Its been two years since Mrs. Maninder left her filthy hovel beside the garbage dump. She took the journey with her new born daughter and a 2 year old with a cleft palate.
In the mean time reconstructive surgery took place on her elder daughter. A lot of love later they have returned to Thane.
Now Mrs. Maninder is home – to a new home that members of a local church have prepared for her. As she is transitions into a new life and a new neighbourhood she is taking her first steps of helping herself and looking after her family.
She walks to work with her 2 kids. Mrs. Maninder is currently working ½ day helping to clean at the JSK centre. She then drops them off at our house where Asha and Enoch are on holiday. We have become a defacto mini-creche. At the end of the diwali holidays we are hoping that a local church day-care will take the elder daughter in. Our prayer is that God will open up doors for the younger girl too.
The next steps?
Mrs. Maninder hopes to support herself through tailoring. We are hoping she will gradually be able to take a larger share of the family finances on her own. In the mean-time, however, the church is helping directly with food care, house rent and some top-up cash for household needs. All of this out of the desire to be true to James 1.27 – to look after widows and orphans in their distress.
We are being stretched as a fellowship as we take this step – and have a long way to go too.
Beyond financial help, we have to help nurture Mrs. Maninder, and help her as she mothers and brings up her daughters.
The most precious thing to give is time. The hardest thing for any of us is to get out of our house and go and meet others.
The road ahead is not easy – but at the same time so full of opportunities for God to change our hard, lethargic and usually ungrateful hearts…
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