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There is so much to tell already, and it is only our first day… For all of the obstacles we faced to get here, we’ve had a miraculously smooth trip this far. Nobody missed their plane, everyone got their luggage (an India trip first, I think). Some of the things I’ve seen out the bus window so far:

-a man walking his 3 foot tall monkey on a leash
-a four-year-old holding the hand of a three-year-old and running, unsupervised, down the median of a four-lane highway
-the 16 foot barbed wire fence surrounding the opposition party compound
-a husband driving a scooter with his wife side-saddled behind him holding their newborn

We are definitely tired, but feeling well. We went to our first orphanage today in Delhi and had an amazing time playing with the 21 kids. Their newest addition is a baby named Asha (meaning Hope). They got her from the hospital 3 months ago when she was 3 days old. Her young mother wanted to give her up for adoption to a Christian orphanage. She is beautiful, and Abraham and Grace (the director and his wife) enjoyed showing her off. I think Herb held her the most.
While washing dishes I also met Oba, a 24 year old girl who works at the orphanage. She went to bible college and now “wants to help the poor children.” Only later in talking with her did I find out that she lost both of her parents in a train crash when she was 16, and grew up in an orphanage herself. Four years ago, Eric met her with the I58 team when they visited Kota. She’s praying for her passport so she can spend 6 months in Georgia… it’s a small world!

Mat and I had a chance to sit in on an English class for the kids taught by Joy, a University of Michigan grad who has spent 8 months teaching here in Delhi. She said that in the last month, she has lost 3 friends to motorcycle accidents. She also wanted to know who won the Rosebowl, if anyone had won the primaries yet, and whether the US was really entering a recession (in which case, should she pull all of her money out of the bank?).

The children sang a dozen songs for us, and were full of “pep” as my Pappy would say. They danced around, used wide hand motions and shouted at the top of their lungs. Yesterday, many of the kids visited the dentist and had teeth pulled. Others are missing their two front teeth… You should have seen their faces of concentration when trying to deliver the line, “Satan has zero power!” over and over, but they didn’t let it slow them down!
Thankfully, we were able to bless this orphanage by purchasing 4-6 months of food and toiletries for them. Mike got to pick out all of this, which included around 1 1/2 tons of rice. Herb also made his own trip around town to collect baby food for little Asha. When the food arrived and was piled inside the orphanage gate, someone pulled me aside and said, “You don’t know how much this means to us. We pray every Sunday that somehow food would be found for the kids, even that it would be brought by total strangers. Lately it has been extremely tight, and this is such a great relief.”

There are even more stories to tell, but the randomness of those above kind of describe how it has been so far… hit by every different emotion…sensory overload at its best. But this group’s been great - we’re laughing a lot and are off to a good start. Mat fits right in, too. Keep checking back with us, and thanks for your prayers! Tomorrow we head off to a leper colony three hours away…

Much Love,
Allison

This entry was posted on Monday, April 7th, 2008 at 11:34 am and is filed under Allison Stockton . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.