Sojourners and Pilgrims: 2012

Thursday, August 9, 2012

Leaving on a Jet Plane

Leaving on a jet plane.

It is hard to believe we are finishing our last week in India. Jeff left almost two weeks ago and we fly out early the morning of the 13^th and arrive that evening after about 26 hours of travel. The girls have continued to work hard at Vathsalya every day with the children. Martine is now thinking of a career in teaching. The two teachers here were very impressed with her ability to help the 6, 7 and 8 year olds who are her main charges during the morning class time. Last week the girls helped paint the walls in the classroom with bright pictures. They all have their favorites whom they keep asking “can we adopt so and so?” Not such a strange question in our household! Gabi is especially attached to a brother and sister. She has asked for prayer in handling leaving them knowing they may be gone by the time she comes back. These two are supposed to be adopted by an Indian family so it could be fairly quick. Seven of our little friends will be leaving for their adoptive families this month so we are thankful they are starting their new lives.

This week I did training on foster care with older children at an agency called BOSCO. They are starting the first foster care program in the country especially targeting kids over six. They work with kids who are living on the streets or in other dangerous situations. This agency has 30 street children a DAY come through its doors. They currently house the ones whose family’s they cannot find in an orphanage but are developing a long-term foster care program.

You gotta serve somebody.

Idols are everywhere in India. Two story statues of elephants and monkeys are hard to miss. Everyone’s home, every business has a little corner shelf with a small stature, some flowers and incense. Incense waifs in the window every morning from our neighbor’s house where she does yoga and chants in front of her family idol. Jeffrey received this idol as a gift for presenting at the Indian Institute of Science and Business. The government recently spent 50,000 rupees, about 10 months pay, to have prayers said at various temples to combat the drought.

There are non-religious idols too. Education is the most obvious one. Education is the only way to get ahead in this society. It is the only way to break the bonds of your caste and economic strata. Education is so important that almost every week there is an account in the paper of someone committing suicide because they, or their child, did not get into the right school or failed an important exam. Another is position. Your status as a “Techie”, working in the IT field, is miles above the store clerk who is miles above the coolie. People from one level of profession have nothing to do with the other. The goal of every Indian is to give their child a good education and thus a good job which will lift him above his family’s historical status. This is all fine and good if kept in perspective.

Actually bowing down and praying before an idol is pretty rare in the American experience. Putting all your energy into getting ahead in the workplace, acquiring goods, or achieving a certain status is not so rare. I’ve been praying for the Lord to show me if I am serving someone besides Him. What am I making my priority? What is most of my time spent on? What message are my children getting as to what is really most important in life? It is so easy to slip into idol mode; getting stressed over something that isn’t really that important, pouring my energy into activities which are just time wasters.

Last week the housemother here at Vathsalya died. This lovely woman had served these children for the last 18 years. Never having married, she only visited her siblings and their children on Sundays. That is being the hands and feet of Christ. Today I visited a home for mentally challenged girls. The nuns there serve these girls whom society has deemed doubly worthless, female and unable to care for themselves. I watched as they fed, bathed and loved on the children. Some would return their love with a smile. Others could not respond at all. Still others would hit or bite or scream. That is serving the least of these.

Where do we go from here?

So what’s next? Our tentative plans are to come back next summer to India and Nepal. Jeff has been asked by a small college here to teach a one month block class. This does not have a salary but it does include housing. This is a great help in affording the trip. We have also been exploring with Vathsalya Charitable Trust assisting them in creating branches in other parts of the city and state. After our month here we would move on to Nepal were we would begin implementing the International Children’s Support Network. We have written a program outline and basic business plan for this organization which would assist a network of churches in providing foster care by giving professional support for training and oversight of the program and interfacing with the government and other NGO’s working with children. This could actually be implemented in any country where private foster care was legal and I am excited about what the distant future may hold. We would stay in Nepal about a month to recruit churches and network with other agencies which may be able to provide other needed services (i.e. working with birth families so their children can return).

