Iris Ministries, Inc.

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An excellent start (posted by Shampa Rice)

To all our dear friends,

I hope you all are having an excellent start to 2010. Here’s a little New Year’s update from our side of the world.

I remember how my mother was always drawn to widows and orphans, but until recently I never knew why she would call them both “orphans.” But it makes sense. In our society, many newly-widowed women and their children are thrown out as soon as their husbands die. It’s difficult to even begin imagining the grief compounded by such trauma. The young woman has, in one fell swoop, lost everything and everyone. So she too is like an orphan, even if her parents (who will never take her back) are still living.

Several weeks ago our children (Shonali and Jon Isaac) encountered this sort of thing firsthand in our village school in Jharkand. They were there to help with our first school Christmas program.

A young widow works at our school now. She has two sons, aged four and six. The six-year-old quit speaking after his father died. (Being thrown out from home the same time he lost his dad has something to do with it, I think.) Shonali held the boy on her lap and Jon Isaac talked to him. They both were quite surprised that the he was so warm toward them, and he even spoke a few words.

What can we do for these widows in our life? One thing is to get a few houses so that they can be safe and have some kind of stability for their kids: one in Calcutta and one in Jharkand. We are trying to help another young widow with a ten-year-old, whose husband was a pastor and died of TB three years ago; and another one whose husband, an evangelist, just died of TB (this part of rural India has lots of TB). She has a six-month old child. There are so many of these we want to help.

We had the most glorious time with our school kids for Christmas. You can see the pictures below the text here. They had their first Christmas tree and first Christmas party on December 18th! Oh, you should have seen their faces when all the yummy snacks were being given out and Shonali and Jon Isaac played games with them, and ran around with them like three-year-olds, screaming and laughing.

Then we had our Christmas play. The kids acted superbly and we were very surprised that they, being so little, could do drama that way. All the guests (parents and other people from the village) sat in rapt attention the entire time, even though it was a powerful Christian message and they are all Hindus and non-Christian tribals.

After the play we gave out all the Christmas presents to our children, provided by generous gifts from our friends abroad. The kids were in shock. Many had a hard time believing they could keep the toys. They come from such dire poverty that they've never owned any before.

We all spent Christmas day in Calcutta with a young widow and her three teenagers, and Jonathan’s mother from California joined us. This is the family whose father was murdered in the 1990s, and soon afterward they got saved. They always stood up for the gospel, so much so that they are in hiding because the same people who killed their dad is out to kill them. So we always have to be careful that no one follows us to their house.

Our kids were overjoyed to wrap presents for them--so many presents that they were simply overwhelmed! Shonali gave her brand new iPod to the young man, who immediately began weeping and thanking God. When he finally regained composure he said, “Over a year ago I prayed that God would help me get an iPod. I was only praying for a 1 GB model. But I could never save enough money, so I forgot about it. And now I'm holding a 16 GB iPod in my hand!”

The next day we were with the director of Bible College outside Calcutta that we support. The director is like my son (he calls me "ma"), and we went and also gave them gifts and Christmas dinner. They were so overjoyed that they cried. Shonali shared later how much it means to someone to just know that God really cares for us little people, who are forgotten by most of the world.

He is so very good! We are always shocked to see His goodness pass before our eyes, but this Christmas we were the most amazed!

Thank you again and again for your love and support. You are the ones who make all this possible as you believe God for and with us!

In His great love, Shampa Rice