Happy Halloween!
Thank you so very much for your continuing interest and generosity for the children, especially the disabled babies. I visited their little house several days ago, and one wee girl heard my voice and crawled over to me. There was no chair around, so this old fossil didn’t dare to try to pick her up. I felt really bad about that. But I knew I’d probably fall trying to pick up plump little Jodie!
Our little guy with spina bifida has a new little wheelchair and he can whiz along and is quite happy and the housemothers are there for him and his 5 new friends. The kids are all gaining weight, and sometimes it takes two ladies to pick them up. Our two Dutch volunteers, Ben and Angelique, have just returned from Holland, and Ben is a therapist who works with the little ones and teaches the house mothers tricks of the trade.
Things are really quiet here. The kids are out of school, since the first semester has been completed. They have a 3-week vacation. We are in the heart of the monsoon season. Lower ground and rice fields have flooded, but our buildings and rice paddies and farm are on higher ground. We should get a good rice crop.
After firing my thieving farm manager, I hired a 62-year-old woman named Peh who always wanted a job running a farm. She increased our pig count to 53, bought two hundred chicks that are full time egg producers. Fattened our 12 Brahmin cows and makes our own fertilizer by mixing cow and chicken manure with rice husks and chopped hay into pellets, giving us good rice and veggie crops. She takes some of our boys who are not really capable of working on their own, plus village kids trying to get off drugs. She is tough but motherly at the same time. The kids respect her but love her. We are blessed with workers like her.
I hope and pray all is well with everybody and I pray for you daily.
God bless us all,
Fr. Mike, staff and children
