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.

Shoba - Her story and her song ===============================

Shoba is seven year old. We still remember the day she walked into our home with her guardian. She was very sad and quiet. It did not take a long time to figure out that she was carrying a deep hurt within her. Her father passed away when she was very young and since her mother was in a depression and had no job, she couldn't take care of her daughter. So she decided to drop shoba at a relative's house.

Her relatives started mistreating the girl, getting her to do all the domestic chores and also sending her to the local toddy shop (liquor) to buy toddy everyday.

The mother heard about these things but couldn't do anything about it because she had already got married to another man. Her new husband abandoned her within a few months when she was pregnant with twins and never returned.

This was Shoba's situation when she moved in with us.

But Shoba has started going to school and found couple of friends and...

When Devayani moved in with us, we took her to the doctor for vaccination and medical check-up. During the check-up, the doctor found out that she had split sounds in her heart beat and referred us to a cardiologist. After going through few tests, echo-cardiograph and the scan, we found out that she had a hole in her heart referred to as Atrial Septal Defect (ASD). It is a birth heart defect. Because of ASD, extra blood passes into the lungs causing higher pressure thus damaging the lungs.

Because the hole was big, open heart surgery was her only option. We got her admitted to the hospital on 3rd August. The hospital wanted us to bring Devayani’s mother to sign the consent papers. But tracking her down was a nightmare. She refused to come to the hospital because she had to cook for her son who is 20 yrs old.  We finally convinced her to go to the hospital and sign the papers. She seemed very upset with her daughter because of her medical condition. She told her daughter that she delivered 8 babies  and...

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