1st SUNDAY

Well, so today there was no running/exercise program. We will chalk it up the Sabbath I guess. We rose around 7:30 just in time to see the power to go off for 1 hour. After eating some breakfast we had to separate the crayons to make sure every child (about 12 of them) has the exactly number and colors… all 24. One thing I learned today is that kids here don’t see crayons much—so the become a little obsessive about “mine”. Something to work on, their character, I guess.

Big lunch and I spent the afternoon discovering the 200 options on Suresh Attah’s new camera. Impressive. It’s like a professional camera, for non professionals. That pretty much ate up 4 hours of time, between a half an hour power outage.

Kathryn took another nap this evening, I got to meet the new doctor. I was really bummed when the former doctor chose to work full-time in the nearby city of 700K (Tirupati). He still visits to help out when he can. But the new guy is great. A retired doctor after 30 years in the Indian gov’t. He was a leprosy doctor for a long time. Now he has been trained in the last 5 years to be a vocal advocate (both to speak in villages and before committees) on the HIV problems here in Andhra.

I also got to talk for an hour with Balraju. I hope I didn’t murder his name. I don’t know the spelling yet. We talked about future projects and fund raising ideas from the stateside to compliment the need for infrastructure, education and agricultural investment in the rural villages here (so they can actually afford to be charitable someday with their money—instead of receiving it).

Had a late meal at 8pm. And fed the “mama” dog outside with some bread , rice and curd (like sour yogurt). All in all, a good day. We didn’t get to downloading our pictures and getting ready to post them. But I will soon. Hopefully tomorrow we will post several. (now I have to do it).

Prayers: please pray for clear thoughts and the commitment of a few principle figures here to have time to hash out these future ideas and current needs for the hospital. I really want to have a good start after 2 weeks here and I am ready to share and ready to listen to all proposals.

Thank you for following us. And we always thank you for thinking of us before the LORD.