Help Orphans In India (GSAM General Fund)

The hot Indian Summer is in and that can mean only one thing: the Summer Games! This incredible 30-day program of games, events, activities, challenges and frivolous fun is as much designed to entertain our kids during the summer break as it is about shaping them. The Games are an incredible way to harness and cultivate leadership skills, team spirit, good morals, compassion and of course hard work!

As this is our 10^th year of Summer Games we have returned to the original teams: Cobra, Tiger, Elephant and Crocodile. We’re currently about halfway through the games and so far the scoreboard is looking pretty even! Who will be the victor? Which team will claim the coveted Summer Games Cup? Only time will tell.

Elsewhere on the Mission we have completed our wheat harvest and are now preparing our fields for the monsoon and rice paddy season. Our Kindergarten construction is going well and we will be pouring the first part of the roof by the end of the week.

The construction of our new Carpentry Shop is now complete and we just love it! Our carpenter, Ganesh, is already putting it to good use building furniture and completing day-to-day maintenance within the new building. It is such a joy to have a safe, clean and dry workspace for our team.

We also find it prudent to mention here that we have appealed to the civil courts, requesting a mandatory injunction against some ex-employees who are refusing to vacate the premises. Soon our property and family will be whole again. For the sake of clarity and good accountability we want to confirm that no GlobalGiving funds are being used for this purpose.

Summer is also the season for mangoes, lychees, mulberries and other fruit. The 110+ degree heat might be tough on our bodies, but the fruit trees sure love it! Thankfully we have our swimming pool to cool off in - we gave it a facelift recently with a coat of paint and some minor repairs.

As we mentioned, our school is currently closed for Summer Vacation, students will return in July to regular classes. By then the monsoon should be here and cooler weather will hopefully make life in the classroom a little more bearable.

Holidays or not, life continues on at a busy pace here on the Good Shepherd Agricultural Mission and through it all we are grateful for your continued support. We’re confident that this next quarter will be filled with exciting activities, projects and accomplishments – thank you for partnering with us through it all.

Once again we are back with another report that is full to the brim with exciting activities. It is always tough to know which stories to highlight in these short reports - those who want a more detailed report can sign up to our weekly newsletters on our website or even follow us on Instagram or Facebook using the handle IndianOrphanage.

We're happy to report that things continue well here on the GSAM, there's always challenges of course - especially in a big family like ours. Sickness and injury of course are the most common challenge; thankfully we don't have a whole lot to write about in that regard. Board Member Paula is recovering well after her brain surgery, Rajesh continues his treatment for suspected SCA and there have been a few, barely noteworthy, sprains and brakes among our number.

On our farm our wheat has been seeded and the crop is growing well; a short winter may affect the yield at the end however. The biggest job on the farm by far has been our sugar cane harvest - almost 30 acres of cane has been cut, cleaned and sold off to the local sugar mill. The fields were barely empty for a few days before we re-seeded them with cane and started the process over again. Over these last few months we also completed another massive section of fencing on our southern border; thank you to those who helped with funding this project.

The construction of our new Kindergarten is going well, we've progressed to the point where we are ready to frame up and pour the massive concrete roof; this is a huge and expensive task that requires a lot of planning. Hundreds of bags of cement will be used for the roof as well as dozens of truckloads of sand and gravel - these come from the local riverbeds and stockpiling enough supplies will take a few weeks still.

The Kindergarten is not the only construction we have on the go, our much smaller Carpentry Shop is well underway. The roof has been poured and our building team has begun the process of plastering the walls and preparing the floors to be poured. We're hoping the construction will be complete by the next time we put in a report here.

In our school, Maxton Strong School, many of our young boys are training daily for an upcoming inter-school soccer tournament that we are hosting. Almost a dozen school from our local area have signed up for the tournament which begins next week. It's close to the end of the school year here in India, the last day being March 31st, so along with soccer practice our students are also studying for final examinations.

This report wouldn't be complete without mentioning our incredible Christmas season that has just passed. If you've been following us for a few years you will know that we don't do Christmas lightly here. Lights, fireworks, decorations, presents, stockings, bonfires and trees are just the beginning of the amazing celebrations we host here for our kids and community. It truly is "the most wonderful time of the year!"

And of course, what better way to end this report than our children; the very reason we do everything we do. Life has been great lately, cool weather has meant lots of bonfires, movie nights and hanging out around the main office. Every other day there is a birthday to celebrate - and we've had some excellent ones of late! Our kids also took an epic trip to go white-water rafting in the nearby river that marks the border between India and Nepal. There has been regular visits from all of our Mission: University students over the last few months too; it is always so wonderful to catch up with them and hear about their college lives.

We're so grateful for the incredible support that each one of you is to us; your regular donations, emails and messages of support mean so much. As we partner together for the betterment of our kids and the community here in our little corner of India, we can never forget just how many people make this place so special. Thank you for being a precious part of our team.

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• Follow us on Facebook!

It has been 3 months since our last report; approximately 2000 hours since we filled you in on our Summer Games program. In that time a myriad of events, projects, programs and newsworthy happenings have passed us by. Knowing which ones to select to report on here is quite a challenge! Rather than writing a book about it all, we're picking 6 key moments that we feel are most significant.

