‘Tis the merry month of May, but with the heat and lack of rain, it may not be so merry after all. The kids, though, are enjoying their school vacation. With all the heat, swimming is their choice of fun. We have extensive repairs and construction going on at the original Sarnelli House building for the boys, so we had to move them to Nazareth House. I think there is another 4 months of construction before the boys can move back to their dormitory.
All of our young volunteers have returned home to their respective countries to prepare for their entrance to college. They were a great group and the kids miss them. The housemothers really miss them. Many of the housemothers have been with is for over 20 years and are quite long in the tooth. Some of our older girls have stepped in to help, especially taking the kids swimming and riding herd on them when the kids go on excursions to the city. But the percentage of older kids has gone way down, and we are stuck with a herd of babies, curtain climbers and grade school runts. So, with a population of around 130 kids, the older kids are off to study away college or vocational schools and very few older ones are still living at Sarnelli. They return for the holidays to help the house mothers.
This part of the Northeast of Thailand didn’t get rain for five months, so the recent rains for two days was really welcome. The dust settled, and the rain doused field fires set by the villagers. We also got a few days of cooler weather. People here talk about “super El Nino” and how it will mess with the monsoon season and bring a two year period of draught. Since we have no real source of water besides rain, I am trying to find rice we can buy now. The problem is most rice farmers and rice mill owners know that there might be a real shortage of rice, and will hang on to their bags of rice until the price increases to its highest price before selling.
Enough worrying about the future. God has taken good care of the children up to now, and will certainly do so in the future.
Again, God bless you all.
Gratefully,
Fr. Mike the children and staff
