An Auspicious Weekend!

We had two amazing and joyful happenings for Rising Star Outreach this past weekend. It started on Friday, when we received a letter in Tamil from the State of Tamil Nadu's equivalent to our Board of Education. They notified us that after many months of paperwork, visits, pictures, more paperwork, and a lot of leg work, our application had been approved for becoming a fully recognized school in English Matriculation. We are now officially the PEERY MATRICULATION SCHOOL!! I equate it to a college or university going through the process of becoming accredited. For many of our parents, a big concern has been having their children study at a school that was lacking this recognition by the government. It is very important in Indian schools. Our challenge now, is following the curriculum that is required with the new status. This is now serious education!

On this past Friday we had a celebration with all the children, teachers, principal, and all the administration who had worked so hard to achieve this goal. We had a wonderful banner (two actually): one hangs at the front entrance for all to see, and another graces the front of the school. We had a few speeches and sweets for everyone. Just as we finished this short program, the skies opened and we had a huge deluge of rain. Everyone was completely soaked, but our very Hindu Purshotaman assured us that it was the most auspicious thing that could have occurred--it was confirmation of a blessing from above. We'll take it!! Ron and I appeared in our school uniforms (given to us by Lucy Williams and Matt Goodell), and the children were delighted. Ron looked especially cute--just like some of our boys. His shirt was two sizes too small, and his shorts about 3 sizes too big around the waist. Of course, his socks were a bit droopy--that's the way we wear them.

On Saturday of the same weekend, we had our Board meeting with the Indian Board at the Courtyard Marriott in Chennai. One of our Board members is Rajeev Menon, AVP for Marriott over India, Pakistan, Malaysia, and the Maldives. Rising Star Outreach is the Marriott hotel's charity in all 10 of their hotels in these countries. For 6 months envelopes have been in all the rooms of their hotels that explain Rising Star's mission and making it convenient for hotel guests to donate if they wish to. Also at checkout time, guests are asked if they would like to contribute rs100 (about $2.00) to be added to their bill. With hotel occupancy being down 40 - 60% these past months, they still gave us a check from these donations for 10 lakh--$22,000! Marriott is building many new hotels as we write, with a beautiful new JW Marriott to open in Chennai a year from now. This can only get better. We feel so blessed with the great help the Marriott's have given the program from around the world. The Marriott Courtyard in Chennai have truly adopted us, and bring such wonderful hope and love to the children and to others that we serve.

Pictures: 2 new students of the 4th Standard; official banner announcing in English and Tamil our receiving school recognition; Karen Berry (Courtyard Marriott General Manager), Joyce, Padma, Rajeev Menon, Ron; some of the staff of the Courtyard Marriott and Board members, as we received the award and had pictures taken for local media coverage.

Where does the time go??

Is there anyone out there left to wonder if we are still in India or not? The answer is, we are still here and keeping very busy--no excuse, but the only one I have. Time flies--faster here, and we get further behind. What a busy three weeks we've had.

A few highlights: We had a wonderful puja at the volunteer block for the putting in of the front door frame. Who would guess that it was very significant to see that door frame put in with a blessing for the remainder of the building. Needless to say, we would just like to say that the building is completed, but we can only say that the frame is in, and we are continuing the process of completion, slowly, slowly.

One of our house mothers became engaged, and we were invited to participate in the ceremony: Ron spoke and I prayed. It was a Christian union, but I realized many things that I had associated with a Hindu ritual is probably Indian culture and not religious based. The celebration took place in a small chapel in one of the leprosy colonies where this housemother's family lives. It was a sweet experience.

Ron celebrated his 72nd birthday on the 1st of September--the second birthday he has celebrated here. My next one will be with family in the US, which I look forward to. Ron's was a grand event, with two cakes (one for breakfast) and a very large beautiful one for all the staff and the children in the afternoon. They do love birthdays in India, and of course they love the aged, and we are becoming that also rather rapidly.

We had a wonderful parents day the first Saturday in September. Always it is a happy day for some and sad for others who have no one that comes to see them. We try to keep those children busy by helping us with chores, but many times there are families from their colony who include them with their own children for food and a bit of loving. We did lose some boys that day, whose mother had decided they were falling too far behind in an English language school, and had decided to put them in a Tamil medium school. That was sad.

We lost one of our artists in the Bindu Art School at the Bharatapuram colony, but in doing so witnessed some great acts of charity by two of our volunteers. Arumagam had broken his hip and was finally admitted to the hospital that works with leprosy patients. For three weeks he languished, with limited food, no surgery, and no hygiene care. They finally discharged him, weaker, very dirty and smelly, covered with open bed wounds, and sent him back to the colony to die. We received a call from Padma Venkataraman asking if there were any volunteers who could go to the colony and help him. We had two with us at the time: Nicole Pryzbola and Tom Douglas. They took off immediately with bandages, washing materials, and food. They cleaned him as well as they could--he didn't want to be moved much because of the pain from the hip, and fed him a little. They returned for three days; they sang, he smiled and sat up a bit, he smelled better, they dressed his wounds and got him a bed pan-- and then he died. It was an incredible thing these two young people had done--they were truly angles of mercy. Their response was to thank us and Padma for the privilege they had been given to serve this man. That's the kind of volunteers we have here at Rising Star Outreach. A few days after he died, we printed out a picture of Arumagam, mounted it, and they took it along with a flower tribute to the colony, to pay their last respects. Many of the artists cried--I know Tom and Nicole also shed a tear. They were bonded to this dear man with charity, the pure love of Christ.

One amazing side note: last year Nicole's twin sister Megan came to Rising Star. She had written about many of her experiences in her diary, and talked a lot about one of the artists in the colony. She had taken a beautiful picture of him which she enlarged and gave to Nicole. It has been hanging on the wall in Nicole's room for a year. Arumagam was a very thin man, even when healthy, but he had lost a lot of weight in the hospital. She didn't connect him to her picture at first, but it turned out that the very man whose picture was hanging in Nicole's apartment was the one she was asked to administer to. I love these small miracles that we see here.

Pictures: puja for front door frame, housemother's engagement ceremony, Ron's birthday, parents day, Nicole and Tom at tribute for Arumagam, Arumagam painting.