Week of Firsts!

We wondered if the sacrifice that our General Manager offered this past week on his birthday, as he attended the Temple  (most costly religious edifice, second only to the Vatican) in Andre Pradesh, resulted in our most recent additions.  He came to work on Monday with a baseball cap on, covering his newly shaved head.  He had given his beautiful hair to be used for wigs, fertilizer, other things to help the poor.  When, night before last, we were blessed with five new puppies from mama Snowball, (we still have two of her last batch), Ron asked Maren, our GM, if this was his doing.  He laughingly said, I did pray for prosperity for Rising Star, and we received all these new puppies!  Needless to say, we didn't need five new dogs--we've all agreed that we really don't need any dogs but we are not very good at getting rid of them.  We have worked on the neutering program, but it got bogged down in the three bid rule for everything we do or purchase.  This month, for sure!  We now have nine Indian dogs--they all look alike in India except for their coloring--and they are everywhere.  We have not helped the problem!

Our other excitement of this week, was the delivery of our first batch of milk from the village. 

We gave a micro-finance loan to five women in the nearby village to purchase 5 water buffalo. They will provide our milk (we will purchase it from them), which will then help them to repay the loan on the animals.  We have been told that the milk is very rich and will be nutritious for our children.  The rest of us think maybe we will continue to drink the milk we buy from the market!  (Cowards that we are.)  The milk will be picked up by us twice a day, we boil it, add protein powder in the morning and a bit of sugar in the afternoon, and it is then carried up to the children's rooms to be shared.  They love it--we're hoping they like the water buffalo milk as much as they have liked what they have been drinking.

Work has proceeded this week in spite of the rain.  The low wall around the playground, a pad for the big generator that will be coming to keep us in power at the school and the hostels, and a guard house at our front gate are all under construction.  The soccer field is still a bumpy, muddy surface, but all we need is a big piece of equipment to smooth it out.  That has been hard to come by.  The kids had a great game on it on Thursday, in spite of obstacles.