September 2010
Greetings in Jesus Name to you!
We simply cannot believe how fast the month of August has flown by, let alone how fast this year seems to be going! Our family had a very nice reason to celebrate this month as Desirea experienced her very first birthday in India! We were also able to make some great purchases this month as Hope For the Children has been in desperate need of a new fridge & washing machine. The previous fridge was VERY old & has been on its last legs for quite some time now. We got a great deal on a brand new, Samsung fridge and our staff was very happy to receive it!
We also really felt the need to bless the staff with a semi-automatic washing machine. From the beginning of the HFTC’s existence our staff has been washing ALL of the children’s clothes BY HAND!! With over 40 children in our children’s home you can only imagine how much clothes there would be to wash so needless to say that our staff was EXTREMELY happy to receive this particular piece of LG equipment and it was our joy to be able to do this!
We also got the ball rolling on collecting everything required for renewing our visas. The Indian Government requires a good number of documents along with the application and just to make the process even more fun they also require 4 copies of EACH application & EACH supporting document for EACH member of our family. It really would be nice if things were done more electronically here but that’s simply not the case as they just LOVE storing boxes & boxes of paper files over here! I think we’ve killed a small tree with the amount of Xeroxing we’ve had to do this month! Please keep our visa renewal in prayer as we’re applying for a 1-year extension on our current volunteer visa.
We’re also very busy preparing to host a team of 9 wonderful people from our home church, Kennedy Road Tabernacle or KRT in Brampton! They’ll be arriving next month on Sept. 18th and the main focus of their 2-week stay will be to start the construction of the 2nd level of HFTC! KRT is one of the MAIN reasons why HFTC exists today and we’re so thankful for the HUGE part they’re playing yet again. This will be the THIRD team that has come from KRT to Chennai, India to do work on the facility and they’ve also contributed $40K of the $95K required for this project so PRAISE GOD! Please pray that the Lord will give us favour as we strive to raise the balance of $55K required to complete this project. The 2nd level is DESPERATELY needed as many of our children are currently sleeping in the dining hall due to the lack of space in the boys & girls rooms. We also desire to take in more children.
Featured Child – Ravindran Rajapan
Age 13
We’d love to introduce you to beautiful Ravindran Rajapan this month! He’s affectionately known by everyone as ‘Ravi’ and is someone that always has a BIG SMILE for you when you see him! Ravi is from a small town called Kollapakkam and is in the 8th grade. He has been with Hope For the Children for 3 years now and has come from a very destitute situation. Both of his parents are very poor as their only source of income is the father’s job. He makes very meagre earnings working as a broker or ‘middle-man’ in the truck-selling industry. This sort of job is a very low-paid position and therefore his parents could not afford to keep Ravi due to their extreme poverty. As all parents desire, Ravi’s wanted a better life for their son so they sent him to us. Yet despite all of this, Ravi is a very pleasant & good-natured young man. We recently asked him what his favourite thing is about being at Hope For the Children and he told us that it’s the great friends he’s made! One of his hobbies is art and we are blown away every time this little boy shows us one of the pictures he’s done – they’re simply breathtaking! He told us that one of his other hobbies is studying – can you believe it? His favourite subject in school is science and when asked about what he wants to be when he grows up he’ll very quickly tell you that he wants to be a scientist! His desire is to invent things to help people and we think that’s an awesome goal for this bright, young boy. Ravi comes from a Hindu background but just this past year he gave his life to Jesus Christ! We praise God for Ravi and believe the Lord has amazing things in store for him!
June 2010
June is BACK TO SCHOOL month over here in India, which means that the children of Hope For the Children have come back from visiting their families for the summer!
The best part of their return was the surprise that awaited them – their NEW PLAYGROUND!! We’re so thrilled to announce that The Alpha & Omega Children’s Park was completed in early June and was all ready for when the children returned so PRAISE GOD! You can only imagine their faces when they saw their ‘circus’, something they’ve been asking for a very LONG time now.
Needless to say, the playground was an instant hit and our prayer is that the Lord will keep them safe while playing, that this playground will be a source of fun & joy for our chil-dren for MANY years to come! This play-ground was made possible because of a certain number of individuals & churches that responded so quickly that all the funds were raised in only about 1 week! All of you that contributed are such an answer to prayer and because of your generosity this playground will be a HUGE BLESSING to so many children for MANY years to come so we thank you all from the bottom of our hearts!
Another great thing accomplished this month was purchasing brand new school bags (back-packs) & school supplies for all of the children. Not only were they so excited about their new playground but were thrilled to receive their new school supplies as it was very badly needed! We presented each child with their new school bag & school supplies and by the end of the party they all proudly ‘showed off’ their new apparel by putting on their new bags full of supplies!
This was all possible because of the many churches & individuals supporting us in this ministry. We would not be here if not for your prayers & support and for that we’re truly grateful as the Lord is using your resources to touch the lives of many children for His Glory!
Featured Child – Vishal Vijendra
June 2010
“Change a life, change a nation”
Vishal Gevijendra Aged 10
Vishal has quite the story as he’s come to us from an abusive background. For reasons unknown his father committed suicide a little over a year ago. About a month later his mother did the same, leaving Vishal & his sister orphans and ending up in the hands of their mother’s parents.
