Happy New Year friends!
Nina and I have visas for India already stamped in our passports and we're making last minute preparations for travel. Our itinerary and ministry involvement will look something like this:
Jan 13 – 23 : Kathmandu , Nepal (children's home, ministry among street children and drug rehab, home for elderly women)
Jan 23 – Feb 6 : Calcutta , India (ministry with child prostitutes, Mother Theresa's home for the dying)
Feb 7 – 11: Madras , India (children's home for AIDS orphans)
I want to thank you for supporting us financially and through prayer as we make this journey. We go with the desire to give of ourselves and at the same time receive from all those we encounter. This will be the first time in Asia for both Nina and I. Please pray for the following:
That we will have open hearts and eyes to see how God is working in Nepal and India . To be encouraged as well as be an encouragement for those serving in these countries. That God will protect us and keep us healthy during travel. For the community in Galati who will be without us for one month. Pray for Viorel who will be coordinating ministry with both gangs of street kids in our absence. Pray also for the Klepac family and 17-year-old Vasca who moved into the boys' home in mid-November. Praise God that Vasca has adjusted well and is thriving in this new setting. Pray for the Klepacs as they continue to open their home to more boys like Vasca seeking a new beginning in a loving home.
I recently read a book that inspired me as I thought of the street boys in Micro 19 and our daily soccer games and meals with them in the parking lot behind McDonalds. In Finding Life: Reflections from a Bangkok Slum , Ashley Barker writes,
One of the biggest hurdles [for youth in poverty situations] is that boredom that can lead to despair. George Orwell once wrote of his experiences as a poverty stricken young writer in Down and out in Paris and London that 'you discover the boredom which is so inseparable from poverty: the times then you have nothing to do and, being underfed, can interest yourself in nothing'. When young men make the effort in scorching heat [in Romania, the freezing cold] to come out at the end of each long day to do battle on a soccer ground they are keeping poverty at bay, no matter what the surroundings may say. By using their energies in a positive way, and away from the alcohol and glue sniffing that is destroying a despairing generation here, they have an opportunity for a healthy future.
Peace and grace,
Rachel rachel.simons@wordmadeflesh.com