Thursday 7/19/07

Thursday morning we loaded up our overnight travel bags and headed out for Eureka Children’s Home in Veppamarathur (Vep a mare a tur, I think) to lay the foundation stone for the new maternity clinic. Eureka Children’s Home was the original orphanage and it is smaller and not as modern as Shady Grove at R. C. Chettipatty. We usually had either electricity or water at Veppamarathur but hardly ever both. Even so, I really loved the Eureka Children’s Home! It is smaller than Shady Grove and the children for the most part are younger. This is where Deva and Sathish, our foster children for 5 years, live. We had the dedication ceremony and Jill, who is just 15 years old and hypoglycemic, fainted from the heat. 2 of the men took her up to her room and we took her blood sugar and blood pressure and gave her water with propel added to it to replenishment her electrolytes. Karen stayed with her and fed her until she recovered. It was a very hot day. After the ceremony, Sister Lee and the men went with an agricultural official to look at a field where they plan to start cultivation and Karen stayed with Jill in their room. That left Leah, Ashley, and me to start teaching the classes. I taught first aid and CPR with Leah and Ashley’s assistance and Jody translating. Then I went through my alcohol spiel and followed up with a short lecture from some of Lee’s notes on treating bites and stings. Afterwards we had lunch and I walked out to the prayer mound on the other side of where the new clinic will be to see what the girls were up to. The prayer mound is a place on the far end of the property that has a beautiful old tree and a granite bench to sit on. It is quiet and peaceable and a great place to go for meditation. Later that afternoon we had mobile clinic in a local village. The people came mainly for joint pains which they have an abundance of. I felt really sorry for these hard-working people because many of them really needed surgery - more help than we could give them with our limited facilities. We tried to encourage them not to perform repitious tasks without changing positions often and resting. We also gave lots of diet advice for diabetes and hypertension like we did at Thinipatty and treated some children with fevers. We then drove to a dedication for a new “before and after” school program for Hindu children. So far there are 27 children participating. The children have little to eat, so this program provides them 2 meals a day (7 days a week) and English classes. They are taught English from the Bible and they go home and tell their parents what they learned. Many of the parents then ask if they can get a Bible of their own in the Tamil language. This was the first service held at this location and Lee and I got to dish out the first plates of food to the children! It was a very awesome and humbling experience.