Parentless

Well the power outages didn't stop and they were followed by internet outage hardware failures and a series of unfortunate events that almost closed us down. We need $100,000 to buy the land we need. We did our best to raise the money but only ended up with about $6,000. We had to do something we couldn't work couldn't get a loan and were once again at the end of our rope. Either we could close it down or I would have to go back and get a job in America while Mercy stayed and took care of the girls.

I write this from Old Chicago in Topeka Kansas. Where I got a contract working for the state. The money is ok but to keep the orphanage going Mercy had to stay in India. Once again we have to spend time apart trying to keep the boat afloat. To raise the money we would need to buy the land we'll have to do this for almost 3 years.

3 years having the longest long distance relationship possible. My wife is literally a world away. To be honest I'm not sure a house full of orphans is worth it. I doubt we'll...

Ok 1.21 Jigawatts can send a Delorian 50 years into the past.2.42 Jigawatts can bring a development shop to it's knees. Last week on Weds.a lightning strike shorted out 2 phases of power and crossed them inside our electric box the subsequent 440 volts burned out every lightbulb in the house fried 2 power strips and 4 AC/DC adapters and our cable box. Thursday a lightning strike miles away burned out most of the phone equipment and sent the internet connection and phonelines of the etire district dark for 5 days.

I grew up in the midwest of AMerica where lightning is common and worked in what I thought was the lightning capitol of the world when I was in Central Florida working in the phosphate mines but I guess I was used to clean scrubbed power because I never anticipated this. I suppose 5 days without phone lines and INternet wasn't all bad since I couldn't work I started teaching the girls double dutch. Maybe I should say jump rope since thats about all the farther they can get at the moment.

For...

 

Red tape seems to be the theme of the month. We started two months ago attempting to get a car loan and after numerous trips to the bank the paperwork is still processing. Hopefully we'll hear something in the next few weeks. At the same time about 2 months we attempted to transfer some money from our account in America to our bank account in India. The transfer took about 6 weeks to process and more red tape then the car loan.

Last month we started to shop for land to build a church building, widows home and orphanage. We have found that banks in this area do not issue loans for property. You can get a house loan if we own the property but not a property loan.

The girls are doing well in their new school. They enjoy life in Kotagiri much better then they did Bangalore. The level of education at the school is more in align with what they understand and the language they use in the schools is closer to the language they grew up with. The pace of life here is slower. It feels a lot like it...

There's not much I can do about it but blog it so here it goes.

    A lot has happened in the last 4 months. Mercy and I are Back in India and today the girls all come back from the homes we put them in while we were in the states. When it's all said and done we don't have any more money now then we did before left and our ability to buy land and build a permanent home for the orphanage is no closer then it was a year ago.

Still on the job hunt. Downturn in the economy has put a pretty good dent in the short-term contract market. Looks like we may be back here longer then we first thought.

We are back stateside for a few months. We have decided to expand the work and have returned to the states to see if we can save up some money for a larger facilite.

One of our girls had to go in for heart surgery. She's out of surgery and doing fine.

 A new year has come. Looking back on the last year feels better then it used to knowing your having an impact makes a lot of difference. But to be perfectly honest that doesn't mean there aren't days I wish I didn't have nearly 20 people dependent on my paycheck.