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!