Namaste,

On April 25th we piled 17 excited children into 2 jeeps that we had hired for the day. We were off to the Zoo. All the children came dressed in their best clothes. We had bought some sun hats the day before as we knew that they wouldn’t have any.

When we arrived at the zoo we sat down and had some lunch, jam sandwiches, fruit and Indian sweets. We went into the zoo and decided to hire a cart to drive us around the zoo as we had a number of little ones.

The looks on their little faces were cute as they saw for the first time in their lives, giraffes, elephants, tigers, hippos, deer, different types of birds and other animals. They were waving to them and saying bye as we drove off.

At the end of the day we cooled the children down by giving them an ice-cream. A great day was had by all.

I would like to take this time to introduce you to Sophia, who is our wonderful cook and cleaner. She is an amazing lady who has had a hard life. I sat down with Julie, one of our teachers who translated for us, and asked Sophia to tell us her story.

‘When I was 9 or 10 my sister in law arranged my first marriage. I was allowed to stay with my parents until I was 15 then I went to live with my husband and his family. I ran away from my husband and mother in law because they were always beating me and saying horrible things. I already knew the mother of my next husband. So one day she said why don’t you marry my son.

My new husband abused me emotionally and physically. He doesn’t care about the children. I have 6 children. One boy was kidnapped by some neighbours and I haven’t seen him since, twin girls died. I now have 2 girls and a 1 and a half year old boy.

Once I didn’t give my husband money so he punched and kicked one of my girls. He beat and abused me all the time. Once I didn’t give him money, he started beating me at 12 at night till 4 in the morning. When I was pregnant with my last child he would beat me all the time and say get out from my home.

When I was in hospital for 3 days after a beating, I decided that after this constant physical abuse of myself and my children it was time to leave. I ran away with my children to another block and stayed with neighbours.

I had called the police and he did go to jail 2 times. When he came back he was nice but then he would start to do the same things. He is now in a drug rehabilitation hospital

When my daughters grow up I want them to have a good education, a nice job and a nice husband when they marry. My dream for Babu is for him to get a nice job and look after me. I’m a little bit scared that he will grow up to be like his Dad. (Here we gave her a lot of support and said we’d pray against that)

Now I’m happy because I have a good job and Global Tribe is helping me and I feel very grateful. Before I had a lot of money but I had to give my money for my husband’s drugs and alcohol. I’m happy I left my husband. Nobody will beat me or scream at me again.

We have moved Sophia out of a very small room into the house that we are renting which has 2 rooms, a kitchen, toilet and bathroom. It is in a nice village. The girls are at the moment in an orphanage. We need to get them out of there so they can start their schooling as they are very bright girls. We have found a lovely boarding school that they can attend and will be sending them there in July. The fees for this school are quite high and so I’m asking if there are people out there willing to sponsor these girls. We do have one sponsor already, thank you very much.

If you feel to sponsor these girls can you please get in contact with me by email or put your monthly donation into the account below with “Girls sponsorship” as details.

Needs:

• Prayer: 
  Children to experience a fun, learning experience at our center.
  That we are able to reach out to the families and be a real witness to them.
  That the electricity will stay on. Now it is summer and we are reaching the high 30s and early 40s so we need the fans.

• Financial: 
  We are looking at having a relief center so we buy a few things which can help our community in times of need, so maybe food or clothes or cooking utensils.
  If you would like to give a one off donation or become a regular supporter you can put your gift into this account:
  02 0524 0134771 024 The Rock City Church Global Tribe – India
  BNZ bank (Please put your particulars)

I am leaving India on the 12th of June arriving back into Wellington at 1.30 pm on the 14th of June. I am looking forward to catching up with everyone. Thank you again for all your support and prayers for Global Tribe Children’s center I really appreciate it and so do our children.

God bless,

Julie-Ann Clayton
Global Tribe Children’s Center

Namaste, The heat is slowly rising. Today it is 40-43 degrees. I am sitting in our center and the children are sleeping. We have 16 children here today and all but 1 is asleep. 4 children are away. One is starting on Monday.

The center has been open for 5 weeks and we have a total of 21 children, one of them being our wonderful cook/cleaner’s son. He is the baby of our center being a one and a half year old. The next is 3 and the oldest is 7. We will keep it at this number and as we move the older children onto school in a couple of months we will open it up for new enrolments.

We have very fun filled days. Here is a normal day for us:

• Arrive and have free play.
• Brush our teeth.
• Aerobics and dancing
• Morning tea/ water and toilet break
• Formal teaching: We choose a topic and study it for a week. The children are broken up into 3 ability groups. E.g study Hindi for a week then the next week we’ll do numbers, etc
• Then we have lunch and rest
• The afternoon is different as the children will awake at different times. So we do art and craft and writing in the afternoon.
• We wake all children up at 3.00 and its games until their parents arrive to pick them up.

C Block FireWe are in B Block and last week we were working with the children when outside I saw a lot of people running past. It was a really windy day and a fire had broken out in one of the houses in C block and people were running from everywhere, to help. A lot of our parents or older brothers and sisters came to collect the children as it was really just over the road from us. If you imagine homes made of any material you can get, paper, cardboard, material, plastic and wood these were destroyed as the fire swept through the whole block. 200 homes were destroyed. 4 of our families were affected. They have lost everything. We were able to give them some clothes, from the amount we had had donated from NZ. Last week there was a fire in another block and we were able to give a lot to one family. So this weekend we went shopping and bought some outfits for these little ones who have lost so much.

On behalf of the children at Bawana I’d like to send a huge thank you to everyone who has supported us with prayer and financial gifts and to those who are regular supporters.

Next email will have news from our fun time at the zoo.

I pray that everyone reading this will feel a part of this exciting ministry. Without your support it wouldn’t be happening. Please feel free to contact me any time, it would be great to hear from you.

My address is jig.naenae@paradise.net.nz

God bless

From Julie-Ann / Jig

Hi everyone.

Life here in Delhi is getting extremely busy. We have moved out to a little village in a place called Bankner which is one and a half hours drive from the main city. It is a nice little village and we have been blessed to be living by a couple who I have known for 3 years now. We are blessed for a number of different reasons. One: we didn’t have gas to cook with until yesterday and we’ve been at our house for 2 weeks, we had to apply for a gas connection first. So we were welcome to have meals with them as much as we liked. We now have gas so are able to try our hand at making chai, subji (vegetables) and chapatti. Two: For the first couple of days we had problem with water, there was none, so we were able to fill our buckets at their house. One day the whole village was out of water so the tanks came in and we filled our buckets from the tank.

The center is very exciting. We start this Monday the 12th March. During last week we walked around the slum with Julina, our wonderful teacher, and surveyed the families. I was amazed at the number of children who attended school, it was fantastic to hear. The children who weren’t doing anything fell in the ages of 3 and 7. So we now have a total of 20 children who are going to start. There are 13 boys and 9 girls. Our cook has a 1 and a half year old boy so he’ll be joining us as well.

One of the families we talked to broke my heart. She has 5 children. The father died of a drug related incident. Her in-laws are not doing anything to help. Her 12 year old son and 8 year old daughter work on the streets as rag pickers. That means they pick up rubbish, like plastic or anything that can be sold and recycled. So we are going to have her 6 year old girl and 4 year old boy with us. It would be neat to one day meet the older children and do something to help the family out.

- Jig