Namaste! (Or Vanakkam! in Tamil)
Yes, Maria and I are still alive in South India. It’s been a roller coaster of emotions these past couple of weeks – trying to adapt to a completely new culture can be tiring! We’ve had our valley times of missing home, but also our mountain peak experiences of going shopping with our Indian friends and buying clothes for DIRT CHEAP. It’s crazy how little money we spend.
We are volunteering as a kind of teacher’s aid for Asha Kiran Special Needs School in Bangalore. I, (Emily) work in the preschool and Maria works in a First Grade level classroom. The class groups are designed to cater to kids with the same mental ability, so you can have varying age groups of children in every class.
I am working specifically with a child who have frequent seizures every day, which inhibits his ability to fully participate in the class. His name is Kavin and he’s a brilliant boy, but his condition prevents him from successfully completing a task. Because he is so unpredictable in his seizures I have the challenging task of keeping sneaky hawk eyes on Kavin – for his safety- while making sure he gets the same treatment (and discipline!) as any of the other children. Even in the three-ish weeks we’ve been here I’ve seen progress in him, it’s so funny to me that I can get so excited about a child holding a pencil all by himself!
This is Maria here! These past three weeks I have been settling into my classroom which includes 7 kids who vary in ages from 7 to 12 years. It has been so awesome to see the gifts and talents that God gives these children. I spend most of my time working with a boy named Sowgat who is autistic. He is so bright, but he has outbursts (consisting of sobbing and sometimes stripping naked. . . haha) that often make him hard to handle. Sowgat can read so well, and he sometimes recites entire movie dialogues but it is so difficult to keep him participating. That is where I come in. My job is to keep Sowgat on task and make sure that he understands what he is learning, while avoiding the triggers that cause his fits. It can be frustrating and pretty draining but it has been so rewarding to see him learning these past weeks.
Besides school, we’ve gone on a ton of adventures. Our gracious hosts Prem and Rita take us nearly everywhere with them, and we’ve been able to experience 2+ hour Indian church services, a fabulously decked out memorial service (in the hottest weather ever), the most fun catered birthday party, and much more. We’ve also been able to go on a weekend Safari and see animals like elephants, white tigers, lions, and bears! We never get bored here – with the endless street shops, humans, and adventure around every corner.
God has been working hard in each of us. One thing I’ve specifically noticed is that in our conversations with fellow teachers and friends, we have more similarities than differences. It’s been really cool to see that God is the same everywhere in the world. Pray that we continually see Him working in various ways!
Prayer Requests: That we branch out and take advantage of the places around us. We live a little ways outside the city, in a less developed part of Bangalore, so we are guaranteed the only white people for miles. There are a lot of things to see around our house, but we need the courage to venture out on our own, and stay safe while we do it!
Our dear teacher friend Shonan is a new Christian – only since about 2010. She graciously hosted us for girls night at her house last weekend and we got to have some pretty cool conversations about Jesus and the Bible. Please pray that she finds solid Christian community here in Bangalore, because Christians here are definitely the minority!