If the suicide of his parents wasn’t bad enough, little Vishal spent the next year being abused by his own grandparents. They would verbally & physically abuse him, leave him locked in a room whenever they went out (which was a LOT) and also starve him for many days. However his sister was treated very well by the grandparents simply because she looked more like her mother. Since Vishal looked more like his father it was justified in their minds to treat him like this.
Vishal is a very bright little boy but since he was abused so badly he couldn’t even concentrate on his studies & thus failed the last year in school. However the hand of God was upon him as somehow, our Hindu language teacher heard about his situation & brought him to us. Though being a Hindu, our language teacher felt the best place for Vishal to be was Hope For the Children.
Because of what he went through the past year he was very scared of all of us when she first brought him in mid-May. He was even scared to eat any food given to him because his grandparents kept taking food away from him just to be cruel. He speaks some English and he told us that he LOVES being here now! He wants to be an engineer one day and even though he’s from a Hindu background he’s told us he wants Jesus, which brings us tears of joy & rejoicing as he’ll have an awesome testimony!
Our Prayer Needs
100% in monthly commitments to come in ASAP!
Language learning & cultural adaptation – we REALLY desire to be able to relate & communicate with the children of HFTC as well as the locals on a deeper level
Funds to come in for 2nd level of home to be completed this year
ALL children @ the home to be sponsored through Child Care Plus
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Just when we thought it couldn‟t get any hotter over here, IT DID!! The month of May has simply been a SCORCHER with temperatures soaring over 40 degrees & with the humidity if feels like 52 degrees so needless to say, it‟s been HOT!
Despite the intense heat, the month of May has been quite eventful for us. It’s now summer holidays for the children this month so many of them have gone home to visit their families. There are however about 8-10 of them that remained due to not having any family or simply because their families can’t even afford to keep them for a few days. We wanted to make the best of their time off school by taking them to a place called VGP/Universal Studios Fun Park! It was so wonderful to see the children having a blast as they just aren’t able to enjoy things like this on a regular basis like many other children. The best part is that we had an ulterior motive in taking them to the fun park and that was the need to get them away from the children’s home in order to give them a big surprise!
For many months now the children have been asking us for a ‟circus‟, which means playground for all intensive purposes! Upon hearing this desire of theirs it became a very strong desire of ours to make this dream a reality for these beautiful children. We started re-searching this project back in late March/early April and once we had a proposal put together we sent it out to many churches & individuals and the response was just INCREDIBLE! Within the 1st week of putting the word out for this project all of the funds came in – PRAISE GOD! Because of this we were able to start the construction of the play-ground on May 13th and very soon it will be fully completed.
The children will start to return in early June and we just cannot wait to see their faces for the big surprise that awaits them! The plan is to have the playground completed by early June so that once all of the children have returned we can have the grand opening celebration around the 1st or 2nd week of June. We also wanted to pick a name for the park that gives glory to the One Who made this possible so we’ve chosen to call it “The Alpha & Omega Children’s Park”. We fully believe that the TRUE hope for these children is Jesus Christ, Who refers to Himself as “the Alpha & Omega” in the book of Revelation. He is the BEGINNING & the END for all of us, including these precious children.
Many thanks to Maria “Louie” Alcantara from our home church (KRT in Brampton) for designing an awesome logo for our playground! We can’t wait to have the grand opening next month so be prepared to see a lot of smiling children’s faces in next month’s newsletter!
Our Prayer Needs
100% in monthly commitments to come in ASAP!
Language learning & cultural adaptation
Funds to come in for 2nd level of home to be completed this year (total cost is $60K)
Construction of play-ground to go well & be completed by early June
ALL children @ the home to be sponsored through Child Care Plus (only costs $34/month)
“Change a life, change a nation”
Featured Child – Vignesh Loganathan , Age 5
We’d love to introduce you to little Vignesh Loganathan. This beautiful little boy is one of our newest additions at Hope For the Children as he was dropped off just last month. He comes from a fairly big town called Tambaram, however his parents are extremely poor and simply cannot afford to take care of him. Vignesh also has an older brother, however his parents have chosen to send their youngest to us. They usually like to keep the older ones as they take them to work with them in order to make a little more money even though they end up with not much more.
Families like Vignesh’s are very desperate to make ends meet and will do almost anything to achieve this. This little boy is such a joy to be around as he’s always smiling and is a very playful & easy-going child! He’s just finished junior kindergarten and will be going to senior kindergarten in the next school year.
When we spoke with him last week we had the privilege of asking him if he liked being at Hope For the Children. His response was that he LOVES being here because he’s made a lot of friends and more importantly, he’s VERY excited about the playground being completed! We also asked him what he wants to be when he grows up and he told us that he wants to be a police man. When we asked him if he’s ever heard about a person named Jesus he said he did not know what we‟re talking about. We are so thankful to have the opportunity to share the love of Jesus with little Vignesh and it’s our hearts desire to see him one day give his life to Christ. We believe he‟ll be a light for Jesus as he serves his country as a police man.