Sunday Morning

Good Morning!
It's about 5 am Sunday and I'm looking forward to a wonderful day! As stated earlier, we arrived safely and are now at the Shady Grove Children's Home.
The ride here was, well, an adventure. I only thought road rage was bad around the Toronto area. Wrong! At one point I just curled up and took a quick nap because I couldn't take it anymore. They do not have pot holes, they have craters. The road out of Madras was good just extremely busy. As we went further east the road got progressively worse. To better explain it, let me share something that I thought was absolutely hillarious. We are driving down the road and recieve a phone call. Brother Guna tells the person on the other end all is well and hangs up. When done he informs us that that was the mechanic checking up on him to make sure the jeep was still running. That's pretty bad when your mechanic has to make house calls. :)
The poverty here is just unimaginable. I don't think I can really describe it to you. The best part of Madras reminded me of the worse part of Savannah near Union Mission Homeless Shelter or the part of New Orleans that you don't go to after 4 pm. We left our hotel and within about 10 min I saw blantant nutrient defienciecies on the street. A young man had a strong case of xerophthalmia ( dry eye w/ a clear covering over the eye). I have only seen this in textbooks but it is clear manifestation of prolonged vitamin A defieniency. During the week I am to go to the villages and do some public nutrition ed. I would ask that you all pray for me with that because the defiencies are clear textbook cases, I just want to be able to recall that textbook learning. Also (and more importantly) they need to see Christ in me not just an American dietitian. Side note, my incredibly talented secretary, Tammy, has always mentioned moving one of our clinics to Walmart. Well, that's kind of what I'll be doing b/c it will be in the city market!
Now about the children. My grandfather told me that I couldn't bring any home but, oh, it is going to be so hard to leave them! During the reception they had for us, the children sang songs and danced. The most impressive was the little kids quoting scripture. Not just a verse here or there but whole passages. One 5 yr old girl (cute as a button) quoted Ps 91:1-10 effortlessly. An older girl about 12 yr old gave a 3-min exposition of the TULIP doctrine. It is quite evident that they are being taught and taught well. They then gave the 3 of us a long, beautiful fresh flower garland. I know it won't make it home but I've got pictures. It is made of jasmine, yellow mums, a red flower and then some type of pale green leaves. As leaving to head to the guest house the little boys all waited outside their dorm to tell us good night. It was so sweet! Some were very shy but most just couldn't wait to shake the our hands. "Good night, Sister... Hello Miss Karen, my name is---... Very happy to meet you," was spoken by a flock of little guys. What a way to tell someone goodnight!
By the way, Brother Guna informed me that at one of the other orphanages about 6 or 7 kids don't have a sponcer. If you have ever thought about sponcering a child (or children) this could be your opportunity. Well, I better go. I think we are all up now and I'm the only one still in my PJ's so I better go change.
Sending love form India,
KAB