Annointing oil

There is a small bottle of hair oil that Asha and Enoch have been playing with for the past few days.

This morning they told me what it was. "Opa's annointing oil!" He uses it when people are sick and he prays for them. I had to smile, thinking of my dear father who took a portion of his favourite "Keo Karpin" hair oil and put it in a small plastic bottle - perhaps a hand-me-down from someone who picked it up from a hotel.

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When I smell their hands, I smell my father - in his sincerity and simplicity.

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But besides anointing people - and being used on his own head on a daily basis - the oil has also been used for another purpose. In January Opa and Oma took Sheba and the kids for a picnic at Borivali National Park. At a small play ground Asha and Enoch enthusiastically swung - on swings that screeched horribly. Out came the annointing oil - and one set of swings in the National Park were silently and smoothly swinging Opa's beloved grand-kids.

Illegality

Jesus hung out with some pretty unsavoury characters in His day.

We are no different. Our own often unsavoury blend is still frequented by our Lord - and we also have the privilege of following His footsteps and meeting all kinds of people.

One of our positive friends runs a gambling den. They pay Rs. 40,000/- per month in bribes to the local police to keep running the show. If that is what they pay in bribes - you can imagine how much their turnover is. Needless to say, our friend is not very responsive to our home visits. His suffering wife has left him several times due to his neglect for her and the family - and his odd hours and sullen, selfish behaviour. He is still alive - but barely. His frequent illnesses keep bringing him closer to the edge.

Another friend runs an alcohol business, selling country brewed liquor. She says that God has been good to her and that she has prayed to Him and told him that she still has to sell the stuff to pay for her food and her son's education. Our staff have debated the issue with her a number of times - but though she is not happy with her work - she is not willing to take a step of faith and trust that God will provide for her and her son. The local church, which first referred her to us has tried to disciple her - but she has stopped going to this fellowship or any for that matter because of the business she continues to run.

A very sick woman has just heard that her house will be demolished. The vast majority of our friends live in shantytown areas - the land having been caputured and lived on for years. Every now and then the municipal goverment will allow the original owners to clear the land. So where do the poor go? And how can they get something legal?

We don't have any easy answers for each of our dear positive friends - and especially with the issue of illegality. But we have the Lord - who knew what it was - and is like - and is ever-ready to help us and show us the way forward.

Dedication

We just dedicated our renovated centre - and took a huge step towards becoming an integrated counselling and testing centre (ICTC) this evening.

It was a small meeting - but we had a big God present. John Forbes shared words of encouragement and sang. He said that our testing centre will be a place where people will get good news and bad news. Good news for some who test negative. Bad news for others who are positive. Good news for both the negative and positives - that God loves them very, very much. He reminded us of his own time when he found out he got HIV - and how God had been so faithful to His word in John's life - and that Jesus is life himself - and yearns to give life to others. John has been blessed with a rebuilding of his immune system - from a low of only 64 CD4 cells in 2002 to having crossed the 300 barrier this year!

Later he cut the ribbon that opened the door into the renovated centre.

Earlier in the day our doctors - Sheba and Marise saw six new HIV positive folks. All from totally different settings - one mother and adolescent girl were brought by Bro. Zen who serves through a house-fellowship in Mulund - another sick lady and her child were brought by her neighbour - a woman who works as a cleaner at Lok Hospital - another man came because his wife had tested HIV positive earlier - another man was met at the government hospital by our JSK staff.

The walls are sky blue - and everything smells of paint. Monday will see us working in the re-newed centre - which was dedicated to the Lord this evening.

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Jeevan Sahara will continue to focus on home-care for people with HIV in Thane - but the renovated centre offers us the opportunity to reach out to people earlier - and to link them into care at home sooner - as well as allowing us to partner with the government health facilities earlier.

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The door is open.

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We now need to see the right people come in - or put it another way - people with HIV or at risk of the disease who need life-change. We want to see this centre lead to deep and lasting healing in many.

B-days 4 all

We are smitten by Birthday fever here at that Eicher household. Its pretty hard not to when Andi and Sheba have their birthdays 2 days apart. Andi entering the world and taking his first lungfull of Bombay air 48 hours before Sheba does the same on the other side of the land in Rourkela on the 4th of April.

We are now done with all our birthdays in the immediate family till 2009.

The beauty of a birthday is it gives an annual peg on which to measure our lives. The number of times our spinning ball has circled the sun is secondary to a common measure that says - I have been alive for so long!

