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PL751
2nd August 2018
We have been delighted to have Rick's younger brother Kim and his wife Kathy visiting us this week from Adelaide. Being their first trip to India this has been a wonderful experience of new sights, sounds and cultures for them. After a couple of days alone in Delhi they jumped on a train and were met on the other end in Bareilly by Rick.
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Rick, Kathy & Kim
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Before we go further with that story let us tell you of the horrible experience we faced. For several years now Priscilla has been working hard to raise chickens in one of our new orchards. Raising them from chicks on scraps from our tables, our goal is to be able to produce enough free-range eggs for our kids to eat 2-3 times per week. The chickens will also help with pest/grass control in the orchard.
Just before 3am on Wednesday three wild dogs came onto our property, dug into the chicken coop and killed all forty of Priscilla's chickens. Not sparing a single one. It was truly heartbreaking and a massive setback for our plans. Thankfully with some incredible help from some generous friends who saw Priscilla's pain, we will be purchasing new chickens in the coming weeks. Thank you so much, you know who you are!
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Priscilla feeding some kitchen scraps to her chickens.
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40 out of 40 chickens were killed by dogs in the night.
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The culprits, clearly caught on our CCTV camera.
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With Rick on his last few days of rest (under doctors orders) it was up to his brother half to ensure no dogs could never get to Priscilla's chickens again. With Kim being a Shipway, he was more than happy to get in and work with Sunny and Clifton in the workshop to put together a permanent solution to the dog problem.
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Rick taking a little more of a back seat role than usual.
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Little Aaron also getting into the Shipway work ethic.
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Kim and the boys bringing in a new wall for the chicken coop.
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Forget dogs... the new coop will be able to keep tigers out!
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Completed and ready for new hens.
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Sunny was on deck this week doing his best to keep some pressure of Rick. He's been a busy boy with pumps needing replacing, tractors needing servicing, the chicken house and a variety of other maintenance jobs. We are so blessed to have him, and so many other skilled people as members of our team.
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Sunny changing a bearing on the front tire of our John Deere tractor.
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The faulty bearing.
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By day 2 of Kim and Kathy's visit Rick felt he had had enough rest and got back into work (a little lighter than usual). This time our attention was on the construction of 30-50 new school desks for the children in our school. Over the next 6 months we will be needing to construct around 200 desks to handle current students and expected new admissions for next year.
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The workshop has been a buzz with activity.
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Rick and Kullu drilling holes in the desk frames.
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A factory line has been established.
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The first set of many, many desk sides.
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Kim and Sunny welding the parts together.
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Sunny has been stuck to the welder this week.
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All of these pipes will be turned into desks over the coming week.
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Kim with the first frame welded up ready for paint and wood.
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We also received 50 new chairs this week for our Dining Room thanks to the Samartha Saxena Foundation. These chairs are made in a factory just across the road from us and, due to their quality, normally only last 2-4 years before breaking. These new ones come with a 12 month replacement guarantee... something we are sure our kids will put to the test!
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In accordance with Indian accounting standards all new furniture must be marked with a unique serial number.
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Kathy was happy to help with the engraving of each chair.
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We celebrated our school's 9th birthday this week with a special Founder's Day celebration (that just happens to coincide with the mission's founder: Rev. Maxton D. Strong's birthday). A special program was held with parents and friends of the school invited and then the kids were given the rest of the day off (much to their delight).
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Our school choir singing the school song.
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Some of the youngest students performing a dance.
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Phyllis Ma'am handled the anchoring of the event.
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Some of the girls performing a bright and colourful dance.
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Angel and Jimika always ready for the camera.
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Our mission children performing a dance.
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Amazingly the rain stayed away long enough for us to complete the program.
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A fun little dance by the Grade 7 girls.
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Looking beautiful in their traditional Indian sarees.
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Some of the teachers of our school.
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Over the last few weeks India has been facing terrible flooding, the epicenter of this has been in Kerala where hundreds of thousands of families have been displaced from their homes and over 500 people have lost their lives. In a time like this we wanted to teach our children the importance of caring for those in need. In an effort to do exactly that our students have been fundraising this week and through donations from friends and family managed to raise just over 100,000 rupees (over USD$2000). We are so proud of their efforts and have already passed on the money to World Vision India who are working hard in Kerala to support those in need. If you would like to help out, here is a link:
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These funds were handed over by the school as a part of the Founder's Day event.
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Clifton taking a moment to reflect on the great need in Kerala.
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Handing out some surprise prizes to children who raised the most from each class.
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We also held some interviews this week with 47 applications for the Librarian position in our new library, of these 12 were selected for interviews and it has now been narrowed down to 2 applicants. We also received some solid applications for our hostel warden positions that we have been advertising on our website -but no decisions have been made on those ones yet. Until a librarian is appointed Catherine will continue her regular trips up to the library with the kids.
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Catherine, in the middle of her group of readers.
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Sakshi and Rina laughing at a man eating oysters (they found it disturbing).
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Sabithri is a regular at the library sessions.
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Someone forgot to add an age limit to the library club rule book.
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Trudy likes to consider herself the current librarian.
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Jyoti helping to keep the books arranged correctly.
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Jyoti preferred the cool of the floor and the proximity of the books.
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And that is where we will end this week. We are unsure what will happen over the next 2 weeks as Rick will be traveling around India with Kim and Kathy while Clifton (who normally writes the newsletters) will be off on a huge motorcycle tour with Royal Enfield through the Himalayan mountains. We will do our best to ensure something comes out, but no guarantees. Please keep them both in your prayers.
Blessing on you,
Rick, Clifton, Eugene & Priscilla
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