• Peter's Arm: After a nasty fall in his hostel Peter managed to break his arm. It has been a long and difficult road to recovery for him, but in the next week or so he will have his cast removed.
• Paula's Brain Surgery: A visit to a neurologist in Bareilly gave some scary news to our big family, Paula had a large tumor that was pressing on her brain. Just over a week later she was admitted in Delhi where the tumor was removed. She is now discharged and recovering in Delhi before she will return home to us.
• Rajesh's Testing At AIIMS: Over the last 8 years Rajesh has been slowly loosing his ability to balance; at first it was minor, just a few stumbles, but now he struggles to walk a straight line. After a visit to a neurologist and some testing the doctors inform us that they suspect he has a degenerative brain disease called Spinocerebellar ataxia (SCA). Through some amazing connections he is getting help from India's leading experts in SCA at the All India Institute of Medical Science in New Delhi.
• Rice Harvest: Our farm continues to thrive, in the last week we harvested our crop of Basmati rice and soon we will reap our regular rice crop too. Rice makes up a huge part of our diet, and our Basmati stores are reserved for special occasions like birthdays or weddings.
• Laundry Roof: It was a quiet Sunday morning when a large male monkey jumped on our laundry roof - like the straw that broke the camel's back - the weight of the monkey brought the entire roof down. We're so grateful that no one was in the building at the time, and even the monkey escaped unharmed!
• School Construction: With the monsoon weather now over we have been able to get back on track with the construction of our new kindergarten building. Brickwork began in October and by the end of November we hope to be beginning the long process of constructing the concrete first floor.

If you have been following our weekly newsletters you probably already know that our annual Summer Games program has just wrapped up. The Summer Games is a month long event that we run for our kids during their school summer break. This was our 9^th Games. Filled with games, challenges and programs designed to build our kids confidence, entertain and create memories that will last a lifetime, the Games are truly something special.

Each year the kids are split into four coloured teams, this year it was the Red Knights (red), the King Sharks (black), the Thunderbirds (blue) and the Hunters (green). Competition between the teams was fierce as they completed daily tasks, challenges, competitions and events for points. The team with the most points at the end of the Games would be crowned the Summer Games Champions and receive the covetted Summer Games Cup!

After 4 weeks of challenges and with points absolutely neck and neck, the Red Knights scraped through for final victory and were crowned the Summer Games Champions. Congratulations team!

We had an absolute blast running the games - our Summer Games Committee did an incredible job managing daily fun! We have no doubt that our children will look back positively on these games for years to come. They have all gone off to school this week – sharing stories with their classmates of the exciting (and sometimes disgusting) challenges/fun they had over the summer break.

We want to thank all of you who have supported us through the last quarter, work and life continues well here on the Mission. Our new Kindergarten construction is well underway with the foundation now being completed (just in time for the monsoon which hit last week). Our fields are going well, we have planted a large crop of sugar cane and will soon be planting our regular rice crop.

It is through your support that we are able to continue to make a positive change in the lives of our kids; we could not do this without you.

Links:

• Learn more about the Summer Games...

When last we reported we were heading into Christmas - which is always a lovely time of the year. If you are following along with you weekly newsletters, you already know that our Christmas was a wonderful one. We had plenty of past staff and children return home to celebrate the season; there were bonfires, presents, snacks, picnics, games and everything you would expect from a GSAM Christmas.

We are now headed into summer. Blankets and sweaters are being packed away, we're spring cleaning and enjoying the warmer weather before the tormenting heat of summer sets in.

When we say "all our children are happy and healthy" this is not something we take for granted, especially in the difficult times we live in. We are indeed grateful for good health, for the food on our tables and the safety that we live in. We had a wave of the Omicron variant roll across our campus however it was quick and relatively painless - most everyone had it and recovered from it within a period of 10 days.

There has been plenty to do this last quarter, the most notable of the long list of work being:

• We started construction on our new Kindergarten building; the next big step in our school campus vision.
• Our mustard crop was harvested. Poor weather conditions meant the crop was not amazing, but we were luckier than most farmers in our area.
• Our kids are now all back in our school. COVID-19 protection protocols are in place, but it's great to have them all learning in a classroom environment again!
• We started our Northern Field Fencing Project which is also being fundraised for here on GlobalGiving.

Of course there have been hundreds of other things happening, day-to-day activities, micro-projects, repair jobs both big and small, birthdays, events and even a state election! If you would like to hear more about these types of things please do consider signing up for our weekly newsletter, you can see a sample of them here.

Looking forward, the next big job that we have ahead of us is finding sponsors and support for 8 more of our kids who are interested in persuing university degrees through our Mission University program. It's a massive job, but we've already seen the incredible difference a degree from a good university can have through Our First Graduate.

Through it all we are grateful for the incredible support we have seen from each of you as well as from GlobalGiving themselves. We're confident that this next quarter is going to be just as active, fun filled and adventurous as ever and look forward to partnering with you through it.