We need reasons to celebrate too. So much of our time just spins by without us noticing. The joy of each other cries out for ways of expression. B-days offer one way.

By preparing cards and flowers - cakes and the odd gift - we share our lives together. Somehow in our childhood Dad started shaping our birthday cakes into various beautiful models. The one that I remember most strongly was a 3 dimensional VW bug automobile - complete with silver foil bumpers! I think it was made with chocolate icing too!

Today we got up early - and wished and prayed with Sheba. This evening we have the dedication of the remodelled Jeevan Sahara Kendra - and know that we are in for a treat as brother John Forbes (whose B-day was last Sunday) will be sharing and singing.

Till then we have a few more hours of meeting people - so many of them broken and wasted by HIV. Our birthdays remind us of God's love and faithfulness to us.

Will we see the next? Who knows - but one thing is sure - we want to make sure that life really counts. And we also want to experience joy on the way. This day has been another opportunity for gladness.

Born on April 1st

No its not me! (mine is tomorrow). Nor is it Sheba's (on the 4th of the month).

But two very dear friends from college were born on April 1st - imortalised for countless generations of little boys as April Fools Day.

Tzu Jen Tan - now a surgeon is Singapore at the Alexandra Hospital and Charles Ndeze - now where? Two lovely men.

Tzu Jen Tan comes from Singpore and studied at Taylor University with me in the biology dept. Jen dug into his studies and surroundings. He was amazed at how much was edible in the wild and took pains to make small jars of berry jam for us. He cut open rat hearts for research purposes and made exquisite drawings of them (some which made their way back into our rooms). He loved cross-country running (and running in the cold with minimal clothing). Though I was thrilled about it, I was not totally surprised to hear that Jen as given the 'sword of honour' - for being the best officer that year - when he eventually did his time in the Singapore military. In all of this there was an often almost painful humility in Jen - and a great love for God and us other mortals! I was so privileged to have Jen come out in 1998 and do an elective from his med school with me at Nav Jivan Hospital in Jharkhand. Here's to you Jen as a father of three girls (the twins were born very prematurely last year), husband, surgeon, and most importantly - Jesus follower!

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Charles Ndeze. Just saying the name is bitter sweet. We heard about him before we saw him. A bare-foot footballer has come from Burundi, we were told. Charles never fit into the college soccer team - too regimented and driven I think. But we had many a conversation late at night - when he would be working as a security guard and I was at the library trying to put in some study or finish a project. Charles was the son of an Anglican Bishop in Burundi. He was a man of wealth - and loved his cows. He was a gentle giant - in the very strange setting of rural Indiana - a place not known for diversity and cosmopolitan pizazz. But maybe that was just as well - because Charles did not seem to want that world either. As the son of a man who I assume had enormous influence in his country, I always sensed that Charles was at least partly running away from something. This was in the years just prior to the terrible blood-letting in Rwanda.

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Oh to try and speak my broken French with Charles again. Where are you Charles? I did the google search for your name - and only came up with a charismatic gorilla cub. Cold comfort. I wish we could meet again - and share where our lives have lead us - and what God has been doing since we last saw each other in 1992!

Exams

Its not every day that Enoch does up Asha's shoes as she goes to school. But then again, it is not an unusual thing for him (or her) to do. The kids are very loving and affectionate almost to a fault.

Asha is at the end of her first year of school and is taking her final exams.' So far she has been flying through these.

Enoch has come home with sheets which inform us that these concepts were successfully taught to him at school. When we ask him to read the words he was supposedly taught, we get guesses. Sheba - in her love and patience - has started sitting with Enoch to help him do what the teacher is supposedly doing in school.

One think both Enoch and Asha do - however - is they love to be read to. We are currently going through "The Light Princess" by the Victorian author (and great influence on CS Lewis) George MacDonald. A wonderfully redemptive tale - and told with such wit and sleight of hand - I wish I could marshal words - and esp. thoughts in the same way.

It looks like we have many years of sitting with the kids and their books ahead of us!

We are not meant to be alone...

"God has willed that we should seek and find His living Word in the witness of a brother, in the mouth of man. Therefore, the Christian needs another Christian who speaks God's Word to him. He needs him again and again when he becomes uncertain and discouraged, for by himself he cannot help himself without belying the truth. He needs his brother man as a bearer and proclaimer of the divine word of salvation. He needs his brother solely because of Jesus Christ. The Christ in his own heart is weaker than the Christ in the word of his brother; his own heart is uncertain, his brother's is sure."

- Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together