Second Saturday's

One of the projects here at India Christians Ministries is called CCH, which stands for Church Children’s Homes. The homes are family style, churched based orphanages where the children not only have the pastor’s immediate family taking care of them, but the entire church family nurturing them as well. It’s as if each pastor adopted ten children but the entire church body takes responsibility for parenting them. ICM currently runs 40 homes and they have hopes to open 20 more in 2013. 

UNICEF estimates that there are over twenty five and a half million orphans under the age of 17 living in India. There are more orphans in India than there are people living in Texas or New York. Only about 60% of orphans aged 10-14 go to a school of any kind and many are left to fend for themselves. Indian Christians have found it impossible to stand still. They don’t just hear the statistics on the news or look them up on google, they see them. They live them, and they are taking seriously their call to ‘care for the Orphan.’ 

Every second Saturday of the month Indian children have the day off from school. (Oh yea, did I mention that India works on a 6-day school and work week!?). Each month, on this special school-free saturday, the 15 CCH families in our district come and meet together at the office for a day of worship, games, food and medical check-ups. 150 children and their ‘parents’ pack into the upstairs level (roughly equivalent to a fellowship or prayer hall) that is made to comfortable seat about 30 to 40 adults. 

They spend the morning singing, dancing and worshiping all together. In this country, when its time to worship- everyone participates. The five year old kids who can’t sit still for more than 5 minutes, the over zealous 10 year olds, and the awkward middle-schoolers ALL raise their hands with the Hallelujahs, clap and jump along to the beats and sing at the top of their lungs. The best part is that none of these kids are annoyed that they have to spend their free Saturday at ‘church.’ Exactly the opposite- they are ecstatic to be together and to be praising God. 

After lunch- which was paradoxically chaotic and quite organized- the kids went back to worship. I kept waiting for at least the little ones to poop out, but its like they know that they were made to worship and they never get tired of it! Another hour went by before we transitioned into games and crafts. 

Duck, Duck Goose was on the agenda but when I was given 30 energetic kids of all ages, half of a room barely big enough for all of them to stand and an hour to ‘play,’ I quickly had to re-consider. Deep Breath. Thank goodness much of my life has been spent at summer camps, retreats and children’s programs. I jumped up onto the couch and motioned for everyone to come close and watch carefully. I held up 3 fingers and grabbed 2 other children. We formed a group of 3. Then I held up 5 fingers, grabbed 4 kids and we made a group of five. I nodded to see if they understood and then started shouting out numbers. They screamed and giggled and started running around trying to form the right kind of group. When they found the right number of people they would raise their hands and shout ‘Aka, Aka!!’ which means ‘Sister, Sister, look!!’  Thumbs up. A different number- more squeals, more laughter.

After four rounds of screaming the Hokey, Pokey- Three versions of Simon Says, Five speeds of ‘head, shoulders, knees and toes,’ and 20 minutes of just making animal sounds and motions, I was finally told that games were over. Praise Him. I have never thought about God’s sustenance in terms of ‘getting through game time,’ but let me tell you- He provides in every circumstance. 

Tired out from the day, sweating and smiling the children said their goodbyes and headed back with their pastors to their homes. The older kids shake your hand and the smaller ones (with no reservations) point to their cheek and ask for a kiss, each one screaming ‘Bye aka, bye aka!!’ 

Many of the homes are still looking for financial sponsorship- please pray that God would be moving hearts in this direction! Check out ICM’s website for more info, or ask me- I could talk about these kids till the cow’s come home. (No pun intended....)