Yesterday Pastor Daniel and Jacob visited our home. We talked about India's children for a couple of hours, us asking question after question, and the two of them patiently educating us on the nature of the needs there. Our dream is to not only help more ourselves but organize many others to help.
Mercy Homes place children in a stable family with a mother and father with up to 10 children per family.
As a result, the lives of the children are forever changed, most of them adopting the Christian faith of the parents. Unlike the national orphanage system kids don't get lost in the pool of displaced homeless children. These kids are given far more than a bed, food, and a roof over head. They receive the most important of all development needs: LOVE. The love of a family alters their course and secures for them a future.
There are now 59 Mercy Homes and growing. Imagine the impact as these children become old enough to get married and run their own Mercy Homes! The impact on lives could increase exponentially! So we're jumping in.
One more thing: Mercy Homes in America! Pastor Daniel and I talk each time about the possibility of legal custody transfers, taking the story of kid in "The Blind Side" and making it a well-known way to take kids into stable homes. The key is connecting the stable and willing families in churches with the biological mothers in in poverty who desire for their children to have a completely different upbringing.
Finally, they told us about new program called SALT -- Save a Life Today. By the grace of God there is now an opportunity to save the lives of HIV invected children. The ministry is now contacted by the doctors in the city of Tissur whenever a child shows up there from the surrounding villages to receive medical care. These kids are normally identified and then exiled. But with SALT they are given a sufficient protein diet to combat and even be healed of AIDS!! As we learn more (and hopefully visit there some day) we would like to make this ministry widely known in America!
Today I'm proud of my kids for giving Pastor Daniel any money they had, proud of my awesome wife for signing us up to sponsor two children. But I'm mostly excited about partnering with Mercy Homes and SALT! So we're dreaming and praying.