For the next nine months I’ll be working on all the necessary tasks to be ready next summer such as doing further research on social and legal issues, making contact with Nepalese churches, and creating training materials and a policy manual. I’ll also be working to find US churches who would like to be part of a church-to-church partnership helping a Nepali church get their foster care program off the ground.

For now however, we all miss our friends and family and can’t wait to see you all again!

Sunday, July 15, 2012

Just for fun!

This post I wanted to tell about some of the places we have visited while here. This post is just for fun and I hope you enjoy the information and pictures. I accidentally uploaded the pictures as a post so you’ll have to look at the post before this one, titled vacation pictures, to see them.

One weekend we took a trip to a neighboring town called Mysore. If you’re a history buff you’ll remember the sultans of Mysore and their battles against the British. We visited a palace, saw albino peacocks in the zoo, and hiked in a bird sanctuary. The girls were excited to ride an elephant and a camel. Elephant riding was on their India to do list. Jeff and I most enjoyed the bird sanctuary, a peaceful and green place, very unlike the city of 5 million we are living in. I think the greatest attraction at the zoo, for the Indians, was Martine’s braids. Mysore is much smaller and less cosmopolitan then Bangalore and we caused quite a stir. Several times we noticed we were being videotaped and all of us were asked at one time or another to pose for a picture with someone’s baby. This is similar to the behavior we experienced in Bangalore nine years ago but now that city has more foreigners than any other in India so we aren’t such an oddity. People often do come up, even in Bangalore, and feel Nephtalie’s hair. There are many African students here but few children and I guess they wouldn’t be so bold as to feel an adult’s hair! The funny thing is they always then ask how we made her hair like that. They don’t seem to understand its genetics.

Last weekend we took four days to travel south to a town on the coast called Fort Cochin. Fort Cochin a very old city. Vasco de Gama lived and died there. It was by turns controlled by the Portuguese, Dutch and English so there are all kinds of architecture. There was even a Jewish community there. We went to two palaces where Rajahs had lived. They are pretty run down now but still interesting. We visited churches over 500 years old. We saw the port where fishermen were using Chinese fishing nets and selling their catch on shore.

This town is on the Arabian Sea so we also went to the beach. This was a bit of a disappointment to the girls. They were hoping to swim in the sea as they do in the Gulf when they visit their grandparents. When we got to beach we noticed only males were swimming in the water. A few girls were wading in the edge but only boy were really getting wet. This had also been true at a lake we visited. It is interesting that none of the boys had swimsuits. All were in their underpants. But girls couldn’t even don a pair of shorts and a t-shirt and go into the water. Our girls did have fun walking in the shallow water and playing in the sand but really wanted to swim which they haven’t gotten to do all summer.

By far the most fun was visiting an elephant training camp. We saw the elephants being washed in the river, baby elephants being fed by hand, adult elephants learning to carry logs (elephants are still used in the forest service). We touched them and rode them too. Getting to be up close and personal with these animals was certainly a special experience and one we will never forget.

After visiting Cochin we went on a boat down the river, or backwaters, as they call this area. It is a large lake with a series of interconnected waterways leading eventually to the sea. Boats which used to carry rice (the local crop in this area) have been converted to houseboats. This was a wonderful experience. It was beautifully quite and green. Bangalore and suburbs has about 10 million people packed into a very tight space so we really cherished this time in such peaceful surroundings. This area receives a lot of rain and was full of palm trees and bright green rice patties. There are many villages along these rivers where no land motor vehicles are present. Because of the slow pace of the boat one is able to take in the village life in a way not possible in a speeding car. Jeff was in heaven in the calm and peace. We also loved the food they served, river fish and tiger prawns.

It was great to spend some time away and see more of India. People are always surprised when we tell them we are only in Bangalore while here. The girls were thankful for a change of pace too. It is hard to believe we have only one month left. We all miss our boys, our friends, our dogs, but are sad at the thought of leaving. Don’t forget there are lots of pictures of the things I described in this post on the post labeled “vacation pictures”. Not in the photo gallery J.