We are so grateful for the support and prayers of everyone that has followed this blog. We saw first hand the great work being done by the Hopegivers organization. Kyle and I were fortunate enough to get to spend some time with Samuel Thomas and I asked Sam what their greatest need was. He said, in order, the following two things: 1) prayer, and 2) support. First off, I would like to encourage you to pray for Hopegivers and the orphans. Second, I would like to encourage you to sponsor a child. I have seen first-hand their operations and my good friend Rex Austin is on their board of directors and he and I can assure you that your money will be well spent and will go to support the children. Click the banner below and then click on CONTRIBUTE / SPONSOR A CHILD to see how you can help. Again, I assure you that this is a very good investment of your money.
I have uploaded all of my India photos so that you can browse thru them and see what we saw. I took over 1400 photos of my own and they are all here minus one or two that I accidentally took of my knee or the floor or where very blurry. A large portion of the first 300 or so photos in the first set look very blue – the blue haze is because of the blue tint on the windows of the van we rode in. A large number of the photos were taken from a moving vehicle and therefore some of them are pretty blurry. I also broke them down into 3 groups. It was much easier to convert to the html code in smaller groups. Anyway, I hope you enjoy them and feel free to email me if you have any questions on any of them. Oh, and here’s the link to the photos:
Thanks,
Go0se
While in India I was fortunate enough to be able to spend a little time with Samuel Thomas, President of Emmanuel Ministries. I have quite a bit of video of him that I hope to be able to chop up and upload for everyone to be able to see. Most of it is not super high quality but I believe it is good enough that you can get the message. I will be uploading these files as I can so please check back here occasionally to see them.
Below are two of them. They are zipped up so you will need to download them to your PC and then unzip them before watching. Please click on either link and it should popup a download window to allow you to download it to your PC.
Samuel Thomas – Leper Ministry
Thanks,
Scot
We arrived home Friday night safely. We were on time and I believe everyone’s luggage made it as well. The trip was very long but on the British Airways flight from Delhi to London we got upgraded from the premium economy to the business class seats. That was sweet! They were the large seats that would fold down into a bed if you wanted. We were all grateful. The only drawback was when we got to the American Airlines flight from London to Dallas we were in coach and we felt like sardines.
I believe I can speak for the whole group and say that we are all grateful to all of those that followed along and kept us in your prayers.
I am going to try to post a few pics in a few days so check back every couple days for some more stuff!!!
Thanks!
Scot
Here are a few pics from the orphanage/school, leper colony, and church we visited the last two days.
orphanage room
Above is a room that the orphans live in. Typically there are more than 1 orphan in the same bed. In America that would sound strange to have more than 1 child to a bed but in India the children are happy because it is better than living in the street.
orphans
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These are orphans in the orphanage at the leper colony.
lepar weaving
This is a leper working a weaving loom making a blanket.
We are in Delhi. The hotel we are staying in says free wifi in the rooms. Well, it isn’t working and all we have access to is a lobby computer. There is another guest that has been here for 12 days and says the wifi hasn’t worked the whole time so I don’t think we’re gonna have any good access to upload pics, etc. We visit one more orphanage today and then our flight home starts late tonight (Dec 31st in theafternoon Oklahoma time). We had a great day yesterday visiting an orphanage and english school in the morning and a church dedication in the afternoon.
Please keep us in your prayers, pray especially for safe travel.
-Scot
It was a long road to Delhi. We made safely. Thank you for all the prayers. We visited a leper colony and the church there today. It was an experience for sure. Don’t worry we are fine. We bought blankets made by the lepers to help support them. I took some really cool video I hope to share when I get back. Not sure what Scot captured he may be able to upload something tomorrow as we are told we will have in room internet. God bless you all for the prayers you are continuing to lift up. We feel them I assure you.
We are up early and will be leaving Agra in less than an hour. We are going to visit a lepar colony first thing. I’m excited and a little apprehensive at the same time. Hopefully our hotel tonight will have better Internet access and maybe we can upload a few pictures.
Please continue to keep us in your prayers.
-Scot
Hello. Our Internet access has been severely hampered by two things: 1) Kyle lost his blackberry and 2) the hotel we are in only has wifi in the lobby and it is not top quality. We are all doing well and we had a good day. We toured the Taj Mahal and the Agra Fort today. They are both incredible sights to see and I am glad we were able to take the time to see them. Tomorrow we leave Agra very early in the morning and head for our last stop.
Please continue to keep us in your prayers.
-Scot
It took us an hour but we made it through. The air is so bad right now. The smog is thick and it is very hard to breath. We will try to get wifi from the hotel and post some pics. No promise of wifi though.
