This trip has been amazing and I have 1.5 days left to cover everything that is left.  It should be very busy.  It is raining gently and about 70 degrees here.  That is the one thing I am not interested in leaving in India.

Jay the tumbling guy is at Sooch and he is a big hit.  He brought a bag of equipment and he has the kids crawling through tubes, hopscotching through circles, and hopping over stuff.  So wonderful to see.  He has this big parachute type cloth and the children all gather around the outside and lift it up and down.  Then at the end he throws colorful balls into the mix and there are balls flying through the air and the loud sound of children shrieking and laughing.  Caught one series on video so should be a great video.  He is even going to leave all this equipment behind when he leaves.  I’ll ask him to train some of the mothers on how to run the show.

I have learned so much on this trip that it is hard for me to fathom.  I really want to thank Jasdeep because her translation and input into the discussions with our primary women managers was so incredibly eye opening.  I’ll never forget in to Kill a Mockingbird when Scout was told that you really couldn’t understand people until you had walked around in their shoes (one of my favorite books of all time).

Little things.  Like that we should bring small gifts to the House Mothers in addition to stuff for the kids. Small piece of jewelry or lotion.  We should honor them and make sure that all the ambassadors know their names and spend time with them.  We come into town and we are the fun people for the kids, but we need to make sure those kids know who is their mom and who is the most important person in the world.

They also said that it would be nice to give things to the House Mothers so they could hand things out to the kids when we are gone.   That while it is fun for us to spoil the children, the House Mothers are seen as secondary as they are not the ones that are providing.

There are about a 100 of these insights, so I will be busy writing them up on the way home.

There has been tragedy and progress on this trip.  This should be seen as a wake up call to identify what risks there truly are in the execution of the work we provide.  It is also a cultural wakeup call.  Our job is to come into our India TMF home and to serve and respect them.

I am so honored to be able to work at The Miracle Foundation and am so proud of how much has been done and what we can do in the future.

Sincerely,

Elizabeth

ps.  The wireless tower is up and they are testing.  Strong storms are causing a few more delays.  The 50×15 computers are here but we will still need to buy monitors, CPU and UPS.