Aug. 2003

Dear Saints and Aints.

Shalom.

Looking at the computer screen I get tired. It is “littered” with jumbled sentences and paragraphs containing half-thought out ideas that take in the whole spectrum of my thoughts and feelings, which somehow resist any attempt to be shaped into a cohesive, sense-making whole. Words that should jog my memory only produce amnesia. The usual start of a newsletter ...

The look through my window presents also a rather uninspiring view. A gray dismal sky peeps through gaps in the trees. The leaves of tree and shrub, bombarded by raindrops, tremble. The only bit of color is the golden bell-shaped flowers in the two small trees guarding the gate.

Looking within, this morning, for inspiration, is out of question. My mood matches the scenery outside my window and my mind mirrors the confusion on the computer screen.
Nevertheless, life is still great. I took a week off to drive to a hill station some 300 km north of here. My soul needed to catch up with my body ... The whole week was totally uneventful in which, so I assume, the therapeutic effect lies. I did absolutely nothing but eat, sleep, read and wandering through the woods - using the car for the latter took the strain out of the “wandering”.

Though somebody came with me this time, I prefer driving alone. My car becomes my castle, my prayer room and my musing chair. Also I can sing and add 50 animals to “Old McDonald’s farm” without causing offence to anybody. In church, they refuse to give me a hymnbook ...

Of course driving here is rather dangerous as even the birds try to “play chicken” with you on the highway. At times to their detriment ...  Unmarked speed breakers of huge proportions are a constant danger. I often wonder why some enterprising soul does not build a hospital and or garage near some of them. He could make a good living. Traffic laws are only known to the one who wrote them ... In Canada a person who looks both ways before stepping out on a “one way” street is a pessimist. Here he is a realist ... What doesn’t help is that a lot of people think traffic lights are meant only for decoration. A new danger is all the young girls on scooters etc. who think when a cop whistles at them it is in appreciation of their comely form ... Yet I enjoy it all even if I am the only sane driver on the road ...

Towards the end of the summer I drove down to Hyderabad - 500 km south of Nagpur - and met Kory Sorensen and Irwin Whitt from the Toronto office and Glen Embree from the Abbotsford Church in British Columbia. It was simply great. It was nice to share how I feel with people who understand why I might feel the way I do. The other great thing was they paid for my hotel bill. I am inveterate mercenary.

Also great was meeting with the two young men from the home who are at the Bible College in Hyderabad, which Dr. David Willis founded some years ago - a good place for our young people. It is certainly a place worth your support. This year I am supporting eight young people in various Bible Colleges. More wanted to go but some opted out in the last minute.

To some the work in Nagpur seems “spiritually” inconsequential – yet, we run a Christian home, an effective Christian home where the kids are continually exposed to God’s Word. This year so far three followed the Lord through the waters. Other young men are serving the Lord in various ministries. The rest of the kids slowly grow and who knows what one day will happen? Of course, we have other kids too ...

Spirituality is a far broader concept then we often assume and frequently confuse with religiosity. I am as spiritual in the bathroom as I am in church, as it does not depend on the place but the condition of the person. Also isn’t worrying the whole day about your kids and caring for them as spiritual as attending a whole night prayer meeting? I think it is. There are many other aspects ... One kid (grade 12) had left the home in huff over something. He said many “unkind” things about this worthy man. Then several months later he returned. Looking at his feet he said, “I need mercy.” As I go to God every day for the same “commodity”, I could easily identify with him. He continued, “I want to come back to continue my studies.” Since he left, his father is paralyzed, his mother has cancer, his brothers all left the shack they lived in, the Government razed that to the ground, and they now were living under a sheet of plastic on the sidewalk. Of course, he is back. Spirituality in work clothes ... 

As to our place, if I am honest, looking at it sometimes I feel a wee bit embarrassed thinking of other well-kept places, schools and institutions. Though always clean, it is nothing like those and, never mind how hard we try – it looks “scruffy” - a normal home for normal. boys? We have a home for kids, not a nunnery or a cathedral. Also we don’t have the money for maintenance. To me a broken window is of less concern then a hungry kid ...

Now that the rains are in full swing – the playground is heaven for boys who enjoy playing in mud – (and which boy does not?) - and for those who can only enjoy a football game in pouring rain - at the end of which they become indistinguishable from each other and - the playground. Watching them I get “homesick” for my childhood ...
An added problem - excuses, excuses ..., while kids are by nature destructive ours seem more so as they come from the lower and lower-lower classes – the poorest of the poor. Most of them never lived in a house, only in shacks in the slums or in small villages. Nagpur has, so I just read, 425 areas designated as slums ... That people can retain their sanity and humanity in those places is a tribute to the indomitableness of the human spirit. Still, it is one thing to take them out of the slums it is quite another to take the slum out of them.

However, we have a great bunch of kids. One of the teens asked me for money to see a movie. After I gave it to him he said, “I never understood how you could possibly believe you would go to heaven.” Then looking at the money he grinned; “Now I think it just could be possible.”

Do pray for Yohan. He is really doing a wonderful job and carries a tremendous burden. We only disagree on the number of kids we should have. I want more he wants less. He wants a better place for fewer while I am happy with something half completed for more. I think of the condition of the kids wherever they are from and he thinks of the ever-increasing unpaid bills. Somebody believes there are two realities - Yohan’s and mine. There is only one and when we see two we need a spiritual eye operation. I see the desperately poor kids - poor in every possible way - and I see the bills. But both coalesce in the faithfulness of God. If only we dare to lay hold of that ...

Well the dull gray sky is still there, the leaves still tremble under the onslaught of rain drops and - as you just read - jumbled sentences and paragraphs containing half-thought out ideas that take in the whole spectrum of my thoughts and feelings failed to be shaped into a cohesive, sense-making whole ...

Thanks for putting up with me. Thank you also for your love expressed in prayers, gifts and letters. Not that you "possibly could" you "definitely will" go to heaven ...

Love from us all

Frank.