Dear All,
We are in the last weeks of preparing and renovating our old bakery into a home for abused and disabled babies who have severe mental deficiencies stemming from mothers who took drugs during pregnancies, botched abortions and severe beatings. These babies have been abandoned by their mothers and relatives, and now we have four, with two more coming in a couple weeks. We are training three new girls on how to care for them, and the principle ways of physical therapy. These girls will live and be under the watchful eye of a couple of our older housemothers, who are dedicated and loving mothers to these pitiful wee tykes. It is not a quick take in and release program. These children will be with us until they die. We will have to put a cap on to how many of these babies we can handle, since our facilities are limited. The government wants to give us many more of these pitiful babies, but won’t give us any money for construction or care.
The rainy season started on with a bang; plenty of rain. During the dry season last year, we received funds from the Sarnelli House Foundation in Holland to drill a 60 meter well and put in a solar cell pump. This past week, we finished planting in our 12 rai piece, and tried out the pump. It did an amazing job and filled up the paddies with water within 2 days. And on our 70 rai piece (35 acres) we drilled two more wells, and are in the process of putting down solar cell pumps there as well. We will now be planting rice in the big field.
As long as we are reporting on farm news, one of our mama pigs cranked out 18 piglets two weeks ago. 4 died at birth, and two died later. Since mama has only 10 nipples for milk, two little oinkers have to be fed by bottle. Two more mamas are about to give birth, so we will see how our supplements work on them. We have three cows ready to give birth as well.
And back to the children. Our latest Covid attack seems to be over and the kids are now healthy and happy and we now have over 50 of the kindergarten and primary school age. These kids are cute and funny and I always wonder how could their parents abuse and abandon them. The latest is to do a show and tell on their missing baby teeth. According to some of the little girls, the extractions rivaled a brain tumor operation!
Anyway, thank you all so very much for your interest and help with the all these little tykes. Especially since they are kids you don’t know nor ever met.
Gratefully,
Fr. Mike, the children and staff of Sarnelli House
