Its been quite a while since our last blog post… nevertheless the work here has not stopped. We have has such a busy few months that its hard to know where to begin!

Our farm crops are doing well, we have just passed through the monsoon and are now headed into winter. Our rice (paddy) crop is nearly ready for harvest and we have begun slowly getting it cut with the combine harvester (we expect to have it all done within the next few weeks). This crop is essential for us as it is one of our biggest sources of funding.

We were also able to finish our new spray tanker which is a big pressurized spray system that can be connected on the back of the tractor to allow us to spray the fields. It will take a lot of the manual labour our of the work that we do which will help to cut costs.

The children are all doing well, our Year 12’s have just finished their second last set of examinations and all are confident that they have done well. The primary school kids also had exams/tests over the last few weeks and are now starting to prepare for our Annual Christmas Drama which they put on for the local community. The children also recently celebrated Teacher’s Day with a fantastic performance put on by the children for all the teaching staff.

It has been a time of celebration too with many birthdays, anniversaries, and even a wedding! One of our mission Girls (who is now 23 years old) got married a few weeks back and we had a huge celebration here on the mission. Her name is Asha and for the last few years she has been living and working in the city of Dehradun, during this time she met a great young man named Basant and earlier this year they made the decision to get married here.

We were overjoyed to celebrate their marriage on the mission and on the big day there were nearly 400 people in attendance! The couple had a wonderful time and nothing could have gone better.

Also during the time we missed two of our Board Members, Clifton & Priscilla Shipway, welcomed their new son Malik into the mission family. He is already growing up fast and loves spending time with the children around the place.

Two of our kids became very ill in the last months, Priya with Typhoid and a bunch of other ailments and little Danny who had terrible fluid buildup in his lungs. Both were hospitalized for quite some time but are doing much better now. We also have had many other sicknesses like tonsillitis, boils, mumps and even a case of severe heat stroke! Thankfully everyone who got sick has since recovered in their health.