practicing a traditional Indian dance, I’m promised I too will be able to dance like that before I go home? Watch this space.  

 We took 200 modeling balloons to india because the children enjoyed playing with them so much last time, the balloon animals went down a treat this time too, we had no balloons left by the end of the day, I think the older children had as much fun playing with the balloons as the younger kids did.  They all left very contented. 

We have arrived safe and sound in India We had minimal delays, no detours and missing only one piece of luggage! It appeared that half of Chennai had gathered in the wee small hours to welcome us at the airport, however two important people were missing.  Yes Houston we had a problem, however after prayers, phone calls and wakening up only a few households Raj’s and Captain Thacker’s, we were swiftly collected, Vikki was given a shawl to welcome her, had her photo taken,  and we were taken to our hotel for the remaining part of the morning.  I’m sure Captain Thacker would have preferred we just stayed up, since it was early we could have had a head start on our “missionary work”.  However Pastor Raj yawning too, negotiated us all a few hours to rest and recuperate. We’ve not had much chance to use the internet and we won’t be able to update for a few days. This weekend we have been a Raj’s Church. This photo is of the slum children having a meal at the church.A lady at Raj’s church was remembering someone who died and she laid on this meal in that person’s honour. The children had a good meal.We also went for a walk around the slum and met some gypsies who live there, their living conditions are very poor and they don’t have much.This is a photo of 2 children who live in the slum.We were at church all day yesterday and are about to set off to the orphanage so I have to go. Will update at the weekend.Missing everyone…Rae and Vikki

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Because I didn’t want to keep two blogs up to date I posted all my India stories on my iTalker blog. So if you want to read about India got o www. iTalker.org.uk. keep looking at this blog because Rae and Nikki will be posting onto it in the the few days as they prepare to visit India mid November. As I write I’ve just heard that Eric and Lorna are now on their way to Sri Lanka. Here is an extract from an e-mail I received from Capt Thacker this morning;

Praise our Lord. Tks for the contribution.

Last few days Raj n family n self very busy in taking care of hospital duties. Raj has another patient to look after at another far off hospital. Robert is here to help us. By HIs Grace doctor released Erica yesterday after noon n now she is staying in Merdian Hotel. This morning we heard Robert n his friend Philip left for Colombo for holidays as they already planned. Yesterday afternoon when I was leaving them in the hotel, Robert planned to take them to Colombo. Both the girls are now in the hotel, Erica may be felt week to travel. ”

In just a few more days i’ll be on my way back to India again. I’ll be encountering the busy streets and the many hard working people moving around these streets seeking to earn themselves and their families a living. This will be an opportunity to see in greater depth some of the projects that we have been praying about. Already we have managed to achieve quite a bit of support and I’m delighted that we are now in the process of starting up the St Andrew’s Trust India. This trust will be used to receive monies from the UK which will be passed on to the various projects that our team fro St Andrew’s saw last July. Calling the trust after the partron saint of Scotland is one way of highlighting the Scottish link and also keeping our options open as to where or how this particular Trust will develop. All the board members will be Indians and it will be their responsibility to ensure that the money raised here in the UK is used for the purposes for which it was donated.

I looking forward to showing Willie some of the projects that have impressed me and i hope that Willie might be able to give some additional advice to those who are running the various projects. i hope to try and keep one of the blogs going I think it will be my iTalker blog but hopefully we will be able to cut and past it back onto this blog. It’s interesting to see that Erica and lorna are now in India and writing up their blog via www.worldwithout walls.net Its an excellent blog well worth a read.

Update from Grace…

Regarding the house that we need to vaccate, God has been very gracious with us . The land lord is willing to allow us to stay ….on condition that we pay him additional Rs 2000 per month (50 US $ ) from October . We already pay him Rs 3000 per month. He will allow us to stay for 6 months and may extend also. He is taking advantage of our pressing need to continue with the house. We pray to God that he will open doors and make it possible for us to build the orphanage and move the children to our own building.

The government approvals to build the orphanage is almost in the final stages. Please uphold this need in your prayers…that God will speak into the hearts of the authorities and we find favour in the sight of God and men.

Since September there is an increase in the number of widows that came for the provisions to the land. An additional 50 widows needed to be included in the program. Until December we have funding for 150 widows ….. but for OCT ,NOV and DEC we do not have funding for 50 widows. The cost is 2 pounds per widow for a month which will cost 300 pounds for 3 months. For the month of september we used the funds from the children’s donations .. but to use it for the comming months will not be posssible.

If you come across anybody interested in donating for the widows can you please pass this request to them. I just felt like sharing this with you because you have seen the programme and the work. These additional 50 widows are very poor and deserve help.

You can donate online via paypal. it’s easy to set up a paypal account. It’s secure and the money comes out of your bank account.
Click on the link to donate.

http://www.sangitacharitabletrust.com/donations.html

Vikki and I are going to visit the orphanage in November and we’ve been collecting some items to take over with us, we’re also making contact with Johnson & Johnson and hopefully they will be able to provide some daily hygiene products for the children. We have also hired the sewing ladies from Raj’s church to make 3 or 4 sets of clothes for the children, money we raise through various fundraising events will go to the cost of this. This also gives the sewing ladies an income and they are then able to support their own families.

Thank you to everyone who has donated so far.

Rae