Well I’ve managed to find an internet connection at the Hotel in which we’re staying  We have stopped over in a beautiful hill town known as Munnar. It is a community that has built is economic development around the tea trade. The man who started the tea plantations here was a Scot James Findlay from Glasgow. Today all the tea planations around the area are owned by Tata the huge multinational company.

 Let me tell you a little of what we did yesterday. We flew down to a town in South India called Dindigul, and was met by Abraham Sammuels. Abraham’s parents have been missionaries in this area for the past 50 years. He now owns a 12 acre site and is looking to develop the land for Christian ministry. He lives on his small holding with his wife Ruth and two sons one of whom is married.  One of Abrahams dreams is to build a small clinic on the site so that it can be used to give advice to would be parents and to support mothers during their time of pregnancy. He showed us the land he has set aside for this project I think  we have been helping him begin to clarify the vision, at least I hope we have. We returned  to the Parson’s Court Hotel late last night. I spent a little time trying to keep the blog up to date. Thank you to all who are reading this. Like Erica you begin to feel it is a worthwhile excercise when comments appear on the blog.

Today it was an early start as we headed out for a visit to a very interesting project which sits in the Gnat Mountain Range. We were heading for the Pearl Tribal School. I  will write a little bit more about this visit when I have my note book to hand, but suffice to say it was a facinating visit. Meeting two women who today must be in their 40s who left Chennai almost 15 years ago to work among a remote group of tribal people. Their work is outstanding and today they have established a school with government backing to try and educate the next generation of a very primmitive tribal group I give you the name when I have my notebook. As she spoke we became so aware of the obstacles and challenges she and her band of 5 workers have to face as they seek to serve these mountain tribal people while being culturally sensitive. 

We spent the latter part of the morning there and left in the mid afternoon to drive over here to this beautiful part of the world. Munnar is where Capt Thacker was born he was delightd to have an excuse to return. We heard many things from these girls that cannot be easily written in a blog but please pray for those who are spending their lives seeking to serve these mountaiin people. ( Photos will appear \on tthe next posting.

it’s just past six o’clock in the morning. Willie is having a shower, we’ll be at breakfast in five minutes, then we will make a five hour trip into the mountainous region of Kerla, to visit a new project. This is an orphanage looking after around 80 children. Abraham is taking food to them. He met these people for the first time last week and was shocked to see the conditins they live in and also that there was very little food to go around the children. Will try to keep he blog up, but it depends the next time we get to the internet. Thank you all for commenting on the blog so far.