Helping disabled people in India

Pastor Samuel in Hyderabad wrote the following:

Dear most beloved, greetings of peace and joy unto you both in the name of our true savior Jesus Christ from our side.

The physically disabled people condition are very pathetic and very pitiable. There is no one who can help these people and the people on whom they are dependent are crying and weeping and groaning because of their ward’s disability and their poverty. When I visited them and saw their physical condition and their utter most poverty my heart filled with grief and I could not control my tears. But I don’t know what I can do for these poorest of poor and disabled people. Their pain and agony and their guardians’ groanings are very great.

I write this letter with hope and faith in Jesus Christ and pray that if may find a little help for these physically challenged people and bring joy in their poverty and bitterest fate devoured lives in Jesus Name. I remembered His word “Whoever is kind to the poor Honors God” Proverb 14:31 NIV I want to help them and I want to give them the love of Jesus Christ. There are as many as 65 poverty stricken physically disabled people here in this region. We need a helping hand, precious prayers to fill joy in these dark lives.

Whenever I am visiting them to preach the love of Jesus they look at our hands with tears in their eyes the poverty, darkness, bad luck and inability are devouring their lives.

Dear beloved, can we do anything? I remember His word “Blessed is he who is kind to the needy” Proverbs 14:21 NIV a little help in gives them a great joy and happiness and opens us new doors for gospel.

Please remember in your kind prayers and we need your prayers and support very much to reach the unreached with the gospel and love of Jesus Christ our Lord. Proverb 3:27. Without your kind help and support their survival is like a lamp in the open, doesn’t know when it goes off.

The situation of underprivileged children in India

■40% of India’s population is below the age of 18 years which at 400 million is the world’s largest child population.

■Less than half of India’s children between the age 6 and 14 go to school.

■A little over one-third of all children who enroll in grade one reach grade eight.

■One in every ten children is disabled in India.

■95 in every 1000 children born in India, do not see their fifth birthday.

■70 in every 1000 children born in India, do not see their first birthday.

■Only 38% of India’s children below the age of 2 years are immunized.

■74% of India’s children below the age of 3 months are anemic.
■More than one in three women in India and over 60% of children in India are anemic.

■Acute respiratory infections are leading causes of child mortality (30%) followed by diarrhoea (20%) in India.

■One in every 100 children in India between age group of 0-14 years suffers from acute respiratory infection.

■Almost one in every five children in India below the age of 14 suffers from diarrhoea. 30-40% of the India’s population, which is largely economically deprived, spends over 70% of their total expenditure on food.

■Amongst married women in India today, 75% were under age at the time of their marriages.

■While one in every five adolescent boys is malnourished, one in every two girls in India is undernourished.

■23% of India’s children are underweight at birth.

■58% of India’s children below the age of 2 years are not fully vaccinated. And 24% of these children do not receive any form of vaccination.

■More that 50% of India’s children are malnourished.

Can you imagine sending your child to this school?

This is a photo of St. Mark’s Grammar School, a Christian school that serves the children who live in the slums of Hyderabad. Can you imagine sending your children there?

The needs of St. Mark’s are very great. Still, the children who attend this school are safer than those who remain in their “homes” while their parents are out begging or sweeping the streets during the day.

why school matters for children of slums

This interview with school principal at St Marks Grammar School and her brother, Pastor Samuel Babu, sheds light on the daily life of children in great poverty in the slums of Hyderabad, India.

Good Friday and Easter in Slum City

The past three blogs have shown pictures of some of the slum homes lived in by people with whom Pastor Samuel Babu works. Today we had this message from him:

We all , our students , Beggars Valley and Brammah Nagar Slum church congregation and staff wish you “HAPPY EASTER.” It was a very great and blessed Sunday for us here. On Easter Sunday we have given baptism to 7 people. Out of 7 people one is a Muslim woman and the rest are Hindus. Praise God!

We had prayer meetings everyday for 40 days and every day around 300 people attended these meetings and after the end of the Lent 40 days these 7 people came forward accepting Jesus Christ as their personal savior and took baptism. Hallelujah.

This Muslim woman took baptism secretly without informing her husband. Her husband is a religious fanatic, and another young lady also took baptism secretly without informing her family. Her husband died recently. Please pray for these two women and their spiritual life. Your kind, generous and sacrificial help is helping us to reach more people with the gospel.

On Good Friday around 650 people attended the prayer meeting service and I had an opportunity to share God’s Word, I shared with them the 7 words that Jesus Christ said when He was on the Cross.

Please remember us in your kind and continuous prayers as we are reaching more lost souls with the good news of Jesus we need your kind prayers very much.

Thanking you, God bless you,

Samuel Babu

Slum City

Some of the students at St. Mark’s Grammar School come from this place.

Inside a Slum Home

I try to imagine what it would be like to live in such a home. The only access to water is from a spout that is some distance away and only is turned on a certain, very few, times. Access to a toilet of any kind is a great deal of distance away.

What would it be like to give birth in such a home? What would it be like to keep your babies clean?

A slum home

Can you imagine living in a home that looks like this? This is what some of the homes look like in the Hyderabad slum.

IMG_0343

Indian Couple Arrested

From the Internet:

India has 35 million child workers, aid agencies say. A doctor couple accused of locking up their teenage domestic servant while they went on holiday have been arrested in the Indian capital, Delhi. Police say the couple did not return from Thailand as planned on 30 March and they alerted all airports to look out for them.

The 13-year old girl was rescued last Thursday, saying she had been locked up for three days by the couple.

A Delhi court has put them in police custody for two days, say reports.

Neighbours alerted police and activists after they heard the girl crying and screaming for help from the balcony. Police said the girl was locked in the apartment without any food and had been starving.

A lawyer for the couple told the court that medical reports show she is not “malnourished” and that she was given a key but must have accidentally locked herself in, according to NDTV news channel. She alleged that she had not been paid for three months, police said.

The girl is being cared for in a government shelter and her mother is expected to arrive from her home state of Jharkhand soon.

The United Nations children’s agency, Unicef, says there are 35 million child labourers in India. In 2006, India banned children under 14 from working as domestic servants.But activists say the ban is regularly flouted and millions of children continue to work in homes.

Many are also employed illegally in other jobs, including hazardous industries.

What are the “beautiful forevers”?

At first I wondered what the title of the book, “Behind the beautiful forevers” actually meant. It seems that on the edge of the Annawadi slum, near the Mumbai airport, are huge billboards that advertise tile for kitchen floors. They promise “beautiful forevers.” This truly is an amazing book.